James

I agree that the new browser window, in theory, can pipe back information to
the VLE server that launched it, my point really is that we have not as yet
reached that point "out of the box" as so many in the standards debate seem to
infer.

Both Blackboard and WebCT claim to be IMS and SCORM compliant VLEs yet
material from several content repositories does not behave equally in each,
and that is only two from a wide range of current popular VLEs.

With regard to material from Round one of NLN and from Wisconsin online there
is no piping back of information from the learning objects to either
Blackboard or WebCT despite all being IMS and SCORM compliant. This is not a
criticsm of any of the vendors or content developers it is simply that the
technology has simply not converged as yet.

I am not knocking the idea of re-uasable content or the materials thus far
created, far from it, some of the material I have looked at and worked with is
high class and works very well and can be of immense benefit in many
educational areas.

Rather it is the claims that are made about how content will operate which
currently are wide of the mark, (I may say that many of the content developers
do not claim as much as many proponents). We may well get to the stage where
content created to the standards models will work seamlessly across any
platform etc "out of the box" but we are not there yet, and to claim otherwise
at this stage simply devalues the whole process.

There is an inherent danger in all of this, namely, if people accept at face
value what is being promoted and then find that things do not in fact work as
they have been led to believe then there is a risk that they will become
disenchanted with the whole process and never return, which would be sad.

My travels and discussions through workshops across both FE and HE over the
past 2-3 years leads me to suspect that there has been a lot of this happening
across the UK over that time with VLEs in general.

Many institutions have purchased VLEs and often provided product training
without understanding that it is pedagogical issues and use of the system to
properly support learning that is really paramount, and it is only now that
these factors are beginning to percolate in a wider sense.

Looking back over the past couple of years many institutions claimed fantastic
success in expanding online learning using VLEs, what I would find interesting
is to actually find out how many of the hundreds of online courses claimed,
actually are still running and delivering in the sense that they were
originally intended.

My feeling is that many enthusiastic people have had there fingers burned
through the overt push to using VLEs without fully understanding the
pedagogical factors and found that things did not work in the way they
thought, and have then abandoned online learning completely as they became
dissilusioned about the whole process. It is often impossible to get such
people back to look objectively at the process again having suffered such
dissilusion.

It would be a pity if a similar scenario was repeated with re-usable content
through outlandish claims being made which cannot be supported at this time.

Realism should be the way forward, not hype, but I suspect we will continue to
be inundated with unsupportable claims for the foreseeable future.

Danny McAtominey

Netskills


>===== Original Message From Virtual Learning Environments
<[log in to unmask]> =====
>Danny
>
>Your first comment seems to imply that a VLE sits in a browser window,
>when in reality it sits on a server which serves your browser window.
>
>When a new browser window is launched, it is not "outside" the VLE, a
>quick check of the URL (if you can't see the address bar, press [CTRL]
>N, and you should be able to), you will see that the materials are still
>"on" the VLE. You are still accessing the same server regardless of the
>number of browser windows. Therefore any results from the SCORM Object
>can still "pipe" results back to the server (which is the important bit,
>not the browser window from which the object launched).
>
>With regard to your second comment on getting things working, we have
>staff with very low technical ability (they can't create interactive
>Word documents for example), using a simple Word tool (TekniCAL's
>e-Learning Objects Tool) to create IMS Learning Objects which can be
>easily uploaded to our VLE, the Virtual Campus.
>
>We have published some simple How Do I Guides for those that are
>curious.
>
>How do I convert a Word Document I already have into a Learning Object
>using the e-Learning Objects Tool?
>http://www.westerncc.ac.uk/author011.html
>
>How do I publish chapters into a subject area?
>http://www.westerncc.ac.uk/help24.html
>
>How do I add a chapter from a subject into a package?
>http://www.westerncc.ac.uk/help25.html
>
>We have had some "technical" issues with using other tools such as
>Microsoft LRN and Dreamweaver SCORM extensions, when the IMS Manifest
>file is created
>
>With the TekniCAL tool a unique manifest identifier  is created
>
><manifest identifier="efc2b423-1a55-4851-9605-d548d174c2b3"
>
>Whereas with the MS tool we usually get
><manifest identifier="MANIFEST01"
>
>It is using a non Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) in the IMS
>manifest file it creates. This identification format is a recommendation
>in the IMS specifications and hopefully a requirement before long.
>However the Virtual Campus requires a unique identifier.
>
>We then have to manually create a GUID using a GUID creation programme -
>BTW if any one knows of a free windows GUID creation programme, I would
>like to know, as our current one is a DOS programme.
>
>Regards
>
>James Clay
>Director Western Colleges Consortium
>e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>www.westerncc.ac.uk
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Virtual Learning Environments [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>Behalf Of Daniel McAtominey
>Sent: 07 May 2003 11:57
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Creating IMS compliant material
>
>
>How then does NLN round one material, which is IMS and SCORM compliant,
>pipe results back to the VLE when it launches into a new window outside
>of the VLE? As does the material from Wisconsin Online another IMS and
>Scorm compliant content repository.
>
>It may be possible to get some of these things to work but not without
>some manipulation which requires technical knowledge, the idea that they
>will work "out of the box" in ANY VLE or other IMS compliant package is
>fanciful and misleading at this time.
>
>Danny
>
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Danny McAtominey
Netskills
www.netskills.ac.uk

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