Forum .LRN Q&A: LAMS2 and .LRN integration (beta) released!

For those of you who might be interested, LAMS2 and .LRN 2.3 are now integrated.

The integration allows .LRN teachers to seamlessly add LAMS lessons to their .LRN courses. These lessons are sequences of Learning Activities that teachers design using the LAMS drag-and-drop authoring environment.

LAMS2 is quite different from its version 1 release, which it was also integrated with .LRN. For more info, hit the LAMS wiki docs.

I have set up a LAMS2 - .LRN 2.3.1 demo server for those of you who might want to give it a spin.

Also, here is a two minute animation on how it all works.

More info, source and tech docs, available in the LAMS2 .LRN wiki page.

Any comments, very much welcome.

Thank you,

Ernie

PD: the Zen theme is very very nice!

Thanks for your comments.

Does LAMS allow for LD export yet?

Yeah, you can export IMS LD Level A. But as we discussed in Barcelona, we might not be able to apply it to other IMS LD player... as the service layer of IMS LD ain't quite there yet.

Thanks again,

Ernie

What would be interesting is to see the edition capabilities of LAMS integrated to the LMS (for instance
.LRN), instead of replicating some LMS capabilities inside LAMS. Any plans on this?

Yes and no.

On the yes part, we have the concept of Tool Adapters that would allow LMS tools to be added to LAMS as if they would be native LAMS tools/activities. So you would be able to drag-and-drop them and create sequences just like you do normally in the LAMS Authoring environment.

These Tool Adapters work as a, well, an adapter 😉 between the external tool and LAMS Core following the LAMS Tool's Contract*, which is basically the protocol (in a way) that LAMS tools 'talk' to the core.

Now the no bit, it's because we haven't been able to work on these adapters. At all yet.

The adapters would require work in both ends... a tool wrapper in .LRN side and a bunch of REST like interfaces on the LAMS end.

I'll keep you updated with these in the next few months.

Also, if you need this today, there's an easy hack where you can use the LAMS' Shared Resources tool and add the URL for your .LRN activity to it. So when the students hit the LAMS Shared Resources tool, the .LRN URL gets displayed directly. But again, this is not quite the drag-and-drop experience.

Hope that helps

Thanks,

Ernie

* Here's a presentation on how the LAMS Tool Contract works.

do you have a timeframe to have at least the LAMS side
working?

I'm hoping will see some of this in the next four months. If things go according to plan.

It will happen, we just need to fit lots of other priorities as well 😊

I have installed LAMS on a separate server and installed the dotlrn LAMS packages in a new dotlrn 2.3.1 install and configured the parmaters. After adding the LAMS Integration into a class the folder list shows up fine and I can create a lesson using the author and save it but when I try to add a saved LAMS lesson from the folder list I get the following error from dotlrn:

error "no element found" at line 1 character 0
while executing
"dom parse $xml"
invoked from within
"set doc [dom parse $xml]"
("uplevel" body line 46)
invoked from within
"uplevel {
# packages/lams2int/www/admin/add-2.tcl

ad_page_contract {

Creates a new instance of LAMS sequence and adds a new lesson to a cour..."
(procedure "code::tcl::/var/lib/aolserver/service0a/packages/lams2int/ww..." line 2)
invoked from within
"code::tcl::$__adp_stub"
invoked from within
"if { [file exists $__adp_stub.tcl] } {

# ensure that data source preparation procedure exists and is up-to-date
adp_init tcl $__adp_stub
..."
("uplevel" body line 3)
invoked from within
"uplevel {

if { [file exists $__adp_stub.tcl] } {

# ensure that data source preparation procedure exists and is up-to-date
adp_init t..."
(procedure "adp_prepare" line 2)
invoked from within
"adp_prepare"
invoked from within
"template::adp_parse [file root [ad_conn file]] {}"
(procedure "adp_parse_ad_conn_file" line 5)
invoked from within
"$handler"
("uplevel" body line 2)
invoked from within
"uplevel $code"
invoked from within
"ad_try {
$handler
} ad_script_abort val {
# do nothing
}"
invoked from within
"rp_serve_concrete_file [ad_conn file]"
(procedure "rp_serve_abstract_file" line 60)
invoked from within
"rp_serve_abstract_file "$root/$path""
("uplevel" body line 2)
invoked from within
"uplevel $code"
invoked from within
"ad_try {
rp_serve_abstract_file "$root/$path"
set tcl_url2file([ad_conn url]) [ad_conn file]
set tcl_url2path_info..."

I added 'ns_log notice $xml' to add-2.tcl and it seems that the $xml variable is an empty string.

Any ideas?

Thank you.

I've been trying to reproduce this error, but haven't been able to do so.

Is this error showing consistently? Does it occur with only one sequence or with any that you choose?

Thanks,

Ernie

I've never seen a 505 error before. What version of LAMS are you running?

Would you be able to check the LAMS logs for errors as well?

See in the jboss-4.0.2/server/default/log folder the following files:

access_log
server.log

Thanks,

ernie

Thanks for your help on this. I'm glad that is solved.

I have made the changes to the code as you suggested and ´resolved the issue.

The latest code can be downloaded from the LAMS repository.

Thanks again Rob.

Any other comments, bugs or suggestions always welcome.

Ernie

Yes, this is definitely an ugly bug. I had a look at this today and it looks very puzzling.

It seems to be that whenever I try to get a package_id for the lams2int-admin-portlet, I'm always getting the same package_id (not the correspondent package_id for the .LRN LAMS2 Integration instance installed under the class/community).

So whenever you add a new lesson, it _always_ shows as being part of the same instance.

Similar thing happens with the lams2int-portlet.. it always picks up the same package_id.

Quite confusing, really.

I'll investigate a bit this further and get back to you.

Ernie

update apm_package_types set singleton_p='f' where package_key='lams2int';

will fix the singleton_p setting.

I then restarted AOLserver then added the lams2int applet to a new community. It was added with a unique package_id.