SWAD, an Open Learning Management System

SWAD, an Open
Learning Management System
Antonio Cañas
University of Granada (UGR)
@acanasvargas acanas@ugr.es acanas@openswad.org
https://openswad.org/ @openswad
SWAD, an Open
Learning Management System
Antonio Cañas
1
1
Antonio Cañas et al.
February 23 2021, Granada, Spain
February 23 2021, Granada, Spain

Contents
●
History and summary of features
●
Implementation
●
Free software release
●
swad.ugr.es figures
●
openswad.org
●
Future objectives and tasks
●
Conclusions

History and
summary of features
“The dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the
reality of tomorrow”
.
Robert H. Goddard
History and
summary of features
“The dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the
reality of tomorrow”
.
Robert H. Goddard

LMS in 2021: a very broad offer
●
Today: hundreds of LMS
●
proprietary / free software
●
expensive / free of charge
●
installable on the client's servers / accessible in the cloud

308

619

...but in 1999 there were not so many available, and we
started to develop our own system:
Sistema Web de Apoyo a la Docencia
(Web System for Teaching Support)
⬇
Social Workspace At a Distance
https://swad.ugr.es/
https://openswad.org/
A web platform to manage courses, students and teachers,
with functions to support teaching and learning.
What is SWAD?

This is how it looks,
although some parts of its appearance,
such as colors or icons, are customizable
What is SWAD?

Features
Free software · 9 languages · Responsive design · Android app
Face-to-face or blended learning
Hierarchical organization: System · Countries · Institutions
(universities, companies) · Centers (faculties, schools) ·
Degrees · Courses · Group types · Groups
10 available roles: Unknown · Guest · User · Student · Non-
editing teacher · Teacher · Degree admin · Center admin ·
Institution admin · System admin

Functionality
Social network · Calendar · Notifications · Course
information · Syllabus · Documents · Shared files ·
Portfolio · Grades · Assignments · Projects · Exam
announcements · Quizzes · Exams · Games · Surveys ·
Groups · Lists of students and teachers · Attendance
control using QR codes · Forums · Notices · Messaging
system · Statistics · Agenda · Preferences
All features in
https://github.com/acanas/swad-core/wiki/UserGuide.en

Dpt.ATC: 1999-2003
1º TIP: 2003-2004
2º TIP: 2005-2006
3º TIP: 2006-2008
V.L.Center:2008-2016
Free Software: 2010...
UNA.py: 2012-2014
OpenSWAD: 2012…
Dpt.ATC: 2016...
21 years of use and development
openswad.org
2012...
ugr.es CEVUG
2008-2016
ugr.es TIPs
2003-2008
ugr.es ATC
1999-2003
una.py
2012-2015
ugr.es ATC
2016...

Implementation
“Every step that you take
Could be your biggest mistake
It could bend or it could break
That's the risk that you take”
What If, Coldplay
Implementation
“Every step that you take
Could be your biggest mistake
It could bend or it could break
That's the risk that you take”
What If, Coldplay

The core
●
Written from scratch in C
(compiled, not interpreted)
✔Advantages:
●
+ speed
●
- memory
●
Functional even in a Raspberry Pi
●
+ stability of source code over time
✘Disadvantages:
●
absence of specialized library
functions for the web

Former servers at the UGR
2nd: 2004-2006
Pentium 4 HT
RAM 2 GiB
2 HD 160 GB
Fedora 3
3rd: 2007-2008
Core 2 Duo
RAM 4 GiB
2 HD 500 GB
Fedora 6
4th: 2009-2010
Core 2 Quad
RAM 4 GiB
2 HD 146 GB
2 HD 1 TB
Fedora 10
5th: 2011-2016
2 Xeon Quad
RAM 24 GiB
4 HD 146 GB
4 HD 500 GB
CentOS 5.7
1st: 1999-2003
Shared server

Current server at the UGR (6th: 2016...)
●
HP Proliant DL160 G9, 2 Xeon with 6 cores, RAM 32 GiB
4 HD 146 GB
SAS 15000 rpm
RAID 1+0 (292 GB)
SO CentOS 7.2
MySQL database
4 HD 1 TB
SAS 7200 rpm
RAID 5 (3 TB)
Web files
( /var/www )

Plugins
●
It is possible to develop add-ons (plugins) that run on:
●
other servers
●
mobile devices. Example: SWADroid
●
The plugins interact with the swad core through an API:
https://openswad.org/api/

Photographs of users
●
Our own automatic system for detecting faces and
improving the quality of photos, trained with 90K photos

Up to 400K times per day
Up to 2000 times / minute (30 times / second)
Log
“click”
logged access
HTML
server
database
swad-core

149 database tables.
The largest is the one
used to store the access log.
Database

Log table
●
It allows analyzing a lot of information:
●
By role
●
By user
●
By action performed
●
By qualification
●
By subject
●
By dates
●
...
UGR: 477 million registered hits since 2005

Log table
Pages per minute
(averaged during an academic year)
teachers
students

Log table
Matches of the Soccer World Cup 2010
You can even see the rest in the match

Log table
Peak: students choosing groups
Page views per minute

Log table
●
What if we convert every click into a sound?
●
At 1 am:
http://swad.ugr.es/stat/clicks/clicks_1am.wav
●
At 1 pm:
http://swad.ugr.es/stat/clicks/clicks_1pm.wav
●
Peak (students choosing groups):
http://swad.ugr.es/stat/clicks/clicks_grupos.wav

Who has developed it?
●
Recent programmers:
●
Antonio Cañas Vargas (swad-core, servers, management, courses)
●
Daniel J. Calandria Hernández (photo processing, chat)
●
Juan Miguel Boyero Corral (SWADroid)
●
Adrián Lara Roldán (iSWAD)
●
Jesús Mesa González (photo processing)
●
Sergio Díaz Rueda (SWADroid)
(green = free software)

●
Former programmers (I):
●
Jesús Álvarez Martín (photo processing)
●
Alberto E. Rodrigo Gámiz (photo processing)
●
Ana Belén Cara Carmona (chat & whiteboard)
●
Carlos Moreno Muñoz (chat & whiteboard)

●
Former programmers (II):
●
Antonio Manuel Aguilera Malagón (SWADroid)
●
Helena Rodríguez Gijón (SWADroid)
●
José Antonio Guerrero Avilés (SWADroid)
●
Alejandro Alcalde Barros (SWADroid)
●
Rubén Martín Hidalgo (SWADroid)
●
Miguel Ángel Cerrailo Valle (Triswados, app Android)
●
Raúl Álvarez Hinojosa (iSWAD)

●
Programmers of modules that were not used:
●
Andrés Ramón Masegosa Aredondo (photo processing)
●
Raúl Jiménez Benítez (chat)
●
María Beatriz Medina Yáñez (whiteboard)
●
Raquel Cazalilla Sáez (chat & whiteboard)
●
Emiliano Luis Rincón Vallejos (rich text editor)
●
Diego Montesinos Hervás (iSWAD)
●
Lucas Ortiz Velasco (SWADMyPage)
●
David Medina Godoy (SWADE, rich text editor)
●
Marta Muñoz López (SWAD2Moodle)

●
Translators:
●
Antonio Cañas Vargas (CA,DE,EN,ES,FR,GN,IT,PL,PT)
●
Joan Lluís Díaz Rodríguez (CA)
●
Rafael Barranco Droege (DE)
●
Giuseppe Antonio Pagin, Antonella Grande, Francisco Manuel
Herrero Pérez, Nicola Comunale Rizzo (IT)
●
Wojtek Kieca, Tomasz Olechowski, Mateusz Stanko (PL)

●
Contributors (I):
●
Javier Fernández Baldomero (forums, papers)
●
Antonio F. Díaz García (servers)
●
Eva Martínez Ortigosa (administration, papers)
●
Francisco Illeras García (servers)
●
Alberto Prieto Espinosa (papers)
●
Beatriz Prieto Campos (papers)
●
Begoña del Pino Prieto (papers)
●
Mancia Anguita López (papers)
●
Eduardo Ros Vidal (papers)

●
Contributors (II):
●
Francisco A. Ocaña Lara (FAQ, papers)
●
Adrián Gómez Anaya (WikiSwad)
●
Paloma Marín Arraiza (video tutorials)
●
technicians and scholars from the Virtual Learning Center
●
~120 degree administrators
●
...and many more

“You're frozen
When your heart's not open”
Frozen, Madonna
“You're frozen
When your heart's not open”
Frozen, Madonna

First release as free software
January 21, 2010
Free software office of the University of Granada

Steps to release the core
1. Code (names, comments) in English (100%)
2. Code independent from the UGR (100%)
3. Translation to 9 languages (90%)
4. Add AGPL headers to files (100%)
5. Publish the source code (100%) https://openswad.org/source/
6. Publish the installation procedure (100%) https://openswad.org/install/
7. Use git version control system (100%)
8. Upload to GitHub (100%) https://github.com/acanas/swad-core
9. Desirable: automate installation (20%)

Why do we create free software?
●
Because it facilitates collaborative development
Fourth Hackathon of free software projects of the UGR, 2012. Photo: A. Cañas

●
Because it encourages better programming
@psicobyte_ explains the benefits of free software. Photo: A. Cañas

●
Because it improves the code quality
Hackathon of SWADroid and SWAD, 2013. Photo: A. Cañas

●
Because it provides freedom and security to users
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/

How much work is behind?
swad-core SWADroid
Affero GPL v3 license
https://github.com/acanas/swad-core
GPL v3 license
https://github.com/Amab/SWADroid
365,636
C code lines
149
MySQL tables
40,069
Java code lines
17K
downloads
96 person-years
estimated effort*
9 person-years
estimated effort*
$5,257,630
estimated cost*
$512,169
estimated cost*
Other modules and more info: https://openswad.org/source
* According to the COCOMO model in Open Hub

swad.ugr.es figures
“What goes up,
must come down”
What goes up, The Alan Parsons Project
swad.ugr.es figures
“What goes up,
must come down”
What goes up, The Alan Parsons Project

477 million
clicks (page views)
382
million
(80%)
students
26
million
(5%)
teachers
68
million
(14%)
others
1
million
(<1%)
admin.
SWAD-UGR - Jan 2005 Feb
→ 2021

195,584
users have used the platform
171,676
(88%)
as students
3895
(2%)
as teachers
34,047
(17%)
as guests
133
(<1%)
as admin.
→ 2021

2,0million
messages sent
21,3million
messages received
→ 2021

151,772
current users
🧑🧑🧑
128,417
(85%)
students
🧑
3618
(2%)
teachers
🧑
20,071
(13%)
guests
🧑
119
(<1%)
admin.
SWAD-UGR - Feb 2021

...from 1055institutions
ugr
112,778
(74%)
from UGR
5942
(4%)
from other institutions
33,052
(22%)
unknown
515
degrees
7614
courses
SWAD-UGR - Feb 2021

799,106 (1.5 TB)
files
44,206
test questions
1395
forums
23 million
times answered
66,196
posts
SWAD-UGR - Feb 2021

Courses (swad.ugr.es)
7614 courses
5103 with students

Teachers (swad.ugr.es)
3618 teachers
(100% of 3621)

Students (swad.ugr.es)
128,417 students
>100%

Real users / academic year (swad.ugr.es)

Page views / week (swad.ugr.es)

Keys to success at the UGR
●
#1: Platform open to the entire University since 2004
I Meeting of SWAD Users

●
#2: Teacher training

●
#3: User support: thousands of queries answered
Thank you for your help and efficiency...
and for having designed a computer invention that really works,
which reconciles me with the new technologies...

●
#4: Developed according to the users’ requests
A user wants the platform
to congratulate him
on his birthday...
Days later a new feature
congratulates users
for their birthdays.

●
#5: Strengths of the tool
●
Functionality and usability
●
Simplicity
●
It has what most teachers asked
●
Reliability and safety
●
It consumes few resources
●
It works 24 hours, fast and almost without failures

openswad.org
“A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in
a cradle forever.”
Konstantin Tsiolkovski (russian physicist)
openswad.org
“A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in
a cradle forever.”
Konstantin Tsiolkovski (russian physicist)

SWAD outside the UGR after release
●
Little diffusion
●
Difficult to reach the target audience (need for advertising)
●
Absence of simple installation
●
Many competitors
●
Many LMS, some of them very widespread
●
Released as free software too late (2010)
●
A lot of work, small team
●
Conclusion
●
Very few (two or three) installations

The OpenSWAD.org project
●
OpenSWAD.org is an installation in the cloud of the
SWAD educational platform, offered free of charge for
any country by the OpenSWAD Association (non-profit
organization, independent of the UGR)
●
OpenSWAD.org is available since 2012, but it did not start
growing until 2015, when we decided to carry out
advertising campaigns

Why “Open”?
●
Free software (so open source)
●
Open and free for everyone
●
Open design and interaction
●
You can access many features (hierarchy, courses, teachers, statistics) even
if you are not logged in
●
Open content allowed
●
Upload, mark as public and choose license
●
Anyone could access, even without log in

Steps for internationalization
1. Code independent from the institution (100%)
2. Translation to 9 languages (90%)
3. ISO 8601 format for date-times (100%)
4. Dates-hours independent of location (100%)
5. Calendars independent of location (100%)
6. Weeks starting on Monday or Sunday (100%)
7. Floating point / comma format (10%)

Advertising: conversion funnel
2,600,000 ad impressions on Twitter and Facebook
2,600,000 ad impressions on Twitter and Facebook
2600 filled in their data (50%)
2600 filled in their data (50%)
260 created center, degree, course (10%)
260 created center, degree, course (10%)
130,000 clicked link (5%)
130,000 clicked link (5%)
5200 created account (
5200 created account (4%
4%)
)
130 enrolled in course (50%)
130 enrolled in course (50%)
65 created course content (50%)
65 created course content (50%)
13 used with students (20%, 5 per million)
13 used with students (20%, 5 per million)
Example: Feb. 2015 March 2016
→

Cost of advertising (2015 2017)
→
Cost Dates Days Cost/day Impressions Clicks Cost/click
Twitter 4650.29€ Feb 12, 2015
Sep 25, 2017
956 4.86 € 14,042,284 50,119 €0.108
Facebook 2400.84€ Sep 26, 2015
Sep 25, 2017
730 3.29 € 12,858,591 192,833 €0.012
AdWords 1255.93€ Feb 16, 2017
Sep 25, 2017
221 5.68 € 392,298 15,046 €0.083
Total 8307.06€ Feb 12, 2015
Sep 25, 2017
956 8.69 € 27,293,173 257,998 €0.032
Courses Teachers Students Total users
Courses or users with real use 528 385 1657 18 411
Cost per course or user €15,73 €21,58 €5,01 €0,45

Conversion comparison (2017)
Cost Dates Days Impresiones Clicks Page views Users New
accounts
New
courses
Twitter €66.20 Sep 6 -
Sep 24,
2017
7
€9.46 /
day
271,072
€0.00024 /
impression
734
€0.09 /
click
14 632
€0.0045 /
page view
342
€0.19 /
user
186
€0.36 /
new
account
10
€6.62 /
new
course
Facebook €109.66 Sep 7 -
Sep 25,
2017
7
€15.66 /
day
148,206
€0.00074 /
impression
3780
€0.03 /
click
33 087
€0.0033 /
page view
274
€0.40 /
user
114
€0.96 /
new
account
12
€9.14 /
new
course
AdWords €65.83 Sep 5 -
Sep 23,
2017
7
€9.40 /
day
13,210
€0.00498 /
impression
808
€0.08 /
click
11 169
€0.0060 /
page view
243
€0.27 /
user
94
€0.70 /
new
account
7
€9.40 /
new
course
Total €241.69 Sep 5 -
Sep 25,
2017
21
€11.51 /
day
432,488
€0.00056 /
impression
5322
€0.05 /
click
58 888
€0.0041 /
page view
859
€0.28 /
user
394
€0.61 /
new
account
29
€8.33 /
new
course

4,8million
clicks (page views)
1,376,000
(29%)
students
700,000
(14%)
teachers
2,464,000
(51%)
others
304,000
(6%)
admin.
OpenSWAD - Jan 2014 Feb 2021
→

33,534
current users
5526
(16%)
students
1817
(5%)
teachers
26,740
(80%)
guests
148
(<1%)
admin.
OpenSWAD - Feb 2021

from 148
countries
from 2079
institutions
23,499
institutions
2495
centers
2841
degrees
4287
courses
OpenSWAD - Feb 2021

Users / country (OpenSWAD)
First countries in OpenSWAD according to number of users
First countries in OpenSWAD according to number of users
33,534 users
from 148 countries

Users / country (OpenSWAD)
●
Even a report about OpenSWAD has been broadcast on a
Latin American TV channel
OpenSWAD in Atomun, Telesur TV (Venezuela), July 2017

Users / institution (OpenSWAD)
Users from 2079 institutions

Users / month 2014 2021 (OpenSWAD)
→
Advertisements

Teachers / month 2014 2021 (OpenSWAD)
→
Advertisements

Students / month 2014 2021 (OpenSWAD)
→
Advertisements

Future objectives and
tasks
“When they ask me when a program will be ready, I
answer: it depends on how much you work on it.”
Richard Stallman
Future objectives and
tasks
“When they ask me when a program will be ready, I
answer: it depends on how much you work on it.”
Richard Stallman

●
Objective 1: Incorporate new functionalities in the
platform and improve some of the existing ones for its
integration with gamification, geolocation and EDM
Objective 1 tasks
T1.1 Instructional design + planning T1.5 Improved test exams
T1.2 Monitoring + activity reports T1.6 Scanning homework with the mobile
T1.3 Collaborative edition (wiki) T1.7 Integrated grades
T1.4 Improved schedule + calendar T1.8 Enhanced forums + chat + messages

●
Objective 2: Integration of gamification based on typical
game elements in the functionalities of the web platform
and the mobile app
Objective 2 tasks
T2.1 ARS integrated (interactive games with remote control)
T2.2 Scores + badges in global and course functionalities
T2.3 Karma in timeline, forums and files
T2.4 Progress bars in user profiles and courses

●
Objective 3: Integration of indoor geolocation to improve
the location of users in institutional dependencies and
attendance control
Objective 3 tasks
T3.1 Database + location prototype T3.5 Possible improvements
•
Alerts about friends that are close
•
Display location on map
•
QR to check-in
•
Store history for activity reports and
recommendations
T3.2 SWAD API functions
T3.3 Integration in SWADroid
T3.4 Add gamification

●
Objective 4: Integrate Educational Data Mining techniques
to improve student assessment, identify study tips, and
offer alerts to students and teachers
Objective 4 tasks
T4.1 Study state of the art of EDM (lines of research, articles)
T4.2 Study algorithms + software tools
T4.3 Off-platform experiments (predict + recommend + alert)
T4.4 Select algorithms and integrate them into the platform

●
Objective 5: Analyze educational changes in motivation and
participation, results, and degree of use and satisfaction
after the improvements
Objective 5 tasks
T5.1 Interviews with users prior to the improvement
T5.2 Acquire reference data prior to improvement
T5.3 Measure indicators after improvement: performance, use, motivation ...
T5.4 Disseminate partial and final results

Conclusions
“We are free, we can be wide open"
Analyse, The Cranberries
Conclusions
“We are free, we can be wide open"
Analyse, The Cranberries

Conclusions
●
We have developed and used an educational platform for
21 years at UGR (Spain)
●
It’s a fast tool that consumes very few computing
resources, making it suitable for low-cost installations

Conclusions
●
It had a great growth between 2005 and 2015
●
In 2015 it was almost used by the entire UGR (≈60K
students)
●
In total, it has been used by 195,000 users at UGR

Conclusions
●
Since 2010 it’s free software, so anyone can install it (and
improve it)
●
Since 2012 it is freely available in the cloud for everyone,
in the portal OpenSWAD.org
●
Of course, you can try it at https://openswad.org/

Conclusions
●
Since 2016 its use at UGR has decreased due to
institutional support to another official platform
●
However, we have continued working on the
improvement of the platform
●
We will continue its upgrade with gamification,
geolocation and data mining, among other features

Thank you!
Antonio Cañas
Thank you!
Antonio Cañas
86
86
Antonio Cañas Vargas

SWAD, an Open Learning Management System

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