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| Product Name | .LRN |
|---|---|
| Developer Name | .LRN Consortium |
| URL | .LRN |
| Review Date | February 27, 2004 |
| Forums | .LRN Discussions |
| Reviewer | Email Review Staff |
| Communication Tools | |
| Discussion Forums |
The software includes support for discussion forums. Discussions can be viewed by date, by thread or by author. Instructors may create separate discussion environments for small groups. Groups can be open to all or only a select set of students. Posts can include attachments, an image or URL. Posts can be either plain text, formatted text or html. Students can enable or disable posts to be sent to their email. Students can post to the forum by email. The discussion forums can include a moderation function. Discuss |
| File Exchange |
Students can share the contents of their personal folders with other students and their instructors. Students can submit assignments using drop boxes. Discuss |
| Internal Email |
Students must have an external Internet email address. Students can use the Internal email feature) to email groups. All emails sent from the system are archived. Discuss |
| Online Journal/Notes |
The system supports a weblog tool, which allows students to have personal weblogs as well as weblogs for classes, subgroups, and communities. This blogging functionally includes full RSS support, limited trackback support, limited Blogger API support, and formatted text entry. Discuss |
| Real-time Chat | |
| Video Services | |
| Whiteboard | |
| Productivity Tools | |
| Bookmarks | |
| Orientation/Help |
Students can access context sensitive help. The system includes an FAQ module for generating new FAQs. Discuss |
| Searching Within Course |
Students can search all discussion threads and documents in their folders. Discuss |
| Calendar/Progress Review |
Students can keep track of all their assignments, deadlines, and due dates in their personal online calendars. Instructors can post events and announcements in the online course calendar. Entries in the online course calendar can be posted for the entire class, a specific team, or a specific user. All students have a personal home page that lists new email, all courses, and groups in which the student is enrolled and all course and system-wide events as well as those from their personal calendar. Discuss |
| Work Offline/Synchronize |
Students can download the content for an entire course into a format that can be stored locally, and synchronize calendar events with Microsoft Outlook calendars. Discuss |
| Student Involvement Tools | |
| Groupwork |
Instructors can assign students to groups. Each group can have its own discussion forum, group email list, surveys, shared calendar events, file exchange, assigned group leadership and subgroups. Discuss |
| Self-assessment |
Instructors can create self-assessments. Discuss |
| Student Community Building |
Students can create online clubs and study groups at the system level. Students can send email to their groups, use a shared notice board and calendar, and share files privately within the group. Discuss |
| Student Portfolios |
Students can use their private folder (in a course to display their work. Personal home pages may include their photo, personal information and links to important websites. Discuss |
| Administration Tools | |
| Authentication |
Instructors can protect access to individual courses with a username and password. The system can also authenticate against an external LDAP server, IMAP/POP mail server or using the Kerberos or RADIUS protocol. Administrators can set up fail-through authentication against a secondary source (e.g. the system’s own database) in the event that the primary source (e.g.. LDAP server ) fails. User logins can be encrypted with SSL. The system has a password reminder option and students can maintain their own passwords. Passwords stored in the system database are encrypted. Discuss |
| Course Authorization |
Instructors can assign different levels of access to the system and to courses based on the following pre-defined roles: student, instructor, teaching assistant. Instructors or students may be assigned different roles in different courses and group contexts. Discuss |
| Registration Integration |
Students can self-register. Administrators can batch add students. Instructors can add students. OpenACS (.LRN's parent project) supports eccommerce and credit card transactions. This functionality has been added by some institutions to restrict access specific .LRN courses to paying users. This functionality is not included in the main code branch. Discuss |
| Hosted Services |
Hosted systems are offered by a number of companies located around the world. Discuss |
| Course Delivery Tools | |
| Course Management |
Instructors can selectively release materials based on previous course activity. Instructors can selectively release announcements based on specific start and end dates. Instructors can link course content to specific calendar events. Discuss |
| Instructor Helpdesk |
Instructors can form online groups to share documents, and experiences, with instructors in their organization, using discussion forums other collaborative tools. Instructors can also submit a helpdesk trouble report through an online form and track its resolution on the web. Discuss |
| Online Grading Tools | |
| Student Tracking | |
| Automated Testing and Scoring |
Instructors can create survey questions Discuss |
| Curriculum Design | |
| Accessibility Compliance |
To enable accessibility, the software does not use frames, provides primarily text interface and uses alt tags. Discuss |
| Course Templates |
Instructors can use templates to create announcements, FAQs, calendar entries, links, discussion forums and course descriptions. Course content may also be uploaded through a form. Discuss |
| Curriculum Management | |
| Customized Look and Feel |
Institutions can create their own look and feel templates. Institutions can apply their own institutional images, headers and footers. The system can support multiple institutions, departments, schools or other organizational divisions on an individual server setup. Each unit can be separately branded. Distinct designs can also be applied at both the course and specific section level. Instructors can alter the appearance of their course. Instructors can change the navigation icons and color schemes, and the location of the navigation menu for a course. Discuss |
| Instructional Standards Compliance |
The system can import and export user information using the IMS Enterprise Specification 1.1. Discuss |
| Instructional Design Tools | |
| Content Sharing/Reuse | |
| Hardware/Software | |
| Client Browser Required |
The software supports Internet Explorer 4+, Netscape 4+, Mozilla Firefox 0.7, Mozilla 1+, Safari 1. Discuss |
| Database Requirements |
The system has been tested on PostgreSQL 7.3.2-7.3.4 and Oracle 8.1.6 and 8.1.7. Oracle 9i and PosgreSQL 7.4 have not been thoroughly tested yet. Discuss |
| Server Software |
The software includes web based package management and developer support tools. The software requires the AOLServer web/application server which is available under the GPL. Discuss |
| UNIX Server |
The software is available for most versions of Linux or Unix. Discuss |
| Windows Server | |
| Pricing/Licensing | |
| Company Profile |
.LRN is based on the Open Architecture Community System (openacs.org) and is guided by the .LRN Consortium. Consortium members include The Sloan School of Management at MIT and Heidleberg University. Software development collaborative effort and companies are located around the globe. Discuss |
| Costs |
The software is free and distributed under the GNU Public License. Discuss |
| Open Source |
The software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The source code is available at http://www.openacs.org/ Discuss |
| Optional Extras |
The software supports internationalization. Discuss |
| Software Version |
The current software version number is 2.0. Discuss |
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