It's my absolute pleasure to introduce LORSm v0.4: an standards and specifications compliant learning object repository ![]()
LORSm uses IMS/SCORM specifications/standards to implement a repository of learning objects and a delivery environment. Things you can do with LORSm:
1. Import Course Content (IMS CP & SCORM).
- Imports Blackboard6 IMS CP packages
- Imports WebCT IMS CP packages
2. Share courses between different .LRN classes.
3. Course Management and Administration
4. Metadata Viewer/Editor (to certain degree)
5. Course Delivery
6. Online edit of course content (versioning et al)
7. Students time and views tracking
8. Full text search on content and metadata
9. Export Course Content
10. Tons of improvement and others features
The killer features of LORS 0.4 are:
1) You can import *any* course that you export from Blackboard6 and WebCT 4.1 seamlessly into a .LRN class.
2) Once it is imported, a teacher can share a course with other .LRN classes. So for instance a course on "How to use .LRN" can be shared across many classes without having to duplicate its content. The repository does it all for you (including permissions and all that). That was hard, but it's a really really wicked feature.
LORS requires a slightly addition to File-Storage. LORS uses FS for all handling of files and resources. We did these changes for the work we've been doing for the Concord fellows. Hopefully those changes in FS are going to be merged with our FS. Otherwise, I'll see how we can go around this.
In addition, we use Jeff's views to do tracking of all sort of views for items and resources. That's pretty simple and cool as well. It's also implements service contracts to use tsearch2 or openfts.
If you want to give it a go, you can download it from here:
LORSm packages:
http://weg.ee.usyd.edu.au/people/ernieg/files/lorsm_v0.4.tgz (these are all on CVS too: lors lorsm lorsm-portlet dotlrn-lorsm)
Version of FS that will work well:
http://weg.ee.usyd.edu.au/people/ernieg/files/file-storage.tgz
You also need to check out the "views" package from CVS as it is required for student tracking.
To test it, you can use this IMS Content Package... my bloody thesis, which gives some technical details of the implementation and comparisons to other learning object repositories:
http://weg.ee.usyd.edu.au/people/ernieg/files/Thesis_v1.0.zip
By no means I can take credit for LORS on my own. It wouldn't be even half of what it is without Dave, Deds, Roel, Caroline, Mathias, Al et al who have helped to make it a much more appealing repository than what it was on version 0.1. For Lars, Don, Jeff and all the fellows who have worked on OpenACS since the beginning: thanks for have taught me with your code more than what I've learnt in four years at University ![]()
Things that require some work (release notes if I may):
* As of now, LORSm is -to certain degree- a demostrator. Therefore some work on scalability is required.
* Also, it's only available for Postgres (volunteers for Oracle migration are welcome).
* UI isn't really my forte ![]()
Future improvements include: internationalization (thanks Rocael), sCORM RTE integration (thanks Giancarlo), probably an online IMS CP package editor (creating course online and being able to export them to other platforms). I personally would like to implement features for federated search and discovery of learning objects across several instance of LORS. For instance, learning objects that are available at Sydney University are searchable (thru webservices) by other institutions running LORS or any other repository for that matter. Other IMS specifications should be considered too.
Ideas, comments, suggestions... always welcome.
Ernie
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