I need to find an online database that lets me do the following:  edit
a database of classes being taught.  I need to assign teachers to
classes.  All of the other variables, such as title, location, and
time offered, are fixed.

In addition it would be great to be able to search for, say, all of
the "intro. whatever" courses being taught on a Monday at 8am that
aren't currently staffed.

Additional criteria: It would be wonderful if this application were
open source, relatively easy to install, and used PHP/Mysql. A flat
file solution would be even better.

My preferred platform is Unix or OS X 10.3  The program should be able
to spit out comma-separated fields at some point so we can put the
data in a spreadsheet for distribution.  Free would be good, but my
budget for this project is $500, tops.  There are too many scripts out
there for me to determine which one would work the best for this task.
 "roll your own" is not a good answer for me at this time.  "We've
used the product X for this purpose, and it works great" is a good
answer.  "We did this by hand with parchment and quill pens" is not a
good answer.

A program that does all of the above, is free, and takes into account
teacher schedule preferences, would be fantastic.

Hi, 

What you are describing I believe Moodle takes care of, and more. A
very good package that I've setup in the past for several training
sites. It also has a ton of add-ons and a very large support
following.

http://moodle.org/

I believe that covers it for you. As you say, there are many others. I
would recommend this one, but if you find it doesn't do something you
need done, just use the Clarification Function, describe what it
doesn't do, and I'll go through a few others to find you another
match.

thanks,

webadept-ga

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Clarification of Answer by webadept-ga on 06 Apr 2005 17:17 PDT

By the way, a very close runner up would be Claroline

http://www.claroline.net/

thanks again, 

webadept-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by craniac-ga on 06 Apr 2005 18:56 PDT

Hi, thanks for your response.  I currently use moodle.  I am afraid I
muddied the question by bringing up teachers and classes.  Moodle is a
course management system.

All I need is an online database that can easily be modified by
multiple remote users that can export comma-separated data. Currently
we use a spreadsheet, with a list of courses that do not have
instructors assigned to teach them.  The column headings look
something like this:

instructor     course no.     course name    room no.     time offered


All of the fields except for "instructor" are already in place and do
not need to be changed.  I just need a way for non-tech savvy people
to go online, add instructor names to courses, and perhaps search for
unassigned courses or search for a particular instructor's courses.  I
don't think Moodle offers that.  In order to use Moodle, I would have
to create a bunch of courses, assign instructors and configure each
course, etc. when all I really need to do is populate one field at a
time in a database, via a web browser with a simple user interface
that won't frighten luddites.  That rules out using myphpadmin, for
example.

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Clarification of Answer by webadept-ga on 06 Apr 2005 22:44 PDT

Ah... hmmm ... yeah, that is a bit different isn't it :-) Seem to be
using a jack hammer here to remove paint. I'll look around again and
see what I can come up with, shouldn't be much of a problem finding
something that does that.

So you are using Moodle now? Or you just have it now? Just curious
because if I can't find something, maybe I could just write a quick
add-on that lets you do that with your Moodle system. If you aren't
using it though it wouldn't make much sense to do that.

Anyway, I'll get back to you tomorrow.

webadept-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by craniac-ga on 07 Apr 2005 07:02 PDT

I'm using Moodle right now, loving it, and a moodle plugin would be
awesome.  I am not using moodle to administer all of our courses,
however, just the ones I teach and those of a couple of friends.

Perhaps referring to scheduling distracted the answerer from the core
of the question.

I wonder if http://sourceforge.net/projects/empscheduler/ might help.
Don't forget you can use phpmyadmin to export anything you want from a
sql query.