Cost-effective Learning Management System

Abstract

This project is based on Google Classroom API, which integrates a number of features with it to be considered as a comprehensive LMS solution. Although Google Classroom is not an open source platform like Moodle, it is considered as one of the most stable and widely used platforms for teaching-learning across the world. However, it has a number of limitations including attendance, interactivities, grading and reporting, learning analytics, exam proctoring, etc. This study addressed these limitations to many extents and proposed a costeffective solution with zero cost, zero complexity and zero maintenance - as an inclusive and equitable solution for different levels of education in Bangladesh. There are basically three types of LMSs –commercial (e.g., Canvas), open source and free (e.g., Moodle), and free but not open source (e.g., Google Classroom). According to the various websites, the cost for Canvas LMS per student per year is approximately $25-40 in case of more than 1000 users. Although Moodle LMS is open source and free, the hosting cost is more than $3,000 per month for 15,000 students with AWS and in the Moodle cloud it is $1500 per year for 1000 users with 5GB storage each. Still, it is a good amount of money as a recurrent cost for any educational institutions in Bangladesh where education is free and mostly funded by the government. This LMS project based on Google Classroom API is totally free and no cost is required for hosting. This platform is widely known to the education community and could be highly simple, effective, and user-friendly. It may provide further flexibility and efficiency if it is considered within the Google Workspace for Education (previously known as G-Suite for Education), which is completely free to all educational institutions worldwide. The COVID-19 is a global epidemic. This disrupts many aspects of human life, including the educational sector. The COVID-19 epidemic has immense impacts on educational systems all across the world. This project is basically focused on the primary and secondary education sector considering challenges faced by the teachers while using Google Classroom or any type of LMS.