Forum .LRN Q&A: Re: SCORM dev update

Let me see if I can address all your comments here.

Importing webCT packages to .LRN

I have done some testing importing webCT 4.1.x IMS packages into .LRN.  However, there's a lot of tweaking required as their export fuction has proven, at best, fairly poor. For start webCT 4.1.x doesn't allow you to export full courses (unlike their previous version 3.x!). Let that aside, you can only export two types of content: quizzes and content modules.  Moreover, in several ocassions I have had packages missing files (although they were described on the organization of the package -imsmanifest.xml file- as existing!

Unfortunately, it does not export users information, neither course settings, which is quite a limitation.

At any rate, if most of your courses in webCT have a lot of content modules, you'll be able to export those and then -hopefully- import them seamlessly into .LRN using the LORS libraries.

Atutor

I haven't had much exposure to Atutor, although I have read it has a strong support for IMS specifications and good authoring tools as well. It export content in according to SCORM 1.2 specs (and it seems that they adhiere scrictly to them -which is good), so you can import those easily with the LORs libraries. Although, take into account that only exports content. It won't export forums,

Moodle

I'm not so sure about its compliance to standards. Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle) it says that it complies with IMS QTI.

I have tested Moodle before and I have to say I was impressed in many ways with it. First, it is a debian package, so you can install it on a fly. Second, it is a system that revolves around the student and his/her experience: therefore it is quite intuitive. For example, their discussion forums have a picture of all people posting messages there. I'm not a learning or community guru here, but that gave me the impression of a nice community feeling.

Actually, I would encorage people in the community to have a look at it, as it is always good to see other perspectives and approaches.

Random and LORS package

Random, as I mentioned before, it's just an example on how to use LORS libraries. I would strongly suggest you not to use if for any production purposes without previously tayloring. They can both be found here:

Random:
http://mlweg.pc.ee.usyd.edu.au:8080/files/view/20040309_random.tgz

LORS:
http://mlweg.pc.ee.usyd.edu.au:8080/files/view/lors_v01.tgz

I hope that helps,

Ernie

Thank you for your comments. I got yours lors/random package and I'm going to install them. I'm reading about Adam Ullman RTE implementation now.

I'm going to install atutor to see how lors works on importing content exported from it.

Moodle is still a little confuse to me about SCORM implementation. At moodle.org I saw that version 1.2.1 offers support to import quizzes in webCT format but they say nothing about SCORM (see: http://moodle.org/doc/?frame=features.html). There's a company at moodle.com that offers enhances moodle with  support for SCORM packaged learning object at charged (about US$15000).

Anyway I will continue reading about SCORM and dotlrn implementations. Maybe me and people in the company I work could help you and community in the brief future (at leat at user case level).

Orzenil