Product Details

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Communication Tools
Product Name	dotLRN/OpenACS
Developer Name	dotLRN
URL	dotlrn.org
Review Date	January 07, 2007
Forums	dotLRN/OpenACS Discussions
Reviewer	dotLRN Leadership Team 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. A spell-checker is available for student and instructor responses. Discuss
Discussion Management	Instructors can set up moderated discussions where all posts are screened. Discuss
File Exchange	Students can submit assignments using drop boxes. Students can share the contents of their personal folders with other students. Administrators can define disk space limitations for each user. Discuss
Internal Email	Students can use the built-in email functionality to email individuals or groups. Instructors can email the entire class at once at a single address or alias. Students can elect to forward their mail to an external address. Discuss
Online Journal/Notes	Discuss
Real-time Chat	The chat tool supports unlimited simultaneous group discussions The system creates archive logs for all chat rooms. Discuss
Whiteboard	Discuss
Productivity Tools
Bookmarks	Reviewer Comments This feature is available in OpenACS and could be used in dotLRN with minimal effort 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 subscribe to RSS feeds to be notified of changes to materials. Discuss
Searching Within Course	Students can search all course content. Students can search all discussion threads. Discuss
Work Offline/Synchronize	Discuss
Orientation/Help	Discuss
Student Involvement Tools
Groupwork	Instructors can assign students to groups. Students can self-select groups. Each group can have its own discussion forum. Each group can have its own chat or whiteboard. Groups may be private or instructors can monitor groups. Discuss
Community Networking	Students can create online clubs, interest, and study groups at the system level. Students from different courses can interact in system-wide chat rooms or discussion forums. Discuss
Student Portfolios	Reviewer Comments The portfolio is site wide. A student creates a personal page that they can use for any materials, not a specific course. See dotfolio.org Discuss
Administration Tools
Authentication	Administrators can allow guest access to all courses. The system can authenticate against an external LDAP server. 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. 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. Administrators can transfer student information bidirectionally between the system and an SIS using delimited text files. Administrators can transfer student information bidirectionally between the system and an SIS using IMS Enterprise Specification v1.1 XML files via web services. Discuss
Hosted Services	Hosting and support services from Commercial Affiliates. Discuss
Course Delivery Tools
Test Types	Multiple choice Multiple answer 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. Instructors can specify whether correct results are shown as feedback Discuss
Automated Testing Support	Instructors can create system wide test banks. Questions can be imported from external test banks that support QTI. Discuss
Online Marking Tools	Discuss
Online Gradebook	Instructors can add grades for offline assignments. Instructors can export the scores in the gradebook to an external spreadsheet. Instructors can create a course grading scale that can employ either percents, letter grades, or pass/fail metrics. Discuss
Course Management	Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials based on group membership. Discuss
Student Tracking	Usage statistics can be aggregated across courses or across the institution. Discuss
Content Development Tools
Accessibility Compliance	The product provider self-reports that the software complies with the WAI WCAG 1.0 Level A guidelines. Reviewer Comments According to http://openacs.org/xowiki/Accessibility and taken into account the work done for the 2.2.1 release, .LRN core meets WAI WCAG 1.0 Level A. Discuss
Content Sharing/Reuse	Instructors can share content with other instructors and students through a central learning objects repository. Tools are available to enable version tracking and linking to specific versions as well as the creation and management of workflows for collaborative content creation and review. Discuss
Course Templates	Course content may be uploaded through WebDAV. The system allows administrators to use an existing course or a pre-defined template as a basis for a new course. Discuss
Customized Look and Feel	The system provides default course look and feel templates. Instructors can change the order and name of menu items for a course. 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. Reviewer Comments Assessment package includes the possibility of creating questionnairs and within the Evaluation package you can also define learning sequences. Discuss
Instructional Standards Compliance	IMS Content Packaging 1.1.3 IMS Content Packaging 1.1.4 IMS QTI 1.2.1 IMS Enterprise 1.1 SCORM 1.2 Reviewer Comments IMS-MD and IMS-LD should be added. .LRN is currently the only LMS that implements the three levels of IMS-LD standard. More info is available in xowiki: http://openacs.org/xowiki/Educational_Standards . Discuss
Hardware/Software
Client Browser Required	Discuss
Database Requirements	The system supports Oracle. The system supports PostGreSQL. 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	Reviewer Comments GPL Discuss
Open Source	The software is distributed under one of the OSI-approved licenses. Discuss
Optional Extras	Discuss

Reference Citation: EduTools. (2010). CMS: Product Comparison System. Retrieved September 08, 2010 from http://www.edutools.org/compare.jsp?pj=4&i=562