Hi Nima,
What is sad though is that LAMS and .LRN overlap quiet a
lot.
Well, not quite.
Although LAMS does have similar activities/tools as .LRN have, LAMS activities look slightly different, but most important they behave a bit differently. Since LAMS is all about learning workflow, the LAMS activity have to have a sense of state (completed, attempted, reattempted, finished, locked, etc).
Nevertheless, you can use .LRN/OpenACS tools as part of LAMS sequences. For instance, have a look at this sequence that uses three .LRN and OpenACS tools. In the first activity you can see the classical .LRN forum, followed by a OpenACS Photo Album instance (on a different system) and another FAQ. (NB: I didn't have an instance of LORS running, but it would have been very similar).
You can easily author sequences with .LRN/OpenACS activities using the HTML Noticeboard in LAMS or the Share Resources activity. The good thing is that takes about 2 minutes.
So in principle, you can create learning sequences with .LRN/OpenACS tools. And even better, with both, .LRN & LAMS activity tools. Therefore, you can use LAMS to create the learning design with any activities you want and 'run it' with your students.
In addition, you can still monitor these .LRN activities in LAMS Monitor to see how your students are progressing thru the sequence (although the .LRN tools aren't not part of LAMS).
So I think it's not quite like LAMS and .LRN have the same tools, but how they can be combined to create meaningful and cool learning activities to put on a sequence.
you talk there about a moodle class but use a dotlrn class > :)
Yes. But the example of adding a new sequence from a scratch it basically meant to teach people how to use LAMS authoring to create activities, the fact that it creates a sequence that talks about Moodle is secondary. Nevertheless, point taken. We'll change this accordingly as soon as we have a chance.
say that we have support for lams but from the users
perspective maybe we must call it support for learning
activities?
I agree. It might be better just to call these learning sequences instead of LAMS Sequences as they are called now. The students shouldn't even know that they are using another system to run these activities.
Thanks,
Ernie
