Forum .LRN Q&A: dotLRN newby

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1: dotLRN newby
Posted by Claudio Pasolini on 10/14/03 07:34 PM
Hi all,

this is my first posting in this forum. I'm already quite familiar with OpenACS core and with a fair number of packages, but I never tried dotLRN before.

Well, I've just installed dotLRN from HEAD, read some documentation, configured a department, some terms, subjects, classes and users and now I have some doubts:

  • When I go to the control panel and to customize layout I only see just a few portlets available (I'don't see for example homework and survey). What do I have to do to make them eligible?
  • What is the meaning of subjects (in the context of a University)? Can someone provide an example?
  • Do you think that dotLRN is a solution applicable to high schools? Perhaps someone has already done it?
TIA, Claudio
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2: Re: dotLRN newby (response to 1)
Posted by Nagita Karunaratne on 10/14/03 11:46 PM
I'll try,

To administer portlets for a class go to the 'Administer' page of the class's portal and choose the 'Manage Applets' link.

I think a 'subject' and 'class' are analogous to 'class' and 'object' in OOD terminology. A class is an 'instance' of a subject. For example a subject can be 'Biology 101' but there will be different classes on this subject such as 'Biology 101 - Spring 2003 - Section 002'

I don't know about the last it seems suitable for any collaborative environment.

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3: Re: dotLRN newby (response to 1)
Posted by Carl Robert Blesius on 10/17/03 04:10 PM
Took a minute to find this again (posts are hard to find again once they starts sinking into the forums).

Looking at the different translation it seems that there are some inconsistencies in the way "Class", "Subject", and "Department" are being translated.

Here are two examples to make this more clear for translators:

(Faculty = Liberal Arts)*
Department = Classical Studies
Subject = Greek
Possible Classes = Greek 101 for first year students, Greek 201 for second year, Greek 201 Works of Plato

(Faculty = Business)*
Department = Management
Subject = Organization Studies
Possible Classes = Managerial Psychology, Leading Effective Teams, etc.

*assigning departments/subjects/courses to a faculty is not yet possible

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4: Re: classes vs. subjects (was: dotLRN newby) (response to 3)
Posted by Matthias Melcher on 10/20/03 02:41 PM
"Subject = Greek,
Possible Classes = Greek 101 for first year students, Greek 201 for second year ..."

No, Carl, I think Nagita is right, and that you will run into trouble at latest in the new term if you mix classes and class instances. The name "subject" should not mislead us to ignore that we have only 2 hierarchy levels, i. e., "department" (that does not deserve this name), and class.

Therefore I would recommend to use "Greek" as the higher hierarchy level ("department"), and "Greek 101 for first year students" or "Greek 201 for second year" as the lower hierarchy level (class). Otherwise, mapping Fall and Spring instances will be almost impossible.

Another problem is that the system abuses these NAMES as ADDRESSES in URLs such that these URLs violate a central Web-Design rule #9 of http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20021223.html .