Learning standards: Exporting Moodle 2.3 to IMS Common Cartridge

Learning standards: Exporting Moodle 2.3 to IMS Common Cartridge

by Larry Zoumas -
Number of replies: 6

Hi. My client wants/needs to make his Moodle 1.9 course content available to external customers with their own LMS.

The IMS common cartridge format has been suggested.

I have read that Moodle 2.3 supports export to IMS. Does it really? I can't any reviews or articles about this. Before the client approves the upgrade (which we estimated at two weeks mainly due to customizations and themes) we want to be sure that 2.3 still suports this. 

Can anyone offer any advice?

Thank you,

Larry Zoumas

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In reply to Larry Zoumas

Re: Learning standards: Exporting Moodle 2.3 to IMS Common Cartridge

by Helen Foster -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hi Larry,

I can confirm that Moodle 2.3 does indeed support IMS common cartridge export. Please see the documentation IMS Common Cartridge import and export for details.

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In reply to Helen Foster

Re: Learning standards: Exporting Moodle 2.3 to IMS Common Cartridge

by Larry Zoumas -

I managed to upgrade my moodle to 3.2. There is in fact an export to IMS function and I can confirm that it does make .imscc backups which one can rename to .zip and that much works.

By this I mean that I validated the package at http://simplelti.appspot.com/upload.htm.

However... I cannot import the cartrdige file back into Moodle,  so I am a little skeptical that everything is working. I also tried to import a sample catridge I downloaded at called CC-SimpleLTI-Sample-V04.zip also found on the above link. That didn't work either. The error seems to be in the parser. Any help or tips will be appreciated.

Is IMS import broken in 2.3?

error/xml_writer_end_tag_no_match

More information about this error

Debug info:
Error code: xml_writer_end_tag_no_match
$a contents: stdClass Object
(
[lastopen] => question_categories
[tag] => questions
)
Stack trace:
  • line 196 of /backup/util/xml/xml_writer.class.php: xml_writer_exception thrown
  • line 1264 of /backup/converter/moodle1/handlerlib.php: call to xml_writer->end_tag()
  • line 413 of /backup/converter/moodle1/lib.php: call to moodle1_question_bank_handler->on_questions_end()
  • line 755 of /backup/converter/moodle1/lib.php: call to moodle1_converter->path_end_reached()
  • line 230 of /backup/util/xml/parser/processors/simplified_parser_processor.class.php: call to moodle1_parser_processor->notify_path_end()
  • line 196 of /backup/util/xml/parser/processors/simplified_parser_processor.class.php: call to simplified_parser_processor->process_pending_startend_notifications()
  • line 102 of /backup/util/xml/parser/processors/grouped_parser_processor.class.php: call to simplified_parser_processor->after_path()
  • line 183 of /backup/util/xml/parser/progressive_parser.class.php: call to grouped_parser_processor->after_path()
  • line 263 of /backup/util/xml/parser/progressive_parser.class.php: call to progressive_parser->inform_end()
  • line ? of unknownfile: call to progressive_parser->end_tag()
  • line 158 of /backup/util/xml/parser/progressive_parser.class.php: call to xml_parse()
  • line 137 of /backup/util/xml/parser/progressive_parser.class.php: call to progressive_parser->parse()
  • line 150 of /backup/converter/moodle1/lib.php: call to progressive_parser->process()
  • line 129 of /backup/converter/convertlib.php: call to moodle1_converter->execute()
  • line 209 of /backup/util/helper/convert_helper.class.php: call to base_converter->convert()
  • line 421 of /backup/controller/restore_controller.class.php: call to convert_helper::to_moodle2_format()
  • line 35 of /backup/restore.php: call to restore_controller->convert()
 

 

 

 

 

 

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In reply to Larry Zoumas

Re: Learning standards: Exporting Moodle 2.3 to IMS Common Cartridge

by Larry Zoumas -

I've been researching this all day and night ;)

Here is what I found:

1. I did find some sample IMSCC cartridges I could successfuly import from Open University (http://www.open.ac.uk/) there are a lot of them. So I can confirm that the IMS import functionality in Moodle 2.3 does work at least in some cases.

2. I also created a very small course in 2.3 with only one 'file' and one 'quiz' with one 'question'. I 'backed it up' as IMSCC and then re-imported it. This worked!

3. However none of my full existing courses which I have created in pre-2.0 Moodle will export and then re-import successfully as IMS. I get the same error as before regarding the Error code: xml_writer_end_tag_no_match. I have verified the xml files and the cartridge files and don't see a problem with them. I have removed all invalid html which may be in any of the files. And I even went back to my old 1.9 Moodle installation, exported in Moodle format, then re-imported as Moodle format into a clean install of 2.3 and then attempted to backup as IMS. This did not work. I even tried exporting just one quiz by itself and this did not work. So I'm stumped. What exactly is wrong with the XML? I don't have days to figure this out.

In conclusion... 

This particular project involves creating commercial elearning content. We've been using Moodle for almost 7 years as our primary tool. But after spending a couple days researching and testing this stuff, my instinct is that it is not possible/practical  at this time to export our existing Moodle courses (mostly quizzes and reading activities created in Moodle 1.8 and 1.9) to IMS via upgrade to 2.3 and backup (export) to IMS format. So we will probably pick a dedicated IMS content authoring tool and rebuild the courses in that. 

If anyone can offer any suggestions as to an approach I might have missed, or can second my conclusion and suggest a good IMS authoring tool please let me know.

Moodle seems to play some IMS cartridges, and it seems to be able to author IMS cartridges if you build them in 2.3 (but my test was very limited in scope).... but for whatever reason it does not seem to be able to save larger and older Moodle courses in IMSCC format even when they work fine when imported into 2.3 as standard Moodle format.

Thanks for any advice or help. Wish it had worked out better.

Larry Zoumas

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In reply to Larry Zoumas

Re: Learning standards: Exporting Moodle 2.3 to IMS Common Cartridge

by Margaret Richards -

Reading the error tracking for this was useful. Are there any other 'standards' for creating a course that can be exported successfully into an IMS package?  The tracker says certain question types do not work? Are there particular resources, activities or other plug-ins that are known to be incompatible?

Can a course which contains an IMS package still be exported into IMS (IMS within IMS)?

Thanks!

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In reply to Margaret Richards

Re: Learning standards: Exporting Moodle 2.3 to IMS Common Cartridge

by Darko Miletić -

Currently these are the ONLY activities that can be exported to CC:

  • forum
  • label
  • lti
  • page
  • quizz (partial support)
  • resource
  • url

Can a course which contains an IMS package still be exported into IMS (IMS within IMS)?

Course will be exported but it will not contain any unsupported activity including IMS package.

 

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