Our campus is planning to switch from Blackboard to Moodle next year. A number of the faculty members that I have spoken with are concerned about loosing the ability to use electronic course materials (cartridges?) supplied by the textbook publishers. I casually contacted Prentice Hall tech support this morning and got a confirmation that they do not support use of materials with Moodle. I have a number of questions on this subject.
Where can I find a primer on the types of publisher supplied content? I've seen acronyms like IMS and SCORM, but have no idea what they should mean to me.
Are people actively using vendor supplied content with Moodle?
If there isn't widespread vendor support for Moodle, what can we as a community do to organize and lobby for this support?
Good questions Aaron.
I'll try to answer some of them.
Links for IMS, SCORM
http://www.imsglobal.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORM
but I recommend CETIS encyclopedia for straightforward definitions.
I think your question about the need to get vendor support is important. Perhaps we should raise this with our publisher reps, and at conferences where publishers have stands.
I'll try to answer some of them.
Links for IMS, SCORM
http://www.imsglobal.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORM
but I recommend CETIS encyclopedia for straightforward definitions.
I think your question about the need to get vendor support is important. Perhaps we should raise this with our publisher reps, and at conferences where publishers have stands.
Why don't moodle.org or moodle.com contact the publishers and try to make a deal with the to support Moodle?