I’m looking for someone to develop a lightweight learning management system for Discourse. Ideally, the plugin would allow me to have certain categories behave like an LMS where the user could progress through a series of courses (topics). Once they view a topic, there would be a button to navigate to the next topic. The topics would still behave like normal Discourse topics where users could discuss the topic. Since this is for an existing community, the plugin will not require all categories to be treated as courses, only selected categories.
Nice to haves would be a progress bar to show how much of the course has been completed. it would also be nice to have a thumbnail preview of the next course to let the user know what is coming up next.
I would like this to go live in February 2023 if possible.
I’m interested in this. I started using Discourse when I was a college professor and used Discourse to teach my classes. I used custom badges and even had a script that would pull my from topics with certain tags and then push the results into the gradebook of the LMS that the university wass using.
I’ve actually already built pretty much exactly what you’ve describing (with a few other features as well). It’s currently a private plugin called “Discourse Learning Management”. This is what it looks like.
The plugin is covered in “unit tests” (i.e. it’s robust). It also has an “importer” system that allows you to import course content from remote sources.
The content you’re seeing in the screenshots is imported from here.
If you’re interested in using it / adapting it to your needs you can PM me and we can discuss what changes you might need and what kind of relationship we’d have.
To build this properly from scratch this budget is probably too low. You may get someone willing to attempt it for this budget however the end result may not be want you’re hoping for. To build just your feature-set from scratch (i.e. without some of the additional features we’ve added) my initial estimate would be a minimum of $5000 USD.
You’re also going to run into the issue of support and maintenance. Any LMS plugin for Discourse, no matter how “lightweight” will involve modifications which need to be maintained over time.
I forgot about that! @csandstedt, I’ve seen this plugin in action and recommend it. And I trust Angus’s estimates, so I recommend you check with him to see what you can work out.
from topics with certain tags and then push the results into the gradebook of the LMS that the university wass using.
(with a few other features as well). It’s currently a private plugin called “Discourse Learning Management”. This is what it looks like.
