E-LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: A FEATURE-BASED COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

One of the main important resources for higher education is a Learning Management System (LMS), which has shown an enhancement of students’ progress with high quality learning outcomes worldwide. Many e-learning tools exist, each one has its own weaknesses and strongest points to the online learning process. This number increases continuously


INTRODUCTION
One of the main important resources for higher education, especially universities, is a Learning Management System (LMS), which has shown an enhancement of students' progress with high quality learning outcomes worldwide (Oliveira, P.C., Cunha, C., & Nakayama, M.K. (2015), Abdulaziz, A., Chowdhury, H., Kootsookos, A., Alam, F., Allhibi, A. (2019)). Some of the benefits of using the LMS are (i) it organizes the e-learning resources and content in one location; (ii) it provides a timely and unlimited access to courses' content; (iii) it easily tracks students' performance; (iv) it reduces the cost of learning and development processes; (v) it reduces necessary time of learning and development; (vi) it quickly and conveniently expands, updates, and modifies e-learning courses; (vii) and some LMS tools have built in capabilities to integrate social learning experiences into the educational process (Kundi, G. M., Nawaz, A., & Khan, S. (2010), Kulshrestha, T. & Kant, A. (2013), Lopes, A. (2014)).
A LMS can be either commercial or open source that provides safe, reliable, and flexible e-learning environment. Its concept has been emerged directly from the e-learning paradigm that connects instructors and students in an interactive way to help in the reinforcement teaching process. Three types of learning methods exist: e-learning, distance learning and mobile learning. All these types use Internet resources to manage and administrate the educational process. Either using desktop, mobile devices, or cloud based services (Software-as-a-Service), the educational process should provide a timely and synchronous interaction between instructors and learners from everywhere (Han, I & Shin, W. (2016), Capper, I. (2001), Grönlund, Å. & Islam, Y. (2010), Kraleva, R., Kralev, V., Kostadinova, D. (2019)). Furthermore, some LMSs use machine learning concepts, automatic recognitions, social networking, and prediction of user preferences to automatically adapt their functionalities based on user requirements (Sheeba, T., & Krishnan, R. (2019), Narayan, V., Herrington, J., & Cochrane, T. (2019), Valova, I., & Marinov, M. (2019)). Consequently, each LMS has its own ingredients, capabilities, and customizable modules. Examples of such models are course management, user management, communication facilities, student assessment, online examination, feedback administration, machine learning, and security, among others (Pankaja, N., & Raj P. K., M. (2013), Deborah, J., Karthika, R., Vijayakumar, P., Bharat, R., & Wang, Y. (2019)).
Currently, many open source and commercial LMS exist and available to the public, each one has its own strengths and weaknesses points to the online educational process. For this reason, it is important for a prospective customer to be well guided to make the best decision. Making the right choice while selecting an LMS is necessary because there are some systems that have unclear user terms, unnoticeable costs, unclear common features, and supported platforms, etc. This makes it necessary to make a comparative analysis among the common ones using important evaluation criteria. Furthermore, it is important to make a comparison study between LMS tools to select the suitable one and explore their strengths and limitations (Nadirah, N., Kasim, M., & Khalid, F. (2016)).
This paper focuses on the comparison of top 20 highly recommended LMSs, both open source and commercial. These tools were selected carefully; a deep analysis and revision of scientific papers and professional Websites were conducted to facilitate the process of ranking the common LMSs (Refer to Table 1). The selected tools are Talent, Docebo, SkyPrep, ProProfs, Absorb, SAP Litmos, Edmodo, LearnUpon, iSpring Learn, Schoology, Moodle, Canvas, Chamilo, Totara Learn, Forma, ATutor, Open edX, Sakai, Opigno, and Ilias. More than twenty evaluation features were considered in this study. These features were selected based on the author long experience of working in higher educational institutions, as well as with the help of literature and official resources that care about the educational process's needs and requirements. These selected features are client, software deployment, platform, browser, mobile learning, SCORM complaint, multi-platform, customer support, communication methods, interface properties, collaborative learning, gamification, reporting, management methods, user roles, access management, client authentication, certificate management, compliance management, and security. To ease the comparative analysis, we suggested a new classification of the selected set of features based on three categories: supported platform, common features, and administration and management (See Figure 1). Besides the introduction section, this paper contains the following sections. A review of the related work is presented in Section 2. Section 3 gives some technical information about the selected LMSs and the suggested evaluation criteria. The comparative tables along with their discussions are presented in Section 4. Finally, in Section 5, we conclude this research work and shed light to some future works.

RELATED WORK
During the past few years, several comparative studies were proposed to analyze the performance of existing LMSs against sets of features. In this section, we summarize the most relevant works. The research carried out by Fertalj, K., Jerkovic, H., & Hlupic, N. (2006) made a comparative study of 10 LMSs using a set of features. They focused on LMSs with proprietary, open source, mainly proprietary and partly standard, mainly standard, and partly proprietary. They made the comparative analysis based on several features such as discussion forum, course management, file exchange, that include administration, course delivery, and curriculum design; and technical specifications that include HW/SW and pricing/licensing. The outcome of this study showed that Moodle 1.8 comes first with 38 out of 40 built-in features and capabilities, Desire2Learn 8.1, ANGEL Suite 7.1 and Sakai 2.3 come next with 37 features and capabilities. LON-CAPA comes at the end with 30 features. Kraleva, R., Sabani, M., & Kralev, V. (2019) provided a comparative analysis of 36 LMS using learning skills tools that contain the following features: SCORM compliant, material, assignments, gamification, evaluation; communication tools (chat, forums and mail messages); and productivity tools (uploading/downloading, analysis of students' achievement, security, and Web-based technology, among others). According to this study, all the considered LMSs support the use of multimedia elements, creating and editing lectures and making exercises and course assignments. Only 86% of the studied systems meet the SCORM standard, and 46% and 68% provide chat and forum supports, respectively.
In summary, the aim of this work is to present a comprehensive comparative study of common existing e-learning management systems. Unlike other relevant studies that have narrow scope either in terms of the number of tools or the number of comparative features, this work considers top twenty, most deployment tools, 10 tools were selected from the private sectors, and the other 10 were selected from the freely available software with GPL. Furthermore, more than twenty evaluation criteria were used in this comparative study. To ease the comparative analysis, we divided these features into a newly suggested classification having three categories of features. These categories are: supported platform; features belonging to this category are related to system support features from a general perspective, common features; features belonging to this category are mainly related to internal operational features and activities supported by the tool, and administration and management features; features belonging to this category are related to system management and administration, both for users and courses (See Figure 1).

SELECTED LMSS AND EVALUATION CRITERIA
After reviewing a considerable amount of scientific and Web-based resources, we were able to select the top highly recommended LMSs. Table 1 provides some technical information about the selected LMSs. As shown in the table, the first 10 tools are commercial and the other 10 are open source with GPL license. The selection of these tools was based upon several criteria. Among the most ones are the number and type of customers, supported languages, and customers' feedback. Also, the analysis being carried out in this study was based upon the latest version update as declared on the tool's main Website. The information presented in the table are taken from the main tools' Websites and other relevant resources.As shown in Figure 1, we suggested a new classification of the selected set of features into three main categories as follows:  II.5. Gamification: Badges (E1), leaderboards (E2), levels (E3), points (E4), and rewards (E5).

COMPARISON RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The comparative results are shown in Tables 2, 3, 4 and 5. Table 2 summarizes the main differences between the 20 tools in terms of features belonging to category 1 (supported platform); Tables 3 & 4 detail the comparative summary of features belonging to category 2 (common features); and finally, the results belonging to category 3 (administration and management) are summarized in Table 5.
It is worth mentioning that when referring to the tables below, for limited space and page margin settings, we assigned labels to features, e.g., forum discussion (A2), video conferencing (F4), etc. (Refer to Section 3). Table 2, we extract the following findings: (i) there is no optimal system that offers all-in-one package to the online educational process, but the best system is the system that adapt its features and capabilities to meet users' emergent needs; (ii) we also noticed that, contrary to commercial systems, the high volume of customers who use open source systems came from educational institutions, such systems like Moodle, Chamilo, Totara Learn, Open edX, and Sakai; (iii) All tools support small to large enterprises, except Canvas which is mainly designed to support small enterprises. Regarding the HW/SW supported platform, we observed the followings: (i) all common operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, and Andriod), and Web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari) are supported by all tools, except Edmodo, Schoology and Sakai that do not support Linux, and ATutor does not support mobile platform; (ii) it is also noticed that most commercial tools provide 24/7 customer care services, except Talent, Edmodo, and the following open source tools Canvas, Chamilo, Totara Learn, Opigno, and Ilias provide 24/7 customer care services; (iii) some tools' developers provide free trial versions, except Edmodo, Schoology, Totara Learn, Forma, Open edX, Opigno and Ilias, and support mobility, SCORM complaint v4.0 and SaaS. Tables 3 & 4. We derive the following findings: (i) some tools have discussion forums, except Ilias, and online chart features, except Docebo, SkyPrep, Schoology, iSpring, ATutor, Sakai, and Ilias (ii) live activities exist in all tools, except Schoology, Chamilo, ATutor, Sakai, and Ilias. Regarding security features, we observed that Docebo, SkyPrep, ProProfs, SAP Litmos, Moodle, Totara Learn, Open edX and Opigno systems have more secured features such as anti-spam, antivirus IP-Blocker, data protection, and complex password enforcement; (iii) finally, most tools have gamification features, except Schoology, ATutor, Sakai, and Ilias.  Table 3. Comparison of features belonging to category 2 (Common features).

Interface Properties
Collaborative Learning 11  Table 4. Comparison of features based on the remaining set of features belonging to category 2 (Common features).

Rules and Permission Authentication
Certificate Management  Table 4; (v) most tools support various content type such as documentation, online lessons, online seminars, video conferencing, and support various learning type -learning by teachers, learning by-self, blend learning and virtual study room, except ProProfs, Edmodo, Schoology, Canvas, and Forma that do not support learning by teachers, Edmodo and Schoology do not support learning by-self. Whereas Canvas and ATutor do not support blended Learning, and all tools support grading, except Ilias and ATutor.
(vi) ATutor, Sakai, and Ilias do not support creating reports; Forma, ATutor, and Ilias do not have features to support assignment creation, and course uploading is not supported by Edmodo and Schoology, course backup is not supported by SAP Litmos, Edmodo, Schoology, Canvas, Forma, ATutor, Sakai, Opigno, and Ilias; (vii) and finally, we observed that all tools accept common file formats such as PPT, PDF, JPEG and Video.
From Table 5 which summarizes the comparative analysis of features belonging to category 3 (management and administration), we conclude the following: (i) all tools have auto-registration features, except Edmodo, Schoology, Chamilo, ATutor, Sakai, and Ilias; (ii) certificate management is supported by all tools, except Schoology, Canvas, ATutor, Sakai, and Ilias; (iii) the prices of commercial tools depend on the number of users and the required set of features; (iv) Moodle and ProProfs support more than 100 different languages, and Moodle provides services to more than 143,000,000 users around the world; (v) and finally, Moodle, Chamilo, TotaraLearn, Open edX, and Sakai are specialized for providing services to educational institutions more than others.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
This paper presented an updated feature-based comparative analysis of highly recommended LMSs, both commercial and open source. More than twenty evaluation criteria were used to conduct this comparative study. The results have shown that there is no optimal LMS that offers all-in-one package to the online educational process, but the best system is the system that adapt its features and capabilities to meet users' evolving needs. For most of the tested features, Moodle remains on the top, and it is considered as the best free open source tools and provides its services to more than hundreds of millions of customers worldwide. Besides to Moodle, Chamilo, TotaraLearn, Open edX and Sakai have more built-in features that provide services to educational institutions more than others. Also, this study showed that Docebo, SkyPrep, ProProfs, SAP Litmos, Moodle, Totara Learn, Open edX and Opigno systems have more built-in security mechanisms such as antispam, antivirus, IP Blocker, data protection and complex password enforcement. Most considered systems have gamification features except Schoology, ATutor, Sakai, and Ilias, and they can offer 24/7 customer care services, except Edmodo and Telnet, whereas open source tools offer this service on specific time slots, except Opigno, Ilias, TotaraLearn, Chamilo, and Canvas, where the service is offered 24/7. As a future work, we will analyze the performance of LMSs using customers' feedback. For this purpose, we will apply the common machine learning methods being implemented for sentiment analysis domain to analyze customers' opinions about these tools, and to build classification models for the optimal set of learning features.