Forum .LRN Q&A: First steps with .LRN

I have been asked if it is possible to set up a site to deliver a training course online. I have just installed a blank .LRN 2.5.0 and have started to explore it. I can see and understand the administration pages, and the basic structure for modelling an organisation, its departments, classes and terms. At this stage it is not immediately obvious to me where and how the course syllabus and course content will be stored and delivered.

I would like to set up a demo that includes a single course of study for which there are existing paper documents. I can see that it would be possible to upload any number of documents to the system's file storage module, but I have a sneaky suspicion that this is not the answer! 😊

I have searched the content repository and can see a bewildering array of packages for .LRN. There seems to be no way for me to establish which of these I need at the moment. I have been unable to find much in the way of live documentation since all the MIT Sloan docs have been taken down.

I imagine that it is possible to upload IMS_LD and SCORM content files and have these 'played' on the client machine, but I am not sure which packages I should focus on.

A few jump out at me as possible candidates:

dotlrn-imsld
dotlrn-homework
dotlrn-learning-content
dotlrn-lorsm
dotlrn-research
dotlrn_syllabus
dotlrn-survey
ims-ent
imsld
imsld-portlet
lors-central
learning-=content
learning-content-portlet
lamsint
lamsint-portlet

I wonder if someone can help me by telling me which packages are current and typically most likely to be useful in a .LRN installation.

Presumably the choice is determined by whether your course content is IMS_LD, SCORM or LAMS? I confess I have no idea what LORS is!?

Do I need to decide on a content delivery standard first?

In which case, what is most favoured these days?

Sorry to ask probably stupid questions, but you have to start somewhere.

Regards
Richard

Emmanuelle,

Yes, thank you very much, that helps a great deal. I will install them and see where that takes me.

I have also been studying LAMS which looks like a very nice UI to be able to use. I have found the documenation for integrating LAMS with .LRN so that you can use LAMS to create and sequence learning tasks as if LAMS were part of .LRN.

However, the LAMS docs also says that LAMS is itself a standalone e-learning system, so I am wondering what the overlap is?

For example, I can certainly see that if you are a large organisation and you already have a .LRN set up with all your content in it, you'd probably prefer to just bolt LAMS on with the integration module rather than have to begin again from scratch. But what if you are starting from scratch anyway? Does LAMS ultimately do everything .LRN can do and thus eventually replace it, or are the two complementary?

Regards
Richard

Hi Richard,

beware of SCORM, unless you are ready to dive into some really ugly code.

If you are lucky some course will run smoothly, but many will not and make them work can be a real challenge: at least this has been my experience importing a fair number of existing courses.

Claudio

Dave,

Ok, that's interesting advice. I can see that 1 & 2 above, are installed as part of a vanilla .LRN, so what you suggest would leave out all the other customisations. I'm not clear why that would be desirable?

Are Don's new packages available yet?

There is no existing SCORM content, new content will be created, so I want to choose the best/most effective route. I am setting this up to help a friend who is doing a masters course on e-learning.

My reasons for leaning towards OpenACS/.LRN are i) personal familiarity, ii) platform already in place, iii) loyalty.

Clearly I should re-visit these, but I'm looking to develop a deeper understanding of these tools as well, so I'd like to be able to learn for example why you would suggest Moodle over .LRN, or for a different application .LRN over Moodle.

I am also very interested in the usability of LAMS (even though it is Flash!) for sequencing, control and monitoring, and I want to understand when you would choose LAMS on its own rather than .LRN with LAMS integrated.

...and Claudio, thanks for the warning on SCORM!

Richard

Well that wasn't helpful.

It depends on what sort of use your friend will be out of it.

LAMS is an interesting platform, you might want to look at the demos. It can run standalone or as an add-on to .LRN (or other LMS).

LAMS is about learning activities.

.LRN and any LMS is about centralized control and organization.

That's all :)

Bingo.