Forum .LRN Q&A: .LRN features in need of funding

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Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
The European Commision will start a new program for sponsoring E-Learning in 2004 and I'd like to start a discussion here, what features for .LRN would we like to implement and get EU funding for.

Things that come into my mind:

- Import / Export of courses from Blackboard / WebCT and SCORM.
- Consistent translations into all of EU languages.
- Assessment system.
- User profiling with finely granulated access rights.

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Posted by Staffan Hansson on
I'd like to add IMS Simple Sequencing for the next version of Curriculum to that list.
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Posted by Dirk Gomez on
Site-wide Search - one that works.
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Posted by Rocael Hernández Rizzardini on
SCORM / IMS is being done by WEG at Sydney Univ. but anyway, everything can be improved, and easy import from BB / WCT will make the adoption of .LRN more easier for those institutions that already run it.
At Galileo Univ. we'll develop the Evaluation System, the RFC will come anytime soon!
Maybe an OKI implementation will be good, that needs a deeper discussion since OKI's success depends on a wide adoption of it.
Assessment, user profiling, search is needed.
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Posted by Don Baccus on
Malte - have you looked at the so-called photobook package?  It provides user profiling and the user can choose what to expose or not on a per-column basis.

It may or may not meet the needs for anyone other than Sloan and it needs porting to PG but it's sitting there in contrib...

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Posted by Don Baccus on
Actually I may not be understanding what you mean by user profiling.  Photobook provides each user with detailed profile forms they can fill out and which allow them to make these things visibile or not to other users.  Since it's based on the CR's attribute and automatic form building code it's easy to add or delete things from the profile types, i.e. to customize it.
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Posted by Talli Somekh on
Don, how hard is it to port to PG?

talli

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Posted by Jeff Davis on
Caroline has mostly ported it to postgres already. It needs to be de-Sloan-ified still though. It doesn't do anything too wierd outside of the CR api so it should be not to terrible to make work.
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Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
Don- I looked at it and I know how we created user-profiling (storing of user specific data in the system that is dynamic in creation (no fixed tables)). We call it user-register and it is in /contrib as well (with Oracle and Postgres support). What I'd love to see is to mix both approaches, make it community based or even finer granulated. If I get around, I will sketch out my vision in the projects area :).
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Posted by Randy O'Meara on
Malte,

I don't see user-register in the CVS contrib area.

Randy

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Posted by Don Baccus on
What's wrong with fixed tables?  The attributes system allows for storing them in type-specific tables or in a general attributes table ... type-specific tables are preferable IMO in particular for datatypes that map to RDBMS-supported datatypes.

Now that PG as well as Oracle supports "ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN" as well as "ADD COLUMN" we can support the adding or deletion of type attributes directly in the type specific table.

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Posted by Bruce Spear on
Comment for LRN Features in need of Funding.

Hey guys: Isn’t this question of features and funding better part of the discussion of the Roadmap?  I mean, we could each list which feature we are interested in working on, which is important, but as I understand the import of EC funding right, we would want to figure out the unique contribution .LRN is or might make in the overall e-learning market, and particularly, that part which the EC is concerned with.  In part, this is a matter of features.  I also wonder if we might think about what the ED would think would interest a “European User”.  Like Malte, I would think that would include the internationalization features.  In respect to Blackboard, I would think some attention to the “import” of Blackboard USERS would be in order: I’ve had faculty members refer to Blackboard’s interface as “intuitive” and demand that I make .LRN look like Blackboard.  Interesting problem – sorta like asking if, like the convergence of Mac and Microsoft interfaces (or DreamweaverMX and Homesite), there are emerging standards in LMS system interface design we might identify and hammer out?  Where did you find notice of this new EC program, is there a link?

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Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
Nope, there is not a link (yet) that I'd know of, as it was mentioned in private conversation from the Commissioner to a collegue of mine, that the official announcement will be made soon. In any case, it should be started during Learntec.

Furthermore, I think a concerted effort to investigate into emerging standards in LMS systems and implementing these in .LRN would be a good eye catcher for the EC.

What do other people think?

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Posted by xx xx on
IMHO, "Internationalisation of content" might be a good project for EC funding.

- "Import & translate courses"; hopefully giving CMS a boost.

I would imagine you could have a need for internationalisation of content within www.aiesec.org too? As an example, I would like such a feature to present important (medical) information in different languages.