Information

Information

by Dean Swanson -
Number of replies: 8

Hello, I am new to this, and I haven't been able to determine the answer to my question.  We are looking into open source lms options.

We develop customized online training, primarily for govt agencies & healthcare.  We have our own proprietary lms, but it's getting flakey.  Our system allows us to create a course list customized by student.  For example, if I have a govt agency with 500 employees, and there are 25 courses in that agencies course list, the admin can customize a course list for each employee.  One employee might have 10 courses, another 15, and so on.  We create a seperate course list for each of our clients, they then choose from the list what courses appear in an individual's course list when they log in.  In theory, it's possible that no 2 course lists would be the same for a single agency.  It's scorm compliant, tracks student logins, completion date, test results, etc.  All courses are between 5-60 meg.

Is this possible in Moodle?  Thanks in advance for your help.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Dean Swanson

Re: Information

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Yes.  You can enrol a student into such courses as you feel they need and they do not then have access to other courses (if you password protect them or use other options) When they log in they only see the courses they are going to be studying.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Dean Swanson

Re: Information

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

I don't think that you could replicate your existing system within Moodle. However, I feel that if you got your head around what Moodle does offer, you could probably come up with something in Moodle that was just as good at meeting the underlying business requirements.

Look in particular at Moodle 2.0's coures completion tracking features.

If that does not work out, or even if you are just set in re-implementing you current system, you could do it by writing a very small custom system that just deals with allocating students to courses. Then use Moodle's database enrolment plugin to transfer the "who is allowed to access which courses" information into Moodle. The 'Very small custom system' could also be done as a Moodle plugin of some sort.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: Information

by Colin Fraser -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Testers

Seems a very labour intensive structure, but once you have enough individual modules ready in a Moodle, you can just import your modules into an individual course. As Mary said, you can have as many or as few enrollees in a course as you want.

On another set of issues, I can understand the problems you say you are having with your old system, and the angst that it is going to cause to change to something completely different. There is not going to be any transition period, no blending, it is just going to be a hard time for everyone. There are three issues you need to consider here, training of staff in the new system, whether it is Moodle or anything else, getting your clientele to adapt to it, who likes change, and the last part is rebuilding your resources. Using Scorm was a good idea, Moodle is fully Scorm compliant. Inevitably, when using Scorm modules that do not work, it has always been there has been some tweak in the module that has not allowed it to run in Moodle. I have found that, usually, it has been a package created using a proprietary tool. However, things change and some resources are too ephemeral to spend time making into a Scorm Package.

This is where Moodle does come into its own. It is easy, simple and fast to create a small module in Moodle that is editable any time and can be implemented in a few minutes - even while someone is using the module. How much better than that does it get?

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Information

by Dean Swanson -

Thank you all for your input, but a couple of clarifications:  we use Articulate as our development tool, and as you know it's a user interface with flash files.  2nd, as I mentioned they are customized courses, so if I have 200 state/county govt agencies as clients, I have 200 different courses on preventing workplace violence, 200 courses on preventing sexual harassment, etc.  It is rare when I can use the same course for more than one agency.  We do have our own web server, and needless to say it's got massive storage capabilities.  Does that make a difference??

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Dean Swanson

Re: Information

by Colin Fraser -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Testers

Government is like that.. but no, the greater the storage and memory you have available is going to make it all the better for your clients - as always.

You can use your server setup to change one agency over after another instead of doing it all in one swoop... but it may be that in the near future, with Moodle, you can produce a series of courses using all the same materials but presented in a lot of different ways. From memory, there was a lot fo discussion a couple of years back about this same move, from Articulate to Moodle, but I was not overly interested in it then.

There is a way in Moodle to have a lot of Moodles, say one for each agency, specifically named for them, each with their own logins, own courses and so on, but using one codebase and database. I do not really understand how it is done, never tried it, never needed to, but it works apparently. Alternatively, you can have a lot of separate Moodles, each with their own codebase and database.  Flexibility is the approach here, which Moodle has, and I am sure you could get someone from a Moodle Partner to act as a consultant to get it up and running. Mark Dreschler from NetSpot may be able to assist remotely, as may someone local to you. I understand Mark has overseen the set up Moodles for the public schools system in my home State and that is well over 200 Moodles.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Information

by Dan Marsden -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Plugins guardians Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

really great Idea Colin - That would make a lot of sense!

You would create a SCORM repo (a location on your system that hosted all the scorm objects - (unzipped in their own folders) - this location needs to be on the same url as your moodle sites - eg your moodlesites might be:
somewebsite.com/client1
somewebsite.com/client2
and your scorm "repo" would be located:
somewebsite.com/scorm

then you would set up each clients site to point to the the scorm objects (use the url of the imsmanifest.xml file) - this way you wouldn't duplicate any objects.

It's important that the scorm repo and your moodle sites use the same url  otherwise you'll run into Javascript cross-domain issues.

we've done this for a few people - feel free to drop me a line if you need any further help.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Information

by Colin Fraser -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Testers

Thanks Dan, but not my idea, I am afraid, Martin Langhoff and others have been dicussing this sort of thing for a while so all I am doing is passing on what I understand of it. Not much admittedly, but a little light seeps into even the darkest corners occasionally..mixed

However, with Moodle 2.0 I have been thinking that the resource files in a repository could become a single repository for all Moodles on a single server, irrespective of how many Moodles there are, or how the codebase is set up, or the type of resource. Unfortunately, I do not have the tech skills to make this kind of thing work, but you and a lot of others would, I am sure. big grin Perhaps something similar could even be done in v1.9.10+, if there was a single Moodle with replicated codebase. The moodledata file would get a little busy, but it might work...

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Information

by Dan Marsden -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Plugins guardians Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

...but it took you to decipher the users requirements and see this as a possible solution to their needs! - many of us have used multiple moodles based on the same code base.

1.9.10 has an imsrepository feature hidden in there but it's hard to use in a reliable, secure fashion.

it will be interesting to see what people come up with using the new Moodle 2.0 repositories - I'm sure there will be a few people using them for SCORM objects.

Average of ratings: -