Metacoon

metacoon is an open-source platform that can be used for online learning, cooperative work and for the creation of learning material. The system offers the functionality of a Learning Management System. The developer team also offers tools for the creation of learning and knowledge content(e.g. QTIquestions and tests or SCORM ). The software is published under the GNU General Public License. The offline authoring tools are freeware.

History
The project started in 1999 as a project for the development of learning content at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. After being used as the internal platform of the project the system was used for online courses at the university in 2002. Due to the interest of other educational organisations it was published under the GPL in 2004. The development of the open source software is managed in Weimar, Germany.

In 2016, active development of metacoon ceased, with a shift in focus to open-source solutions in an "educational cloud”.

Origin of the name
The name "metacoon" derives from the Greek word meta and the word Cocoon (the Apache framework of the same name used in the project).

Features
The platform uses a room metaphor. A metacoon platform can be imagined as a virtual house with a number of rooms for projects or courses.

The rooms can be furnished with the tools of the metacoon framework to use them in different scenarios:


 * as learning environments
 * as a virtual project environment
 * as an alumni portal
 * as a platform for career services

Learning management

 * creation of courses
 * management of SCORM and QTI 2.1 packages
 * implementation and management of learning material such as images, PDF, Office documents, videos, audio, HTML courses
 * assignments (private, public)
 * discussion forum

cooperative working / knowledge management

 * group and permission management
 * file management
 * calendar
 * polls

Interoperability
metacoon runs on any system that supports PHP 5.x and MySQL 5.x. Tomcat and Cocoon are needed in order to use QTI packages. metacoon offers the following interoperability features:


 * authentication using LDAP and Shibboleth
 * quizzes and assessments using the IMS QTI 2.1 standard
 * enrollment by means of an interface for student information systems
 * integration with other Content Management Systems such as the edu-sharing repository