BuddyPress Courseware is Now a Full-Featured Learning Management System

We’ve been following the progress of BuddyPress Courseware, a plugin which brings learning management to WordPress. It’s a unique LMS in that it offers a social approach to learning with BuddyPress as the base framework for students, classes, assignments and interaction.

Stas Suscov has been making quite a bit of progress on the project lately and has announced a host of new features ready for the plugin as a result of his participation in Google Summer of Code. Stas wrote in his midterm update that with the new set of features, he’s finally comfortable identifying the plugin as a full-featured LMS, as opposed to a very sophisticated hack.

• Quizzes support for assignments with a brand new form builder, automatic grading and responses with correct/wrong answers
• Improved and simplified workflow, replaced sub-courses/learning styles with lectures that have a handbook navigation style (tree, next, previous), a bookmarking system (so you will never forget where you left off)
• An updated UI/UX with icons, cleaner interface and a simplified administration dashboard
• An updated dashboard with progress indicator (based on solved assignments)
• Zen mode for editors!
• Security improvements for uploads (uploads are now private for every user/post)
• A compatibility layer so users will never get installation problems because their BuddyPress has a component disabled!

Test BuddyPress Courseware in the New Sandbox

Want to play around with BuddyPress Courseware and test the plugin without having to install it on your own server? Head over to the new Courseware sandbox.

The social aspect of BuddyPress Courseware puts it in a league of its own, especially given that it’s completely open source. Expect to see open source systems putting their more popular proprietary counterparts out of business in the very near future.

If you’re an educator who loves working with WordPress, you will want to keep your eye the development of BuddyPress Courseware. To find out more, check out the BuddyPress Courseware Handbook and take the plugin for a test drive today. Send your feedback to Stas on his summer of code blog.