International ILIAS Blog

This article is, as you may have gathered from the title, about ILIAS at Learntec. I thought, however, that it might be interesting for you to get a personal perspective of this interesting annual event in the ILIAS calendar - a behind-the-scenes look, so to speak. This is my second year helping out at the ILIAS stand - which makes me a newbie, for ILIAS has been taking part in Karlsruhe's annual trade fair on the topic of education and learning since 1999! 

ILIAS has been a regular guest at the LEARNTEC in Karlruhe, Germany, since 1999. For the first time this year, however, the software was represented by the ILIAS Society itself, as a co-exhibitor together with the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University. Although new technologies such as VR and AR applications were the subjects of large-scale presentations at the trade fair, it was the numerous possibilities that are opened up by an integrated LMS that attracted many enthusiastic visitors to our stand. Using the brand new demo version of ILIAS 5.2, people were able to thoroughly test our software and have all their questions answered.

During the peak times on each of the three days of the trade fair, there was so much going on at the ILIAS stand that the society's representatives, Matthias Kunkel and Fabian Kruse, were hardly able to keep up! Luckily, they were supported by numerous members of the community who happily stepped in to provide information and answer questions. Alongside these informal conversations, the presentations under the motto 'Meet the User' proved to be a huge success: numerous visitors were shown how ILIAS is used at other institutions and which teaching and learning scenarios are especially effective.

As well as schools and universities, this year in particular saw more people from the business sector interested in finding out more about ILIAS. Many companies have recognised that open-source software is often the better alternative to commercial software – not only in terms of cost, but also when it comes to features and security. It seems likely that after all the conversations and the well-attended presentations at the LEARNTEC, the ILIAS community will grow even larger. We would like to extend a big thank you to all guests and helpers who supported us at the fair!