BLMS – Learning Management system powered by Laravel

Introduction

BLMS is a cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS) that provides a platform for creating and delivering online courses suitable for corporates and higher institutions of learning. BLMS is built on Laravel and comes with all the advantages offered by the world’s leading framework. BLMS’s main advantage is that it has powerful administrative features which make it easy for administrators to deliver learning and manage the system. BLMS can be downscaled or upscaled to meet the needs of the organization.

Software

BLMS is built on PHP and MySQL and the best web applications framework in the world, Laravel, BLMS offers all the advantages of the framework.

  • BLMS uses the latest versions of PHP and MySQL
  • Unlike most LMS systems built in the early 1990s and 2000s, BLMS uses the best design principles many of which are inherited from the Laravel framework.
    • There is a new version of Laravel every year due to the robust maintenance schedule. This keeps the framework at the front of the curve and BLMS takes advantage of this.
  • Cached memory integration in Laravel results in better memory management, high-speed execution, and improved backend performance.
  • Background tasks and queues enables Laravel to manage resources minimally.
  • Middleware to perform tasks before the controller executes the method. BLMS uses middleware to perform tasks such as checking permission to pages and checking payments among others. Some of the middleware included in BLMS include:
    • Auth middleware to check if a user has logged in
    • Admin middleware to restrict access to administrator pages.
    • Menu middleware to serve the correct menu to different user roles.
  • Security and Technical Vulnerabilities are handled better by Laravel.
    • The most critical security issues like cross-site scripting, request forgery, and SQL injection are handled through tokens, permissions, and a secure file system.
  • Laravel has a powerful queuing system. Therefore, BLMS can manage resources minimally by using background tasks and queues.

Templating

BLMS uses themes that can be updated or replaced based on the framework used. The current theme is based on the bootstrap frontend framework and all the templates use PHP, JavaScript (Vue and jQuery) and CSS.

BLMS themes can likewise be built on JavaScript, HTML and CSS only by using the API route system other than the web routes.

Learning Management System (LMS)

BLMS is a LMS system with powerful course management, user management and system management features to enable administrators to deliver blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom and other online learning projects in schools, universities, workplaces and other sectors.

Course Management

BLMS’s course management feature allows administrators to create, organize, and manage courses, including the course materials, structure, and calendar.

Course Structure

This feature allows instructors to create a logical structure for their course, including modules, units, and lessons, and to specify the order in which students should access the materials.

Learning Modules

Administrators can use BLMs to create and organize course materials, including assessments and assignments, polls & surveys, documents (PDF, OpenOffice, and Microsoft Word), video, images, audio, external links and website embeds, interactive content such as SCORM, CMI5, xAPI and h5P.

The learning modules below are available in BLMS.

  1. Assessments
  2. Assignments
  3. Polls & surveys
  4. Documents (PDF, OpenOffice, and Microsoft Word),
  5. Video
  6. Images
  7. Audio
  8. External links and website embeds’.
  9. SCORM
    1. Scorm 1.2
    2. Scorm 2004

The learning modules below have not been fully integrated with the system but will be in the next two months.

  1. CMI5
  2. xAPI
  3. h5P

Grading and Assessment:

This feature allows administrators to create and manage assessments and assignments including scoring and feedback configuration. BLMS assessments make use of the following question types:

  1. Association questions allow for questions to be matched with answers.
  2. Single choice questions allow for one answer to be selected out of a group of answers.
  3. Multiple choice questions allow for more than one answer to be submitted.
  4. The extended response items are traditionally called essay questions because they require students to write a conclusion based on their knowledge of the topic.
  5. An Inline Choice item is like a fill-in-the-blank item where the test-taker selects a single text option from a drop-down menu within a table or inline text. The item may contain multiple blanks.
  6. In Text Entry, the student enters text into blank fields located separate from text or within text. It is up to the item author to determine the number of blanks, the type and number of characters allowed in each blank, and the formatting applied to the answers.
  7. upload question type requires the student to upload a file as per the lesson’s instructions.

The question types below are read-only question types that are used to pass instructions to students.

  1. Section: this question type can be used to group questions together.
  2. Break Page: A break page splits a question into two pages.
  3. Title: This question type is used as a heading.

Additional Course Fields

Additional information or data that can be added to a course beyond the default fields provided by the LMS. These additional fields can be used to store and display custom information about a course that is specific to an organization or institution as determined by the administrator.

Course Calendar:

This feature allows instructors to schedule events and activities related to the course, such as lectures, quizzes, and assignments, and to display them on a calendar. Users can likewise create custom events specific to their needs.

Collaboration Tools:

This feature allows instructors to enable tools such as forums, instant chat, and chat rooms to facilitate collaboration among students and instructors.

Certificate Management

Certificates can be assigned on attendance or completion of a course. This includes the ability to customize the look and content of the certificate, including the layout, font, and logos and to add custom content to it.

Feedback Management

this feature allows administrators to communicate through notes, announcements, and emails. Users can likewise create custom notes within the course.

Reporting and Analytics

This feature allows administrators to generate reports on student progress and engagement, and to analyze data on course performance and effectiveness.

Document Management

this feature allows for the uploading of additional documents that can be accessed by users in the course dashboard.  Users can likewise upload additional documents in each course document section for personal.

Mobile Access

This feature allows students to access course materials and activities from their smartphones and tablets.

User Management

BLMS user management features allow administrators to manage user accounts and permissions of students, instructors, and other users of the system. User management includes:

User Registration

This feature allows users to create their own accounts and enroll in courses.

User Profiles

This feature allows users to create and manage their own profiles, including personal information, contact details, demographics, and any other custom profile group records created.

Additional User Fields

additional information or data that can be added to a user’s pro-file beyond the default fields provided by the LMS. These additional fields can be used to store and display custom information about a course that is specific to an organization or institution as determined by the administrator. BLM’s additional are extensive and include data sets such as tables and JSON data.

User Groups:

This feature allows administrators to create and manage groups of users, such as students in a particular class or department. These user groups can them be used for bulk enrollments into courses, curriculum, course catalogs, forums, documents announcements and messaging.

User Roles:

This feature allows administrators to assign specific roles to users, such as instructor, student, or administrator, each with its own set of permissions and access rights.

User Enrollment:

This feature allows administrators to enroll users in courses, either manually or through automated processes such as self-enrollment or bulk enrollment.  BLMs include tools for enrolling students in courses and managing their access to course materials, student registration and profile management, and role management.

User Tracking and Reporting:

This feature allows administrators to track the activity of users within the LMS and to generate reports on their progress and engagement.

System Management:

BLMS includes features that allow administrators to manage and maintain the overall operation and security of the system.

System Configuration:

This feature allows administrators to customize various aspects of the LMS system, such as the appearance and behavior of the user interface, and to integrate the LMS with other systems or applications.

LMS Built-In Custom Configurations:

This feature has predefined components meant for corporate companies, universities and colleges, schools, and high schools and all complete LMS features. Each predefined LMS type can likewise be limited by turning on and off the predefined features.

Email Configuration:

This feature allows administrators to load custom templates to be used by the system for emails such as course subscriptions and administrative notifications.

Menu Management:

This feature allows the management of menu items. It allows the association and limiting of menu roles to different user roles.

Role Management:

This feature allows for the management and creation of different role types, role groups and default role management. This section allows administrators to control access to the LMS by granting or limiting access to modules and parts of the system. The role management section can override other role configurations such as the ones granted by the LMS type or editing of menus.

Event Management:

This feature allows an administrator to define the communication protocol of the LMS and includes emails, SMS, and system notifications. It defines the user groups to receive the notifications and enables administrators to manage the messages. Notifications can be turned on and off or made mandatory.

Module Management:

This feature allows for the management of modules that are used in the role management area. Module names and icons can be customized using this feature.

Layout Management:

This feature allows for the management of and creation of custom pages. The page management feature includes the widgets displayed on pages. It also includes a widget management page that controls the widgets that are displayed on pages.