Forum .LRN Q&A: DotLRN enhancements

Collapse
Posted by Cato Kolås on
As part of University of Bergen increasing commitment to use DotLRN as the main campus LMS we have now started working on some enhancements:

homework:
o use listbuilder, navigation and bulk-actions (the way file-storage does it). (*)

o homework-folders and subfolders can all have dates for when they are open or closed for submissions. Default it inherits this information from the parent folder or the top community's Admin-page (homework admin portlet). Each folder has the option to turn of this inheritance. Shows remaing time before closing or opening of folders. (*)

o Admins can upload submissions for a student after a folder is closed for submissions. (*)

o When students submits an assigment they get an email-reciept for the submission. (*)

o Each folder has the option to anonymize the content. When submissions are uploaded students are asked for a candidate number that will be shown instead of their names.

o Homework portlet for My Space showing all homework folders for all current memberships.

o Admins can see who has not submitted an assignment to a folder and optionally send an email to them.

o Admins can download a whole folder as a zip-file.

o Admins can in addition to submit correction information also submit information about if a student have passed the test or not. Stores this information in the existing comment-field. Admins have the option to get a printer-friendly listing with this information.

o Integration with Ephorus - an webservice that checks students submissions for plagiarism.

other:
o Admins can choose to send an email or create a news item on many communities at once.

o Admins have the option to delete/edit emails that are scheduled for sending in the future.

o export of a whole calender in iCalendar-format (ie: Outlook), not just seperate calendar items.

(*) implemented (based on DotLRN ver 2.1.3)

If there are others that are working on similar features and like to cooperate, please contact us. And if appropriate later on things can be submitted to CVS.

Collapse
2: Re: DotLRN enhancements (response to 1)
Posted by Nima Mazloumi on
These are great news. Just wanted to inform you that there will be a new homework package very soon that will replace the current version but no upgrade will be provided since its is a completely new package.

I think its worth the effort to extend dotLRN in a way that applets and packages can be unistalled again. We have started to look at this but haven't succeeded yet.

Collapse
Posted by Cato Kolås on
Hi Nima,

it this new homework package in CVS? (whats the package name?)

Collapse
4: Re: DotLRN enhancements (response to 1)
Posted by Nima Mazloumi on
No but it will be in approximately 1 month.
Collapse
5: Re: DotLRN enhancements (response to 1)
Posted by Jose Agustin Lopez Bueno on
Hello!

Are anybody working now in any antiplagiarism solution for
dotLrn?

In Valencia we are thinking in this topic.

Thanks,
Agustin

Collapse
6: Re: DotLRN enhancements (response to 5)
Posted by Gustaf Neumann on
We have an implementation based on xowiki workflow using the plagiarism finder of ephorus (https://www.ephorus.com/en/home) integrated in our learning environment.

Our implementation takes documents from students or profs, submits it over SOAP to the plagiarism finder of ephorus via https, obtains the result from there as well via SOAP and provides the results (scores, annotated paper, etc.). The workflow controls the state of the submissions. While such a workflow instance runs, one can watch the state, etc. Performing the submission in a rpc-style (sent the document, wait for the result) is not feasible, since plagiarism checking can take a while, maybe hours.

We have the plagiarism finder app on production since Oct.

Collapse
7: Re: DotLRN enhancements (response to 6)
Posted by Jose Agustin Lopez Bueno on
Hi Gustaff!

What is your experience with ephorus?
Is it a good product?
Can we see any example?
Is your code avalaible?

Many questions 😉

Thanks,
Agustin

Collapse
8: Re: DotLRN enhancements (response to 7)
Posted by Gustaf Neumann on
Here are some answers: