Forum .LRN Q&A: .LRN Update

1: .LRN Update

Posted by Alfred Essa on 07/25/03 05:35 PM

I want to thank Carl for taking the lead in developing the roadmap for .LRN v2. I have started working on a .LRN marketing plan and roadmap for .LRN v3 and v4.

Coinciding with release of .LRN v2 (September) we intend a significant publicity blitz. We are going to hold off on official "word-wide release" until Jan. 2004, by which time we hope to have articulated and put in place an overall strategy and approach for the long haul.

.LRN v3 will emphasize standards support (e.g. SCORM, IMS, OKI). It will be scheduled for release for Spring 2004. We will convene the standards working group shortly.
.LRN v4 will contain significant Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) features. It will be scheduled for release for Fall 2004.
.LRN University will be launched in November 2003. .LRN University will be a free online resource for developers and students.

As always, comments. criticisms, and queries are welcome.

2: Re: .LRN Update (response to 1)

Posted by Jarkko Laine on 07/25/03 10:59 PM

Al,

That's really great to hear! Especially .LRN university sounds like good old AD University days long before my time :) I'll be glad to give everything I can to help make those plans come true.

3: Re: .LRN Update (response to 1)

Posted by David Kuczek on 07/26/03 10:12 AM

I just checked out the dotLRN roadmap:

https://openacs.org/projects/dotlrn/roadmap

We were once talking about itegrating dotLRN into oacs. dotLRN was supposed to become a configuration option of a standard oacs installation (like dotWRK). Is this still a goal? I didn't see it...

4: Re: .LRN Update (response to 1)

Posted by Oliver Emmler on 07/26/03 03:54 PM

Al,

Great Idea to have a .LRN University. I will help the get this part running.

Oliver

5: Re: .LRN Update (response to 3)

Posted by John Norman on 07/28/03 11:02 AM

I see ACS subsite rewrite in dotLRN 2.0 and ACS subsite integration in dotLRN 2.1, both with "more soon" and "$$" - funding required - against them. I hope this is where dotLRN as a configuration of oacs comes in. We (Cambridge) may not be able to come up with cash, but we could probably commit some effort to this project.

6: Re: .LRN Update (response to 1)

Posted by Carl Robert Blesius on 07/28/03 08:30 PM

Exactly John. The two pieces that need to be worked on to improve the integration of .LRN into OpenACS are ACS Subsite and Portal. After they have been worked on the code in .LRN that does the same sort of stuff (here and here) needs to be hacked up till it is just a presentation layer.

There has already been some work done on acs-subsite. Work in this direction is a high priority.

Thanks for bringing it up David.

7: Re: .LRN Update (response to 3)

Posted by Alfred Essa on 07/29/03 01:37 AM

David, Yes. That's still the goal. We want to keep dotLRN as light as possible, having only education specific functionality and the rest rolled into oacs.

8: Re: .LRN Update (response to 4)

Posted by Alfred Essa on 07/29/03 01:38 AM

Oliver, Great. We will start organizing this effort soon.

9: Re: .LRN Update (response to 1)

Posted by Caroline Meeks on 07/29/03 02:44 PM

I think the dotLRN University is a really exciting idea.

I've been looking at the competition and some systems offer an online course for instructors and sometimes students on how to use the system. This seems both useful to new schools adopting the platform and as marketing material for interested institutions.

Deidre Kane has already put together most of the material needed for such courses for Sloan so we should be able to put courses like this up on dotLRN University pretty quickly.

10: Re: .LRN Update (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 07/31/03 01:28 AM

I wouldn't describe .LRN as being a configuration of OpenACS, but rather a slender set of packages on top of OpenACS. As Carl says, portals and an enhanced acs-subsite are key to providing .LRN-like capability for OpenACS proper. We'll move these out of .LRN and into OpenACS.

But there will always be pieces of .LRN that are .LRN specific and that won't appear in OpenACS proper. The homework package is a good example ...