Forum .LRN Q&A: help with choosing a name for a new package

Hello,

I'm starting to develop a new package at UNED for openACS and mainly for dotLRN.

This package is just a simple aggregation page, similar to moodle “course diagram”, for openACS class and clubs.

If your are not familiar with moodle, that feature is the course main page, where teachers make a planning (sections are defined by subjects or dates) and are able to add activities and resources in an easy way into those sections. So, students have access to all the course stuff in a structured view.

I need some recomendation for this package name which should be educational and descriptive. Something like course-planning or simple-planning, course-front-page...

Thanks in advance.

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Posted by Ernie Ghiglione on
Hi Mario,

This does sound very interesting. Would this be implemented as big portlet that would contain (or agregate) links to forums, FAQ's, etc within it or... ?

Thank you,

Ernie

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Hi! I am also looking into similar features. I have tentatively called my package learning-portlet since it will mainly provide a user and admin portlet to see aggregate learning materials.

My project does not include the more ambitious feature of arra nging the learning materials into a course. I think that is a cool idea, and I definitely think of Moodle when I imagine a package like that.

The goals of my package are to show a user the current status of learning materials they are assigned from assessment, lorsm, and eventually imsld. This would show content that the need to complete, is incomlete, or complete, with a way to see their scores from all these various sources.

The admin side would be a way to see the scores for one user, or results across users for a certain learning material.

It sounds like your goal is to actually build a course page, showing the different parts of a course. In moodle some of those things could be uploaded files, forums, in addition to SCORM content, assessments (quiz etc.).

My package is more interested in giving the user a view of their progress and results of the different parts of a course.

I need to have someting working in a few days and I will be able to share that code once its working.

Undernearth I think we need callbacks to collect the data from the individual packages. Do you have any ideas on how your package will be designed?

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Posted by Nima Mazloumi on
maybe you can also take a look at latest/dotlrn-latest/latest-portlet which displays latest activities in a community in a structured way: file-storage, forums, news ...
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Posted by Gustaf Neumann on
you should look into the homework module of http://www.km.co.at/km/mannheim.
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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Thanks for the links Nima and Gustaf.

The latest package is an interesting idea. It sort of works the way an aggregate view woudl work, you need a specific quer for each type. It just needs to be generalized more or again, since we need more specific learning info such as a grade, customized.

Regarding the tlf-homework package, it appears to be a very nice package, but it doesn't allow assigning other acs objects. Overall it probably makese sense to decide on a central place to store the actual grades though, instead of in each package.

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Posted by Gustaf Neumann on
the tlf-homework handles just assignments (handing in essays, programming examples, seminar prsentations, etc). We use homework as well in combination with our assesment/self-assessment module, which is not included.

The actual grades are collected in the tlf-gradebook (see screen-cast on the same page). For most of the courses, we are required by law to base the grades of the course not only on a single test, but on several (at least 3) different student evaluations. The need for the tlf-gradebook came from the idea to communicate students their current evaluation.

Needless to say, on the mid-range, we are working on integration of assessment with xowiki to allow agile content develompment and exchange.

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Posted by Dario Roig on
Hello, in the University of Valencia we used to reflect the progress of the students in a course the package "cards".

This package is integrated with evaluation and assessments (import your grades). In this link you can see the aid of the package
http://aulavirtual.uv.es/global/HELP/ch07s02.html (in spanish, sorry)

In our server of testing you can access to view demo course with two students evaluated:

http://pizarrades.uv.es/dotlrn/classes/s033/s033.formacinenaulavirtual/evaluacionyseguimientoii/

Student 1:
authority:local
user:mailto:alumno@uv.es
password:4x5es20

Student 2:
authority:local
user:mailto:demoalumno@uv.es
password:4x5es20

Professor:
authority:local
user:mailto:profesor@uv.es
password:4x5es20

Please any commentary will be thanked.

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Posted by Mario Aguado on

The package prototype student view is like this. This prototype is generated with static-porlet in one course and don't include forums, chats, ....

For objects addition I'll try to use add packages feature's with return_url parameter. The view is one portal page with 'new-portal.simple_1column_layout_name' layout.

Sorry for my English. 😟

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Posted by Michael Cordova on

Yes Ernie, that's the idea: a course main page, a front page, where see all the course resources aggregated by lessons or by weeks, by semesters ... by some kind of didactic blocks... for instance, look at the end of this post

I'm Mario's work-mate, and today we have made a graphic in a white board for choosing the composed package name with one word from left colum + another word from right column...

Left column words: Right column words
  • course
  • simple
  • resource
  • block/section/module
  • diagram
  • planning
  • sequence
  • aggregator
  • front-page
  • timing
  • toc (table of contents)
  • summary
  • directory
  • guide

so, some combinations were...

  • course-diagram (as moodle)
  • course-planning
  • course-front-page
  • simple-guide
  • simple-planning
  • resource-aggregator
  • resource-directory
  • block-sequences

and the winner is... simple-planning!!. Does it sound good in english?

For instance... that package should show something similar to...
____
BLOCK 1: (maybe defined by some period of time)

  • Resources:
    • that PDF file,
    • that link,
    • another PDF file,
    • a zip file with exercises
  • Communication tools:
    • use that chat, on mondays
    • and that forum for questions...
  • Evaluation
    • those assessments to complete block 1
BLOCK 2: (maybe defined by some period of time, or deadline...)
  • that PDF file,
  • that link,
  • use that chat (different from block 1 chat), on mondays
  • and that forums (other than block 1 forum) for questions, and proposals...
  • those assessments (different from block 1) to complete block 2 and get evaluated
BLOCK 3:
  • read that book
  • some instructions to complete the course
  • relax, no assessments :) in this "block"
BLOCK 4:
  • block 4 forum
  • final exam
______

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Posted by Christian Fuchs on
I think it is a very good idea to programm such an portlet and it will be very helpful in class.

In my opinion the name "simple planning" might be understood, that the portlet offers "trivial" functions and the instruktor/teacher can only do "basic" things with it.

As a matter of fact, this module has a very high impact on the daily teaching process because
* teachers can easily plan, process and review their lessons
* students can process/review/rework their lessons and their assignments
* ...

And since lesson planning (also e-Learning lesson planning) is based on some kind of curriculum or syllabus these words should be in the new package name.

So my suggestion is "syllabus of instruction" or "instructional syllabus" or "professional syllabus".

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Any progress on the code for this package? Its definitely very interesting and we are interested in how it works.
This package should be finished on September. I did one part and a workmate will finish the package.