Claroline is a collaborative eLearning and eWorking platform released under the GPLopen-source license. It allows hundreds of organizations worldwide ranging from universities to schools and from companies to associations to create and administer courses and collaboration spaces over the web. The platform is used in more than 100 countries and is available in 35 languages.
Tools
The Claroline platform is organized around the concept of space associated to a course or a pedagogical activity. Each course space provides a list of tools enabling the teacher to:
Since 2000, Claroline development teams have been focusing on the code stability and the development of features in line with the user's needs. The main concern of the developers is not to build up a large number of new features, but to concentrate upon a few elaborated tools concerning the pedagogical approach and the interface offered to the users. Besides, a large worldwide community of users and developers contributes to Claroline's development and diffusion extensively.
In order to promote the use of Claroline and encourage the relationship between contributors, each year, the Claroline community meets at the Annual Conference of Claroline Users . The ACCU is a unique opportunity to meet users and developers of many countries to share experiences and accomplishment. The first ACCU was organized the 22 and 23 May 2006 in Louvain-la-Neuve, and was also held in other cities such as Vigo, Lyon and Saidia.
In addition to the developments related to the maintenance and evolution of the current version of the platform, development teams are working on a new version of Claroline. Remaining true to the principles of simplicity, flexibility and stability that characterize Claroline, this version, known as code name Claroline Connect, will offer many new features while maintaining some general guidelines:
User orientation
Custom profiles
Independent learning
Resources modularity and openness to the environment and to changes in the web
Genericity and variety of learning tools and collaborative work
Freedom of configuration
Partners
Initially started in 2000 by the UCLouvain, Claroline has been developed following teacher's pedagogical experience and needs. Claroline is now financially supported by the Région wallonne for its development through the WIST programme. Within this programme, Claroline associates three Belgian partners :
The LENTIC, Research centre on new technologies, innovation and change of the ULiège, Liège
The IPM, University pedagogy and multimedia institute from the UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve
Consortium Claroline
The was born on May 23, 2007 during the second annual conference of Claroline users that was held at the Vigo University, Spain. This international non-profit association mainly aims at federating the Claroline community, coordinating the platform developments and promoting its use. The 5 founding members of the Consortium are:
