\label{Why_LON-CAPA}


There are tens of learning management systems to choose from. Why
should you choose LON-CAPA over the competition?

\begin{itemize}
\item \textbf{Unparalleled assessment engine}: The assessment engine in
LON-CAPA is the beneficiary of over a decade of development and refinement.
Few projects are even in the same league of the LON-CAPA project in
experience with sophisticated homework problems. Sophisticated randomization
features go well beyond merely randomizing the order of multiple choice
problems; everything can be randomized, from the exact parameters
in a given numerical problem to \emph{which} parameters are missing
for a given student. See our Author's Manual for an idea of how powerful
the assessment engine is (http://msu.loncapa.org/adm/help/author.manual.pdf),
or try our Demo Course (http://demo.lon-capa.org/cgi-bin/signon.pl). 


Along with powerful online assessment, the randomization can be taken
off-line as well. Customized exams can be printed for each student,
taking full advantage of the randomization. Most of the usual forms
of cheating on an exam are effectively impossible when each student
gets a different exam. LON-CAPA integrates directly with some forms
of scanning systems (and as long as you can get the input from the
system in some manner, LON-CAPA can integrate with it with a little
programmer support), and supports partial handgrading: An instructor
or a TA can examine a single essay problem on an otherwise multiple-choice
exam, and encode a score for the essay problem before sending the
answer form for grading. 

\item mention development in an aggresive student cheating environment?
Should probably be attached to pedagogical advantages, along with
a mention of tens of thousands of students in the system.
\item \textbf{Full course support}: LON-CAPA is capable of running your
entire course from top to bottom. LON-CAPA can host all of the content
of the course, from syllabuses to actual course materials. It can
track your students grades, with as much power as you need. Want to
give students bonuses for getting a problem right on the first try?
Or insert external grades into the system from an external data source?
Powerful communication features enable discussion between the instructors
and students, or among the students themselves. From the initial course
creation to the final grades readout, LON-CAPA has all the power you
need to run courses.
\item \textbf{It's free}\index{free}: The thousands or millions you save
over expensive course management solutions can be better spent on
computers, or directly spent on your students. LON-CAPA can frequently
do more with less then some of the largest commercial competitors,
too.
\item \textbf{It's free}\index{free}: As in liberty. No need to buy an
extra-special license just to have the privilege of developing extensions
to the system. You have full access to the entire system. You aren't
restricted to carefully delimited parts of the system the vendor deems
{}``safe'' for you to access. You also have full access to all the
data on the system; LON-CAPA never locks up your data. There aren't
any hidden secrets in the system, either, when you're free to scrutinize
all of the source code. And it won't become closed later either, thanks
to the licensing.
\item \textbf{Large Digital Library}: LON-CAPA's digital library means you
have access to thousands of high-quality learning resources right
off the bat, without writing them yourself. Since one of LON-CAPA
driving motivations is resource sharing, you have full support for
it at any granularity, from simply using other's freely available
resource, to a multi-institution grant-funded large-scale collaboration
project, to simply re-using content used last year in the same course.
\item \textbf{Power for the Users}: LON-CAPA's grants a lot of power to
the instructors to control their course; the system imposes minimal
arbitrary restrictions on the instructors because the design is mature.
To get an idea of what the instructors can do, see our Course Management
Manual (http://msu.loncapa.org/adm/help/course.manual.pdf).
\item \textbf{Improve Student's Performance}: Several studies have repeatedly
shown that using LON-CAPA can significantly improve student performance.
One especially interesting result has been its ability to nearly eliminate
the gender gap in technical subjects such as physics, where men have
traditionally outperformed women. 
\end{itemize}