CMS meeting July 6th 2005 meeting minutes

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Meeting about Content Management Systems for Dokeos July 6th, 2005, Hogeschool Gent, Ghent, Belgium

Contents

Present

  • Artevelde Hogeschool: Frederik Martens
  • Erasmushogeschool Brussel: Roel Neefs, Kris Steenhaut
  • Hogeschool Gent: Jean-Marie Maes, Bart Mollet, Michel Panckoucke, Stefaan Vanbillemont
  • Vrije Universiteit Brussel: Roan Embrechts, Stijn Van Achter

Meeting introduction

The goal of the meeting was to bring together the parties currently interested in developing a CMS that can be tightly integrated with Dokeos. The goal of such a CMS is to improve the support for good education in Dokeos, to enable reuse of materials. These changes also give us a good start for the long-term to look and and possibly redefine the structure of Dokeos.

Overview of your documents in the CMS
Overview of your documents in the CMS
In the document module of a course, a link to add a document points to the CMS
In the document module of a course, a link to add a document points to the CMS
For every learning object in the CMS, metadata can be defined
For every learning object in the CMS, metadata can be defined
A workflow illustrating the connection between the CMS and Dokeos
A workflow illustrating the connection between the CMS and Dokeos
Database overview
Database overview

Dokeos CMS demo

There is already a CMS developed - but not finished - at Hogeschool Ghent. It is a CMS that can be used standalone but is developed to be connected to Dokeos. It does require some changes in the Dokeos itself, but the bulk of the code is developed as separate entity. This CMS was demonstrated and discussed, and it seems to be a very good basis for further developments.

Code, presentations, a (dutch) report,...

Current features

  • The CMS code is currently fit for connecting with Dokeos 1.55. It can already manage documents and links as learning objects.
  • How does one typically use it? From the normal Dokeos documents tool, the upload file function is replaced with an "Add file" link that connects to the CMS. Currently it does require one extra screen, but this can be eliminated. More information can be found in this workflow (dutch)
  • You can edit the metadata of a learning object. This follows the IEEE LOM norm. There is a simple basic metadata screen and an "advanced" link that displays more fields.
  • The CMS stores the learning objects per user, as opposed to the way Dokeos works now, where all storage is per course. For the documents storage you can define your own hierarchy (folders) in the CMS, this works similar to the Dokeos documents tool.
  • The access to every learning object can be defined in terms of groups, you can set per group separately the reading, using and writing rights. The search right is automatically true for all objects, meaning you can search for all objects and see their metadata but that doesn't necessarily mean you can read (write, use) the contents itself.
  • Search through the learning objects using the metadata descriptions. In the future a full-text search is also possible.
  • Get an overview: see where a learning object is used by whom
  • Reuse content - you can reuse content from othe content creators if they have given you (a group you belong to) the rights

Technical issues

  • Use of Pear-DataObject which also uses a database abstraction layer, so next to MySQL, other DB-servers are possible

More possible features

  • Licenses: the ability to define which sort of license an object has: Creative commons, GNU FDL, normal copyright...
  • Student-orientation: since students can also be content creators (in normal courses and course groups, in communities, in a portfolio) they need the same functionality as teachers. This means the CMS need not make that student/teacher distinction: it deals simply with users and user groups.
  • Saving searches: the ability to save searches that you often perform saves time.
  • Portfolio built on top of the CMS
  • Thinking through the difference between author and ownership
  • A CMS more easily allows communities, with a more active role for students

Metadata

It is our goal to make all content searchable to promote collaboration between owners of learning objects. To achieve this, metadata is very important. In the current implementation metadata has to be added to every single learning object. Not many object-owners will do this for every single object in their repository. So we're thinking about a way to fill in some (or most) of the metadata automatically. This information can come from:

  • available information about the course where the user wants to add a learning object (this information is available in many institutions)
  • the users profile (a biology teacher will create biology related learning objects most of the time)
  • ...

Further organisation and development

  • We form a CMS workgroup that is open for all interested parties, these can all contribute knowledge and/or development resources
  • Our short-term goal is to have a first usable CMS that will be in production use about one year from now.
  • Our long-term goal is to redefine the structure of Dokeos interms of learning objects, to perhaps change the philosophy of several tools; a CMS gives us the ability to do so in a clean, structural way.

Next meeting: on September 1st at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Campus Etterbeek, E307 (the OSC rooms). Staring at 1.30 PM. Everyone is welcome... (see the forum topic about the second meeting)

See also

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