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EFront (eLearning software)

EFront (eLearning software) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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Promotion for non-notable software product, article by company employee. No independent references are given, and no significant coverage can be found. In its previous AfD, [1] and [2] were pointed out, but none of these are significant. Haakon (talk) 20:14, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep, Hello and thanks for letting me share my option before you proceed to any deletion.

First of all I do not intent to hide the fact that I support this project and I can certainly accept any criticism and feedback regarding the neutrality and quality of the topic. However, this is a well known project and I post here a few evidence for its importance.

1. First of all eFront is a SCORM 1.2 certified and one of the first SCORM 2004/4th edition compliant products You can find such evidence on ADL's website http://www.adlnet.gov/Technologies/scorm/Custom%20Pages/SCORM%20Adopters.aspx or at http://webapps.adlnet.gov/SCORMAdopters/Adopter.aspx?i=539

2. Jfusion (a known Joomla plugin) and Amember (well known payment solution) have dedicated forums to support their eFront integrations: http://www.jfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewforum.php?f=53 http://amember.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8632

3. The product is one of the highest ranked systems on opensourcecms http://php.opensourcecms.com/scripts/details.php?scriptid=222&name=eFront

4. The product is part of Brandon's Hall LMS review and Capterra's LMS directory http://www.brandon-hall.com/publications/lmskb/lmskb_firms.shtml http://www.capterra.com/learning-management-system-software/spotlight/18528/Efront/Epignosis?srchid=259808&pos=1

5. The system can be found on several open-source software directories. I include a few of them below http://osliving.com/content-management/e-learning/efront/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/efrontlearning/ http://www.ohloh.net/projects/11528

6. Techworld had an indepth review for several eLearning tools including eFront http://www.techworld.com.au/article/223565/10_open_source_e-learning_projects_watch

7. Alexa report the project's portal as the 84,124 most visited site on the internet today http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/efrontlearning.net#

8. There are several blog posts concerning the pro's and con's of the project. http://daveperso.mediaenglishonline.com/2009/12/23/getting-your-own-lms-part-2-efront/ http://frumpyhausfrau.com/business/efront-lands-in-the-hot-seat/ http://techno-realism.blogspot.com/2008/11/open-source-learning-management-systems.html http://kavitaragoobar.blogspot.com/2010/03/efront-learning.html

9. The project is watched by several security lists which informs about security issues http://securityreason.com/exploitalert/7985

10. Known hosting providers offer dedicated support for hosting eFront on their infrastructure http://www.siteground.com/efront-hosting.htm http://www.facebook.com/notes/siteground/xmb-efront-and-glfusion-at-sitegroundcom/73372089834

11. Last but not least, the project itself has an active discussion forum that can be found at: http://forum.efrontlearning.net and a simple google search can reveal thousand of web-sites that are powered from the software (just try a google search with allinurl: "index.php?ctg=contact") Papagel (talk) — Papagel (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Ok, but significant coverage is a bit controversial under various aspects. The fact that thousand public web-sites have installed and use this software is or not a "significant-coverage"?. I spend some more time today on the web for other sources of information for eFront and I post here a few more findings that may help make a more informative decision:

  • Brandon-Hall eLearning Trends Research include eFront on the list of the well known open-source learning management system:

http://discovery-thru-elearning.blogspot.com/2009/07/learning-management-systems-trends-and.html

  • Genbeta, a very well known tech news portal in Spain posted a detailed article regarding eFront on March 2010

http://www.genbeta.com/herramientas/efront-intuitiva-plataforma-de-e-learning

  • Another article about eFront in Spanish

http://www.aplicacionesempresariales.com/efront-mas-rapido-y-productivo.html

  • eFront was part of the research work on evaluating learning management systems with test-tools

Kor, B. & Tanrikulu, Z. (2008). Evaluation of Learning Management Systems with Test Tools. In J. Luca & E. Weippl (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2008 (pp. 5261-5266). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

  • A few more blog mentions of eFront

http://barrysampson.com/2009/04/open-source-lms-10-alternatives-to-moodle/ http://dilancreativo.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/efront-plataforma-de-aprendizaje-online/ http://loquenecesita.com/2010/03/efront-plataforma-de-aprendizaje/

  • The CENTRE FOR LEARNING & PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGIES includes eFront in its resource directory:

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/Tools/instructional.html

  • Edutools (an lms comparison web-portal) includes eFront on its short list of LMSs

http://www.edutools.info/item_list.jsp?pj=4

  • Another LMS comparison article in French that includes eFront

http://www.lms-selection.com/fr2/?p=74

  • Eduwiki refers to eFront as "probably the most user friendly LMS"

http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/LMS

  • Delicious has assembled 371 different bookmarks for eFront's website

http://delicious.com/url/4cca5fc536ee79166c46b65d15210808

  • You can find several eFront references on search engines by using as keywords something like "eFront LMS". Otherwise, and due to the fact that there were other services on the past that used the same name the results can be fuzzy.

Papagel (talk)

  • Keep, I am active in the educational technology space as well as being a former developer for the Moodle LMS project. I find that this article is useful. I do agree that some of the verbiage of the article is written in a marketing/spammy tone and should be corrected as well as including the more notable references provided above where applicable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skippybosco (talk • contribs) — Skippybosco (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
    • Ok, but you finding it "useful" is not a keep reason; what's needed are cases of significant coverage in reliable third-party sources. Haakon (talk) 08:13, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you for your response. It seems there are numerous links above from the previous poster which I would assume would be sufficient? A more recent one, while they have not yet posted the public link to the announcement, Brandon Hall (http://www.brandon-hall.com) just awarded eFront the bronze award for "Best Advance in Learning Management Technology for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses". It is a fairly big deal for the e-learning community, which I assumed would be the populous interested in this article, does that qualify it as "significant" or "reliable" for these purposes?

Delete, no hits on efrontlearning or efrontlearning.net in google news, nothing on "efront lms" after the mid 1980s. However, if this efront is related to the efront mentioned in [this], it may be notable on that basis. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:01, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Skippybosco (talk)

  • While used internationally, eFront is developed by a Greek company (Epignosis). As such, you will find a result for eFront in Google News dated April 27, 2010 here (http://www.google.com/news/search?cf=all&ned=el_gr&hl=el&q=efront+lms). This specific news article is in reference to the earlier posters #1 link regarding being one of the first LMS in the industry to achieve SCORM 2004/4th edition compliance.

Papagel (talk)

  • If absence from google news could work as a reject reason for accepting a software article then more than half of them should be deleted (since it covers mainly big media). Also, there are a series of wikipedia articles for similar open-source elearning packages with similar coverage (e.g, like Atutor or Dokeos).
  • I would suggest a Google Scholar for several research work that mention or have as main topic the system or a direct google search using as keywords something like "eFront LMS" or "efrontlearning". Otherwise, and due to the fact that there were other services on the past that used the same name the results can be fuzzy.I include two such search links below:
  • Google search for "efront learning management system" google search
  • Google scholar search for "efront learning management system" Google Scholar Search.
  • Just one more bit of information regarding notability. Brandon-hall research just released the winners for "2009 Excellence in Learning Technology Awards". eFront won a bronze metal on the category for best advance for small-medium enterprises

http://www.brandon-hall.com/awards/award_winners/lta2009_winners.shtml

  • Comment I'm not sure how being compliant to a standard is supposed to confer notability. A general google search reveals expected advertising and discussion, most from various vendor sites and fora. I took a quite look at google scholar, what I found were papers about elearing that mention efront in passing as the software used. As for the award, I'll just say Brandon-Hall seems to hand out a lot of medals. Please see WP:OTHERSTUFF in regard to other possible non-notable software packages. I'm not convinced that this is notable. --Nuujinn (talk) 14:50, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Compliance to a standard (especially an early adopter on a widely used standard) guarantees at least some dedication from the developers on the related field (in this case eLearning). The main question here is the following: among a series of articles about open-source elearning systems does this one satisfies the criteria for a valid contribution or not?

Papagel (talk)

Comment Dedication does not establish notability, and what other articles exist isn't really relevant. What is relevant here is significant coverage by reliable sources. --Nuujinn (talk) 12:54, 5 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Arbitrarily0 (talk) 00:40, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment There are several published research papers that either have as main topic eFront or refer to it. I assembled a list from scholar.google.com:

Zaharias, P (2007). Heuristic evaluation in e-learning context: Selecting the appropriate tasks and reporting usability problems. International Conference on eLearning (ICEL) 2007 (main topic)

Kor, B. & Tanrikulu, Z. (2008). Evaluation of Learning Management Systems with Test Tools. In J. Luca & E. Weippl (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2008 (pp. 5261-5266). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. (major topic)

Ozarslan, Y., Ozan, O. (2010). eFront Öğrenme Yönetim Sistemi, Akademik Bilisin 2010 (In turkish) (main topic)

Fontanin, M. (2008). Developing an English course for in-service librarians, Library Management (reference)

Martens, B. & Acthen, H (2008). Do you moodle? 26th eCAADe Conference (reference)

Matsunaga, N & Kwan, A. (2008). 6th AECEF Symposium in Vilnius (reference)

Williams, G., A Multi-factor Authentication Model for E-learners and Virtual Learning Systems.Federated Approach.Proceedings of Student Mobility and ICT: Can E-learning overcome barriers of Life-Long learning? Maastricht University (reference)

e-Learning Delivery of the Course “Advanced Multimedia Systems Design” SK Toh - 2008 - sst.unisim.edu.sg http://sst.unisim.edu.sg:8080/dspace/handle/123456789/116 (reference)

Malik, N (2008). Discovering Dependencies in Courseware Repositories, M.Tech.Dissertation, Department of Computer Science and Engineering Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (reference)

  • Finally, eFront appears as one of the suggested LMS's from the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System (NMLS) on a related report:

Functional Specification for NMLS Approved Instructor-Led Online Courses

http://publish.nationwidelicensingsystem.org/courseprovider/Course%20Provider%20Resources/Online%20Functional%20Spec.pdf Papagel (talk)

  • Comment. Please. I couldn't get to all of those, but none that I could access do anything to establish notability:
  • Kor, B. & Tanrikulu, Z is a presentation about tools used to test various elearning software packages, the abstract is here.
  • Ozarslan, Y., Ozan, O. is basically a product review based largely on efront's web pages. [3]
  • SK Toh's research paper is an ENG499 CAPSTONE ELECTRONICS PROJECT, that mentions efront once, in a list of vendors: "Open-source Virtual Learning Environments (VLE): ATutor, Claroline, Dokeos, eFront, The eLearning XHTML editor (eXe), KEWL GLO Maker, Moodle, OLA T, Sakai Project, Virtual Training Studio, WebPA, Xerte" [4]
  • Fontanin, M., is an analysis of blending learning, and used moodle as the test LNS. The article mentions efront once, in a list: "Moodle is not the only LMS available nowadays; many others could have been used, both open source (such as ETutor, Claroline, eFront and so on) and commercially developed (such as Blackboard, eCollege, Learn.com etc.)"
  • Williams, G. is about secure VLEs, and mentions efront once, in a list: "Common VLE tools for developing and driving VLEs include but not limited to blackboard, firstclass, EFRONT, WEBCT (Part of blackboard, Dokeos, Cyber Extension." [5]
  • Matsunaga, N & Kwan, A is also about blended learning in general, and mentions efront once, in a list: "A simple search on the internet for “Moodle” [7], “ILIAS” [8], “eFront” [9], “Sakai” [10], or “Dokeos” [11] will reveal much information and sources of free VLEs." [6]
  • Malik is a master's thesis on searching, and the article mentions efront once, in a list: "There are other open source LMSs also available such as Moodle, SCORM, eFront etc. Every type of LMS supports the following features"/ [7]
  • The NMLS report (you guessed it) mentions efront once, in a list, as an item in List of Learning Management Systems, found in Appendix A.
None of these, I think, meet the bar of significant coverage in a reliable source. Passing reference does not establish notability. If you searched the web for my name IRL you find many hits, but I'm notable. Still not convinced, sorry. --Nuujinn (talk) 12:54, 5 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment:Controversy makes the world go round :) You can check next to the references I added what discovered papers seem to have eFront as a main topic and which have a reference to eFront. This obviously is not an exhausted list but pieces of information that together (and combined with other sources) tell a story.
Especially the first three paper are peer-reviewed paper that cover eFront in some considerable extend. I don't understand the point made on the paper (Evaluation of Learning Management Systems with Test Tools) about being a "presentation"- this is a peer-reviewed article on EDMEDIA 2008 (World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications).
Also, regarding the paper from Ozarslan, Y. and Ozan, O they specifically mention on the abstract "In this study, the open source learning management system eFront is evaluated based on literature review and authors experiences during 2008-2009 academic year".
About the NMLS report your remark is a bit unfair. The report has an extensive list of characteristics that are expected from an LMS that is compliant with their needs. At the beginning of Apendix A they state "The following is a list of Learning Management Systems (LMS) that a course provider may want to consider in order to meet many of the conditions associated with offering instructor-led pre-licensure courses". It seems they have done some due diligence before suggesting. On top of this, for each LMS they also provide a short description of their findings instead of just a reference.
Finally, the first paper dealing with "Heuristic Evaluation in eLearning Context" uses eFront as the main evaluation medium. I could find only a part of the paper online from the conference proceedings at: http://books.google.gr/books?id=QX_e-RlW89UC&pg=PA527&lpg=PA527&dq=%22Heuristic+evaluation+in+e-learning+context%22&source=bl&ots=GYnNO2dLg2&sig=OalgBTleLwFBd3ydwHpfyvttOz8&hl=el&ei=UJfiS73OJoOlOKPq5NsN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Heuristic%20evaluation%20in%20e-learning%20context%22&f=false (pages 527-534) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Papagel (talk • contribs) 10:59, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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