UstadMobile is a new open-source learning management system (LMS) designed especially to facilitate education in environments with limited internet access. It offers a range of traditional and innovative LMS functionalities to support educators and learners such as offline learning, enabling users to download educational content and access it then without an internet connection. It then automatically syncs progress and updates when connectivity is restored. Its content management service supports various content formats including text, video, audio, and interactive quizzes and it allows educators or content creators to create, manage, and distribute custom educational materials.
Especially interesting for learners and teachers with poor connectivity is the content compression functionality that automatically can compresses media files to minimize data usage, making it more efficient for downloading and offline use. Also relevant are the accessibility features that support learners with visual and hearing impairments. There is a certain degree of customisation possible to adapt to specific educational needs and contexts and there are tools for adding quizzes, assignments, and feedback. The LMS is most useful in regions with unreliable internet because it reduces the amount of data required for content storage or transmission. The LMS service can be provided in several ways: you can use the open-source version on your own servers, but this may require technical knowledge for initial setup. The company also offers a cloud hosted service (paid but with first 100 users free). Further paid options are a branded app on Google Play and on premise support. The application is (partially) available in 16 languages (English, Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, French, Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Nepali, Norwegian, Pashto, Persian, Russian, Tajik). For more detailed information, you can visit UstadMobile’s official website.
