TIM (The Interactive Material) is a general-purpose learning content management system for producing highly interactive and open digital learning materials. It is tailored to teachers, students, material developers, and other content creators alike as an all-encompassing, centralised platform for creating and hosting document-based materials. The system is open-source, MIT-licensed software actively maintained by the Faculty of Information Technology of the University of Jyväskylä. With more than 20 000 users in total since 2014, TIM has been actively used to host dozens of courses in universities and high schools.

The primary feature of TIM is the wide variety of tools consolidated in a single system to support distance and e-learning methods. In addition to traditional lecture-based courses, TIM has been used to successfully organise flipped classrooms, blended learning, primetime learning, and MOOCs. TIM has also been used as a system for the national IT entrance exams. The system includes various interactive components: multiple-choice questions, open-ended text tasks, drawing tasks, and automatically graded programming tasks are just a small sample of what is possible. All tasks can be graded automatically, or graded and annotated manually by teachers. The tasks can also be graded via anonymous peer review.

The core aspect of TIM is the document-based design. All pages are documents that consist of text and reusable interactive blocks. With user-programmable templates and custom styles, it is possible to create course areas, books, questionnaires, exams, discussion areas, live support pages and personalised learning analytics dashboards. TIM removes the need to jump from one learning system to another, reducing the cognitive load on students and teachers.

The features of TIM

  • Free (excl. large organizations that need more server capacity)
  • Open source (MIT License, GitHub)
  • Supports various devices and browsers
  • Build interactive learning materials
  • Exams and entrance exams
  • Learning analytics to monitor student performance
  • Chat platform for lectures
  • Enrolling for mentoring and group meetings
  • Writing math with TeX
  • SISU integration

Easy editing

  • An editor with many features
  • Borrow contents from other documents
  • Editing rights can be granted to anyone
  • Customize pages with CSS and SCSS
  • Easy maintenance and automatic translation of documents in different languages
  • Easy maintenance of annually used materials using macros
  • Automatic numbering of formulas, images and cross-references
  • Comprehensive instructions for the content creators

Versatile assignments

  • Multiple choice questions
  • Open ended questions
  • Drag and drop assignments
  • Drawing assignments
  • Run programming tasks directly in the browser using dozens of different programming languages
  • Live assignments during lectures
  • Automatic review and scoring of assignments
  • Anonymous peer review

Explore the features with a video

What are students and teachers saying?

I have used TIM on courses on my Windows laptop, iPad, Android tablet and mobile phone, and iPhone with good success. TIM is one of the most interactive learning environments I have used and its versatility is a tribute worthy of note.

Student University of Jyväskylä

The best feature of TIM for the teacher is the freedom to create versatile tasks and automatically score tasks and give feedback to the student. Students will see their progress immediately and based on the feedback, can improve their answer.

Teacher University of Jyväskylä

TIM is the first online platform I have ever encountered that can truly serve pedagogy. For example with Moodle you always have to ask: "What is Moodle capable of?". With TIM you can always start with the question: "What do I want to get done?".

Teacher University of Jyväskylä

TIM genuinely, and in many ways, makes use of the fact that it is an e-learning material.
Often e-learning materials are almost as functional and usable as corresponding paper versions.
This type of truly interactive learning materials should be available at every level of education.

Student University of Jyväskylä

Materials made with TIM

Start creating content

  1. Register as a user
  2. Send an email to tim@jyu.fi to receive a folder for your own cources
  3. Start creating content with the help of instructions (fin)

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