Few thoughts on Lessons

Few thoughts on Lessons

by Jack Eapen -
Number of replies: 14
I have been using Dokeos as LCMS and Moodle as an online examination tool. Now I'm planning to shift completely to Moodle. What my feeling is that Moodle is much superior to Dokeos except in the case of lessons.

In Dokeos, basically we create html documents using a WYSWYG editor. we can upload documents, create simple quiizes. In the learning path (LP) tool, we can simply select the resources we have in the course to create a 'learning path'. i.e. in a learning path you can have created html pages, uploaded documents, quizzes, etc. We can easily change the order of elements in the LP and decide pre-requisites for each step.

the problems i feel with Moodle lessons are:
  • we need to have exclusive question pages in lessons.
  • we can't move a page from one lesson to another.
  • we can't include a quiz (or other course files) as a page in a lesson (i.e. we created a quiz. it can't be used in the context of the lesson, but only as a separate element)
  • when we see a lesson, a ToC of pages is not displayed.
is this problems are only mine? or anyone else shares them?

Regards

Jack

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In reply to Jack Eapen

Re: Few thoughts on Lessons

by Christoph Ruda -

Hi Jack,

I agree with you on the points you have raised. Today I made my first attempt on a lesson and didn't get very far. In particular I found the fact that one doesn't seem to have access to the course question bank a limiting factor, along with the fewer question types supported. Some of the limitations might be overcome (or worked around) with more experience. For instance, I believe that the lack of TOC is a lesson setting you can change. By default it is dependent on a minimum score for the first attempt in order to force the student to work through the whole lesson at least once.

Regards,

Christoph

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In reply to Christoph Ruda

Re: Few thoughts on Lessons

by Jack Eapen -
I don't have experience with many LCMSs. So i feel that the Dokeos way of creating learning paths is a very simple one. Can any Moodler look at that and comment why can't we have something similar in Moodle?

Jack

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In reply to Jack Eapen

Re: Few thoughts on Lessons

by John Isner -
What do you mean by "exclusive question pages?"
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Few thoughts on Lessons

by Charlie Mosley -
I think he means that you can't access those questions in the question bank for setting up quizzes, so you have to re-set them up again if you want to duplicate in a formal quiz. I've found this also. Is there a way around that?
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In reply to Charlie Mosley

Re: Few thoughts on Lessons

by John Isner -
Is there a way around that?

Not yet. There is a plan to integrate the question data bank into the Lesson activity so that both Lessons and Quizzes can share the same questions. According to the developer responsible for the Lesson module in this discussion, this is planned for Moodle 2.0 and the actual development plans are here.

I have a major investment in my question data bank. I would like to use my questions in Lessons, but I do not want to maintain two copies of every question. So for now, I simulate Lessons using Quizzes. See this discussion.
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Few thoughts on Lessons

by Mark Nielsen -
Hi there,

Please note that even though the development plans say 2.0, there are currently no plans to actually meet that target. I have very little time to devote to such a large migration and I have not heard of anyone else interested in doing it.

Cheers,
Mark
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In reply to Mark Nielsen

Re: Few thoughts on Lessons

by Jack Eapen -
I hope everyone will like to have re-usable components in Moodle courses. the very idea of SCORM itself is Sharable Content Objects. I feel Moodle developers should have a serious look at the Dokeos Learning Path tool.

Also, I think the first feature a LCMS should have is the SCORM export feature and not SCORM import. If the s/w don't allow me to export my content in a standard format, how can I confidently use it? if the development of the s/w stops at some point of time, then I can safely export my courses from that tool in SCORM format and import in another tool.

Regards,

Jack

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In reply to Jack Eapen

Re: Few thoughts on Lessons

by John Isner -
SCORM compliance/conformance does not require an LMS to export SCORM, only to be able to import it and play/interoperate with it properly. What other LMS do you know that exports SCORM? Nevertheless, it would certainly be a nice feature if it existed, and you are not the first person to ask about it (see this discussion).
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Re: Few thoughts on Lessons

by Jack Eapen -
What other LMS do you know that exports SCORM?

ATutor and Claroline does that. I just tried exporting a course from Atutor demo site and imported that into Moodle1.8 and it worked fine.
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In reply to Jack Eapen

Re: Few thoughts on Lessons

by John Isner -
Jack,
Very interesting. Thanks for pointing this out!

From the the Atutor description:
IMS/SCORM Content Packaging: Instructors can export content from ATutor as IMS/SCORM conformant Content Packages that can be viewed offline in the accompanying viewer, or imported into ATutor or another conformant e-learning system. Entire courses, or individual course units can be packaged for viewing or redistribution. Content from other compliant systems can be imported into ATutor. Import and export complex content such as Java applets, Flash content, and other embedded programmed objects.

From Claroline.NET news

SCORM and IMS-QTI Export in Claroline. Amand Tihon, a former student of the Institut Paul Lambin finished his bachelor in computer science. He worked at Cerdecam Research Center (Brussels) for a period of 3 months on improving the Claroline standardisation. The SCORM exportation (in the learning path tool) and the IMS-QTI exportation (in the exercise tool) of Claroline 1.7 are the main results of his great job for the Claroline project.

I checked the tracker and found that MDL-4917 "Feature request - SCORM export" was closed without a definitive resolution. I added a comment and you may want to add one too.

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In reply to John Isner

Re: Few thoughts on Lessons

by Jack Eapen -
John,

I was particular about this point mainly for a reason. I have been trying to promote FLOSS in the organizations where I worked (in India) and those organizations were not using any FLOSS before. So people are naturally very sceptic about the merits against commerical tools. Features like SCORM export is a good selling point. We can tell the management

"Try this FLOSS tool anyway. Even if you don't like it after an year, you can just export the content as a standard SCORM package and import to any of your favourite commercial LCMS" big grin

Recently we shifted from Dokeos to Moodle. But the beauty of learning path creation in Dokeos till haunting me blush

Regards

Jack
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