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Communication Tools
Product Name	KEWL
Developer Name	KEWL
URL	http://kngforge.uwc.ac.za
Review Date	November 19, 2006
Forums	KEWL Discussions
Reviewer	Derek Keats email bio
Discussion Forum	Students can enable or disable posts to be sent to their email. Students can receive posts by email as daily digests of subject lines or whole posts. Students can subscribe to forum RSS feeds. Reviewer Comments Discussion forum is fully multimedia enabled. Discussion forum has multiple views, including a mindmap view where posts can be made from within the mindmap. Discuss
Discussion Management	Instructors can allow students to create discussion groups. Instructors can set up moderated discussions where all posts are screened. Posts may be peer reviewed by other students. Instructors can view statistical summaries of discussions displaying participation which can be used to generate grades. Discuss
File Exchange	Students can submit assignments using drop boxes. Students can share the contents of their personal folders with other students. Discuss
Internal Email	Students can use the built-in email functionality to email individuals or groups. Students can use a searchable address book. Instructors can email the entire class at once at a single address or alias. Reviewer Comments Internal email also act as an interface to an external IMAP or POP mail account(s). Discuss
Online Journal/Notes	Reviewer Comments This was a feature of KEWL 1, was not implemented in KEWL.NextGen, but will be back in KEWL 3.0 Discuss
Real-time Chat	The chat tool supports unlimited simultaneous group discussions Students can create new rooms. Instructors may moderate chats and suspend students from the chat rooms. The system creates archive logs for all chat rooms. Reviewer Comments Two different chat tools are avialable, depending on the requirements of the site: HTML chat with Ajax, and IRC chat via an IRC server with a Java client in the web browser. Discuss
Whiteboard	Reviewer Comments A full integrated realtime classroom is scheduled for KEWL 3.2 by April 2007 Discuss
Productivity Tools
Bookmarks	Students can share their bookmarks. Students can create bookmarks in a private folder. Students can bookmark any content material in a course. Reviewer Comments Bookmarks are XBEL compatible for sharing with web browsers. Book marks can be exported to or imported from web browser. Discuss
Calendar/Progress Review	Instructors and students can post events in the online course calendar. Instructors can post announcements to a course announcement page. Students have a personal home page that lists all courses in which the student is enrolled, new email and all course and system-wide events from their personal calendar. Students can view their grades on completed assignments, total points possible, course grade, and compare their grades against the class performance. Students can subscribe to RSS feeds to be notified of changes to materials. Reviewer Comments Students can post to their own calendar, only instructors can post to the course calendar, although since all permissions are configuraion based, this can be altered by a sysadmin. Discuss
Searching Within Course	Students can search all course content. Students can search all discussion threads. Reviewer Comments KEWL 3.0 (due February 2007) will have full text search across everything, including uploaded documents and media. Discuss
Work Offline/Synchronize	Students can compile and download the content for an entire course into a format that can be printed or stored locally. Instructors can publish course content on a CD-ROM that can be linked to dynamically from within the online course or viewed offline. Discuss
Orientation/Help	Students can access context sensitive help for any tool. The system includes online tutorials for students that help students learn how to use the system. Discuss
Student Involvement Tools
Groupwork	Instructors can assign students to groups. Each group can have its own discussion forum. Each group can have its own chat or whiteboard. Each group can be given group-specific assignments or activities. Discuss
Community Networking	Students from different courses can interact in system-wide chat rooms or discussion forums. Discuss
Student Portfolios	Students can create a personal home page in each course. Reviewer Comments A full e-portfolio module is currently in development, and will be available in January 2007. Discuss
Administration Tools
Authentication	Administrators can allow guest access to all courses. The system can authenticate against an external LDAP server. The system can authenticate using the Kerberos protocol. The system can authenticate against IMAP, POP3 or secure NNTP. 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. The system can support multiple organizational units and virtual hosts within a server configuration. Reviewer Comments Supporting additional authentication systems is a small development task, and this is done on an as-requested basis. Discuss
Course Authorization	The system supports restricting access based on roles and roles can also be customizedby the service provider. Administrators can create an unlimited number of custom organizational units and roles with specific access privileges to course content and tools. Administrators can distribute the permissions and roles across multiple institutions or departments hosted in the server environment. Instructors or students may be assigned different roles in different courses. Discuss
Registration Integration	Instructors can add students to their courses manually or allow students to self-register. Administrators can batch add students to the system using a delimited text file. The software supports data interchange with student information systems through an event-driven API. Reviewer Comments We can connect the system to anything on request. It us usually a small amount of programming. Our development focus is on what people ask for. Discuss
Hosted Services	The product provider offers a hosted solution. Reviewer Comments We can host sites for colloration partners. We can arrange hosting for commercial instances. Discuss
Course Delivery Tools
Test Types	Multiple choice Multiple answer Fill-in the blank Short answer Survey questions Essay Questions can contain other media elements (images, videos, audio) Custom question types can be defined. Discuss
Automated Testing Management	The system can randomize the questions and answers. Instructors can create self-assessments. Instructors can set a time limit on a test. Instructors can permit multiple attempts. The students are allowed to review past attempts of a quiz. The system supports a MathML editor for the inclusion of mathematical formulas in both questions and answers. The system supports proctored tests. Reviewer Comments A large range of assessment tasks are available within the system, including Rubrics and Problem-based Learning Discuss
Automated Testing Support	Instructors can create personal test banks. The system provides test analysis data. Reviewer Comments We have a Quiz module for testing large classes in secure venues. Discuss
Online Marking Tools	Reviewer Comments These features apply to certain assessment tasks only. This item seems narrowly conceived here. Discuss
Online Gradebook	When an instructor adds an assignment to the course, the software automatically adds it to the gradebook. Instructors can add grades for offline assignments. Instructors can export the scores in the gradebook to an external spreadsheet. Discuss
Course Management	Instructors can selectively release assignments, assessments, and announcements based on specific start and stop dates. Instructors can link discussions to specific dates or course events. Discuss
Student Tracking	Reviewer Comments These features are in fact there, but the morality of their use is questionable. Discuss
Content Development Tools
Accessibility Compliance	Reviewer Comments We try to comply with good practices in this area, but as a community we do not wish to be held accountable as there are over 100 developers working, some of whom are volunteers. Discuss
Content Sharing/Reuse	Instructors can share content with other instructors and students through a central learning objects repository. Reviewer Comments Sharing can be accross courses, not via a repository, althouh courses can act as a repository with an entirely different interface. Discuss
Course Templates	Discuss
Customized Look and Feel	The system provides default course look and feel templates. Instructors can change the navigation icons and color schemes for a course. Institutions can create their own look and feel templates across the entire system, including their own institutional logos, headers, and footers. The system can support multiple institutions, departments, schools or other organizational units on a single installation where each unit can apply its own look and feel templates as well as institutional images, headers and footers. Discuss
Instructional Design Tools	Instructors can organize learning objects, course tools, and content into learning sequences that are reusable. Instructors can create linear learning sequences organized hierarchically by course, lesson, and topic. Discuss
Instructional Standards Compliance	SCORM 1.2 Discuss
Hardware/Software
Client Browser Required	Discuss
Database Requirements	The system supports MySQL. Discuss
UNIX Server	A Unix version is available. Discuss
Windows Server	A Windows version is available. Discuss
Company Details/Licensing
Company Profile	Discuss
Costs / Licensing	Discuss
Open Source	The software is distributed under one of the OSI-approved licenses. Discuss
Optional Extras	Reviewer Comments Problem based learning, podcast, webblog, instant messaging, full multimedia enablement of all tools. Discuss

Reference Citation: EduTools. (2010). CMS: Product Comparison System. Retrieved September 08, 2010 from http://www.edutools.org/compare.jsp?pj=4&i=559