The Research On The Application Of Open Source Learning Platform Under Linux Environment

With the rapid development of network and multimedia technology and their application in education area, E-learning has become more and more popular. Learning platform on network is a natural result of E-learning development. How to choose a suitable learning platform to support the day-to-day teaching activities, and how to improve teaching efficiency and cultivate the students' self-learning ability and creativity have become a key issue for schools, teachers, and educational researchers. The commercial platform on the market are expensive, so many schools can not afford the cost of the software itself and the cost of upgrading and services. In light of this situation, this paper introduces the concept of open source learning platform.Open source software(OSS), a new model in the software industry, has been paid more and more attention in recent years. The characteristics of open-source software, such as free of charge, excellent performance, easy to customize and localize completely accord with the needs of education organizations greatly. In foreign countries, many researchers and institutions have attended to develop and research on the open source learning platform. Nowadays, there are many excellent platforms, such as Moodle,Sakai and Bodinton are coming forth.In our country, the concept of open source has not been widely recognized and accepted by most educationistarea. The applications of open source software are still in the initial stage, and the research and development on the open source learning platform are also rarely.The purpose of this paper is to provide schools and teachers a low-cost and high-availability approach to establish learning platforms on the base of the features and advantages of open source learning platform, in order to improve teaching efficiency and achieve better teaching results. This paper studies the significance of the usage of open source software in the field of teaching on the foundation of the full understanding of the concept and advantages of open source, collects and introduces the existing "open source learning platform", then analysis and compares their performance and respective features. The result shows that Moodle is the leader in the open source learning platform in a classroom-scale area. Moodle is an open source software packet developed by Martin Dougiamas. It is based on the Constructivism learning theory, helps teachers to build internet-based curriculum and create effective online learning communities. This paper puts the main focus on the Moodle platform and its applications in the university's computer service courses. Against courses' characteristics, as well as the problems found through the survey, the research is on the application of Moodle in teaching resources, teaching activities and teaching evaluation. Moodle's powerful modules are used to offers effective support and supplement to the traditional classroom teaching. Furthermore, a secondary development on Moodle called PA-Plugin (program assignment plugin) is also designed and developed based on the understanding of the development statute and basic methods of Moodle. PA-Plugin is a programming assignment judge tool, which can judge students' programming assignments automatically.