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    1: \label{Why_LON-CAPA}
    2: 
    3: 
    4: There are tens of learning management systems to choose from. Why
    5: should you choose LON-CAPA over the competition?
    6: 
    7: \begin{itemize}
    8: \item \textbf{Unparalleled assessment engine}: The assessment engine in
    9: LON-CAPA is the beneficiary of over a decade of development and refinement.
   10: Few projects are even in the same league of the LON-CAPA project in
   11: experience with sophisticated homework problems. Sophisticated randomization
   12: features go well beyond merely randomizing the order of multiple choice
   13: problems; everything can be randomized, from the exact parameters
   14: in a given numerical problem to \emph{which} parameters are missing
   15: for a given student. See our Author's Manual for an idea of how powerful
   16: the assessment engine is (https://loncapa.msu.edu/adm/help/author.manual.pdf),
   17: or view some demo problems (http://loncapa.org/demo.html), or create an 
   18: account and an authoring space in the LON-CAPA Test Drive environment 
   19: (https://testdrive.loncapa.org).
   20: 
   21: Along with powerful online assessment, the randomization can be taken
   22: off-line as well. Customized exams can be printed for each student,
   23: taking full advantage of the randomization. Most of the usual forms
   24: of cheating on an exam are effectively impossible when each student
   25: gets a different exam. LON-CAPA integrates directly with some forms
   26: of scanning systems (and as long as you can get the input from the
   27: system in some manner, LON-CAPA can integrate with it with a little
   28: programmer support), and supports partial handgrading: An instructor
   29: or a TA can examine a single essay problem on an otherwise multiple-choice
   30: exam, and encode a score for the essay problem before sending the
   31: answer form for grading. 
   32: 
   33: \item mention development in an aggresive student cheating environment?
   34: Should probably be attached to pedagogical advantages, along with
   35: a mention of tens of thousands of students in the system.
   36: \item \textbf{Full course support}: LON-CAPA is capable of running your
   37: entire course from top to bottom. LON-CAPA can host all of the content
   38: of the course, from syllabuses to actual course materials. It can
   39: track your students grades, with as much power as you need. Want to
   40: give students bonuses for getting a problem right on the first try?
   41: Or insert external grades into the system from an external data source?
   42: Powerful communication features enable discussion between the instructors
   43: and students, or among the students themselves. From the initial course
   44: creation to the final grades readout, LON-CAPA has all the power you
   45: need to run courses.
   46: \item \textbf{It's free}\index{free}: The thousands or millions you save
   47: over expensive course management solutions can be better spent on
   48: computers, or directly spent on your students. LON-CAPA can frequently
   49: do more with less then some of the largest commercial competitors,
   50: too.
   51: \item \textbf{It's free}\index{free}: As in liberty. No need to buy an
   52: extra-special license just to have the privilege of developing extensions
   53: to the system. You have full access to the entire system. You aren't
   54: restricted to carefully delimited parts of the system the vendor deems
   55: {}``safe'' for you to access. You also have full access to all the
   56: data on the system; LON-CAPA never locks up your data. There aren't
   57: any hidden secrets in the system, either, when you're free to scrutinize
   58: all of the source code. And it won't become closed later either, thanks
   59: to the licensing.
   60: \item \textbf{Large Digital Library}: LON-CAPA's digital library means you
   61: have access to thousands of high-quality learning resources right
   62: off the bat, without writing them yourself. Since one of LON-CAPA
   63: driving motivations is resource sharing, you have full support for
   64: it at any granularity, from simply using other's freely available
   65: resource, to a multi-institution grant-funded large-scale collaboration
   66: project, to simply re-using content used last year in the same course.
   67: \item \textbf{Power for the Users}: LON-CAPA's grants a lot of power to
   68: the instructors to control their course; the system imposes minimal
   69: arbitrary restrictions on the instructors because the design is mature.
   70: To get an idea of what the instructors can do, see our Course Management
   71: Manual (http://msu.loncapa.org/adm/help/course.manual.pdf).
   72: \item \textbf{Improve Student's Performance}: Several studies have repeatedly
   73: shown that using LON-CAPA can significantly improve student performance.
   74: One especially interesting result has been its ability to nearly eliminate
   75: the gender gap in technical subjects such as physics, where men have
   76: traditionally outperformed women. 
   77: \end{itemize}