Introduction.en - acanas/swad-core GitHub Wiki

English | Español

Introduction

SWAD (Shared Workspace At a Distance) is a free platform for blended learning and teaching management. It has been developed and used at the University of Granada (UGR) since 1999 and since 2012 it is used in other universities and educational institutions.

SWAD integrates into a web tool various functions to support learning, teaching and management of data from students and teachers. These include access to information on the courses (teaching guide, timetables, bibliography,...), documents storage (notes, presentations, problems, practice outlines...), lists and record cards of students and teachers, social network, discussion forums, assignments, student's self-assessment through interactive tests, and individual consultation of marks. Some of its main features are also available as an app for Android and will be available in a future app for iOS.

SWAD is a very useful tool that has become an important complement to classroom teaching, with a cost of implementation very low even in large educational institutions.

The name SWAD originally stood for "Sistema Web de Apoyo a la Docencia" in Spanish ("Web System for Education Support"). Currently we prefer "Shared Workspace At a Distance". Furthermore, the main meaning of the word swad, barely used, is "bunch of things", a concept that fits the idea of a system that includes various services; and in Punjabi language swad means "tasty", which adds a positive connotation to the platform name.