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