Shaman is : (yet another) Learning Content Management System (LCMS), mainly tailored for Distant Learning.

Shaman is currently evolving as a framework for building LCMS applications. For the moment, this documentation is mainly written for developers. See project status for details.

Potential End-Users may have a look at the introduction, which describes our approach of functional aspects.

Managers may find some interest in the Management Plan.

Shaman aims to offer a centralized approach for Content Management, through a WebDAV repository. The intend is to cut down deployment time for new courses.

Content standards are evolving fast, but there is no mature standard yet. So, we decided to support raw content (e.g. legacy Web sites), as well as XML-based content with structured courses.
Support of XML-based publication standards will come under the form of plugins.

All written in Java™ (JDK 1.3.1), Shaman will run on any Java-enabled platform.

Based on a home-grown content database (Insight), Shaman aims to support deep evolvings in new standards support, workflow features, look and feel, etc.

Cocoon dynamic server pages (XSPs) allow easy scripting of dynamic pages, drastically reducing development time.

Shaman is Open Source and free, all built from Open Source + free components. It mainly relies on Apache Cocoon (Web publishing framework), Jakarta Tomcat (Web server), Jakarta Slide (WebDAV server).