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Communication Tools
Product Name	OLAT
Developer Name	OLAT
URL	http://www.olat.org
Review Date	September 30, 2008
Forums	OLAT Discussions
Reviewer	Email Review Staff
Discussion Forum	Students can receive posts by email as daily digests of subject lines or whole posts. Students can subscribe to forum RSS feeds. Discuss
Discussion Management	Instructors can allow students to create discussion groups. Discussions can be shared across courses, departments, or any institutional unit. 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. Reviewer Comments OLAT offers a WebDAV-access for all shared folders. This allows easy up- and download of files and file management via Windows or Mac Desktop or via Web-Tools like Dreamweaver etc. 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. Students can elect to forward their mail to an external address. Reviewer Comments The above features are done using the users mail address defined in their account. Discuss
Online Journal/Notes	Students can attach notes to any page. Reviewer Comments In OLAT notes are attached to courses. The user does have an overview of all notes online but at the moment there is no print feature available yet that allows to print all the notes at once. A blog for each user/student is currently in beta-modus and will be released in one of the next versions of OLAT. Discuss
Real-time Chat	The chat tool supports a limited number of simultaneous rooms. The chat tool supports unlimited simultaneous group discussions Students can create new rooms. The system creates archive logs for all chat rooms. Reviewer Comments OLAT uses the Jabber protocol for chat. It has a built-in webbased chat-client but of course any Jabber-aware client like iChat, PSI, Adium etc. can be used. Logging of chats can be done using these tools. In OLAT each user can have a one-to-one chat with any other online (and "visible") user. Furthermore each group and each course do have their own chatroom. Students can create new groups to create new chat rooms. Discuss
Whiteboard	Discuss
Productivity Tools
Bookmarks	Students can create bookmarks in a private folder. Reviewer Comments The students bookmarks are shown in the home portal as a separate portlet (or on a separate page). This portlet can be configure to show exactly the amount, selection and order of bookmarks desired. 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 Besides the RSS-interface OLAT also offers an iCal-connection for import/export of calendar data. This allows students to view their calendar event in their own calendar application (Entourage, Google Calendar, iCal etc.). This feature is currently in beta mode and will be published in the next release. Discuss
Searching Within Course	Students can search all course content. Students can search all discussion threads. 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. Students can download course content and discussion group content with a PDA. Reviewer Comments This applies to some course elements but not to all. For content creation we focus on using an open source XML framework called eLML (eLesson Markup Language). Content created with eLML does offer all the three above features within OLAT. Furthermore OLAT offers WebDAV support for easy access to files and folders and simple download of content. 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. Reviewer Comments Available in up to 15 languages. 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. Each group can be given group-specific assignments or activities. 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	Students can use their personal home page to selectively display their course work. Reviewer Comments A blog is currently available in beta-status and will be integrated into the next OLAT release. Discuss
Administration Tools
Authentication	Administrators can allow guest access to all courses. The system can authenticate against an external LDAP server. The system supports Shibboleth. The system supports the Central Authentication Service (CAS). 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. The software supports data interchange with student information systems through an event-driven API. Discuss
Hosted Services	The product provider offers a hosted solution. Hosting and support services from Commercial Affiliates. Reviewer Comments The University of Zurich offers hosting for Swiss Higher Education Institutions (Universities etc.). Frentix and Goodsolution offer hosting for customers throughout the world. BPS Systems GmbH offers hosting for German Higher Education Institutions (Universities etc.). There are other companies offering OLAT services throughout the world. Discuss
Course Delivery Tools
Test Types	Multiple choice Multiple answer Matching Fill-in the blank Short answer Survey questions Essay 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 The system supports proctored tests. The system supports Remote Quiz Protocol which allows questions to be rendered and scored externally to the system via standards-based web services. Discuss
Automated Testing Support	Instructors can create personal test banks. Instructors can create system wide test banks. Questions can be imported from external test banks that support QTI. The system provides test analysis data. Reviewer Comments Test banks in OLAT are created either internally within OLAT or externally using a tool called QANT (www.qant.uzh.ch). This tool was initiated and is fully supported by the University of Zurich and offers full integration into OLAT. To analyze test data OLAT offers both an Excel export and SPSS export of the test results. Discuss
Online Marking Tools	Instructors can choose to mark each student on all questions or to mark each question on all students. Instructors can choose to evaluate student responses anonymously. 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. Instructors can create a course grading scale that can employ either percents, letter grades, or pass/fail metrics. Discuss
Course Management	Instructors can selectively release assignments, assessments, and announcements based on specific start and stop dates. Instructors can release materials based on a single criteria (date, grade, etc.) or instructors can use Boolean expressions to identify multiple selective release criteria. Instructors can set up specific course content that is released on a specific date and must be completed by students before they continue with the course. Instructors can link discussions to specific dates or course events. Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials based on group membership. Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials based on previous course activity. Instructors can personalize access to specific course materials based on student performance. Reviewer Comments OLAT offers access-rules not only based on dates, group memberships or test results but also based on user attributes like organization membership, study level or field of study (if this user data is available to OLAT). Furthermore OLAT provides separate settings for visibility and access making it possible to have parts of courses totally hidden and parts of the course visible but not accessible (e.g. telling the student that this section is only available after passing a test or after a certain date). Last but not least OLAT offers these settings not only for the whole course (as most LMS do) but for every single building block of a course. Discuss
Student Tracking	Instructors can track the frequency and duration of student access to individual course components. Instructors can get reports showing the time and date and frequency students as an aggregated group accessed course content. Instructors can get reports showing the number of times, time, date, frequency and IP address of each student who accessed course content, discussion forums, course assessments, and assignments. Usage statistics can be aggregated across courses or across the institution. Reviewer Comments For privacy reasons (and due to Swiss law restrictions) the above data is only available anonymized. It is not possible to for instructors to control individual students. Discuss
Content Development Tools
Accessibility Compliance	The product provider self-reports that the software complies with Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act. The product provider self-reports that the software complies with the WAI WCAG 1.0 Level A guidelines. The product provider self-reports that the software complies with the WAI WCAG 1.0 AA guidelines. Reviewer Comments Depending on user's role (learner, author, and adminstrator) different levels of compliance are achieved. Several features are implemented to support authors complying with WCAG: Images that are inserted require alt-tags, no tables for layout purposes, fully XHTML based, access-keys to jump to different parts of the screen, so called Web2.a mode, which offers dedicated features for visually impaired users. Discuss
Content Sharing/Reuse	Instructors can share content with other instructors and students through a central learning objects repository. The repository can be system-wide or for individual organizational units. For any content in the repository, users can view reports displaying every course in the system that is currently using the selected item. Reviewer Comments For larger courses we use the open source XML-framework eLML (eLesson Markup Language) which is fully compatible with OLAT and other LMS. Discuss
Course Templates	The software provides support for template-based course creation. 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. Reviewer Comments OLAT offers demo courses that can be duplicated as templates. Existing courses can also be used as basis for a new course (e.g. used with courses thought in every semester or year). 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. Instructors can change the order and name of menu items for a course. Institutions can create their own look and feel templates across the entire system, including their own institutional logos, headers, and footers. Reviewer Comments The layout in OLAT is based on an open source CSS-Framework called YAML (www.yaml.de) and is fully customizable either for an individual course or for the whole OLAT server. 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. Instructors can reuse courses as templates for future lessons. Discuss
Instructional Standards Compliance	IMS Content Packaging 1.1.3 IMS Content Packaging 1.1.4 IMS QTI 1.2.1 SCORM 1.2 Reviewer Comments Both IMS QTI 2.0 and SCORM 2004 (not in the list above) are planned for future releases. Discuss
Hardware/Software
Client Browser Required	Reviewer Comments Due to the use of the YAML-CSS-Framework, the use of Ajax for modern browser, and Non-Ajax-mode for older browser, OLAT runs on practically all browsers. Discuss
Database Requirements	The system supports Oracle. The system supports MS SQL Server. The system supports MySQL. The system supports PostGreSQL. The application requires only one database and can coexist with tables from other applications. Discuss
UNIX Server	A Unix version is available. Discuss
Windows Server	A Windows version is available. Discuss
Company Details/Licensing
Company Profile	Reviewer Comments OLAT is beeing developed at the University of Zurich and within an active open source community. Discuss
Costs / Licensing	Reviewer Comments Open Source (Apache 2 License) and there for free for both commercial and non-commercial use. Discuss
Open Source	The software is distributed under one of the OSI-approved licenses. Discuss
Optional Extras	Reviewer Comments OLAT is available in 17 languages (German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Danish, Greek, Polish, Chinese, Lithuanian, Persian (Farsi), Portuguese, Russian and more). OLAT is Java based and uses Apache/Tomcat to be running. The web-framework behind OLAT has been pubslished as a self-standing open source Java framework unter the name "Brasato", which complies with the MVC-pattern (model-view-controller). Discuss

Reference Citation: EduTools. (2010). CMS: Product Comparison System. Retrieved September 08, 2010 from http://www.edutools.org/compare.jsp?pj=4&i=618