Developer meeting October 2007 meeting minutes
From Dokeos
Dokeos meeting of October 16th, 2007 held at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium.
This was an international meeting about Dokeos 1.8 and the future of Dokeos, the way we organise ourselves and the architecture of Dokeos 2.0. A follow-up of the meeting on July 5th.
Contents |
People present
- Thomas De Praetere (TDP) - Dokeos company
- Patrick Roth (PR) - University of Geneva, Switzerland
- Michael Fiorenza (MF) - Erasmushogeschool Brussel, Belgium
- Roel Neefs (RN), Thijs Braem (TB) - Free University of Brussels, Belgium
- Jean-Marie Maes (JMM), Bart Mollet (BM), Stefaan Vanbillemont (SV)- Hogeschool Ghent, Belgium
- Liesbeth De Blaere (LDB), Olivier Sourie (OS) - Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen
- Frits Hoff (FH), Joost Geraets (JG) - Dokeos-Nederland.nl
- René Haentjens (RH) - University of Ghent, but not representing them.
During the introduction Bart Mollet explains that at the end of this year, he will leave Hogeschool Ghent and therefore will no longer work on Dokeos anymore from that point. He will be missed in the community for all his work he did on Dokeos.
Debriefing Dokeos 1.8 and current developments
Thomas starts with an update of the state of the Dokeos 1.8 development and how the authoring element has become a key factor for business choosing a learning environment. Thomas shows the state of art of the new authoring tools in Dokeos.
Patrick shows how he has been using Ajax lately in Dokeos to make it even more userfriendly, examples of usage are the course management part of Dokeos and the selection lists. It's also noted that even though this are nice additions for Dokeos, we should never assume the user has javascript turned on, and therefore would always need to have alternative ways to do things.
LCMS
Bart starts with explaining the current state of the LCMS branch, and now that it is decided that it will be the new big dokeos version, (version 2.0) we need to urgently look at what is still to be done and who is going to work on it. Major parts that are still on the todo list are:
- Learning path
- Exercises
- Migration scripts
- Roles and Rights Management
He then asks the attendees about available resources to work on the LCMS.
Roel: On one side we have the Portfolio, which we will continue to develop on top of the LCMS. Another colleague will join us shortly which we hope will also be able to work partly on Dokeos, but this remains to be seen.
Patrick: I will be able to do about 20% on Dokeos developments the next months, and about 10-20% next year. Topics that interested him are the login procedure, dropbox, documents, metadata. Jean-Marie replies that we shouldn't just remake the existing elements in the LCMS branch but now is also the time to rethink certain ideas. An example he explains is how for example the assignments tool, dropbox, student publication, exercices, peer assessment tools could for example be merged into one assessment tool? Thomas: We need to re-analyse Dokeos from the point of view of the use as well as from a pedagogical view.
Dokeos Company will have a chief software architect on the development, and will also take part in the re-analysing process. The learning path is one of the items they will develop.
Howest: will help with the analysing process, but doesn't have the manpower atm to do much development.
EhB: Their resources are also limited to one person doing everything related to Dokeos with not much time for development; and job students. Their focus will go to surveys? and helping on the migration scripts.
Hogent: Bart will be leaving at the end of the year, he will use that time left to do cleanups in the Dokeos code. Their main focus will be the migration scripts. They will also have job students working on the LCMS as before. Perhaps also some students on more specific projects like debugging and testing Dokeos. They also have currently students working on the import of learning objects in the LCMS and working on iconsets.
Frits Hoff: Just like the Dokeos company are they limited in manpower depending on client work. Finished work can go to the community. They're currently working on using Jpeg2000 technology and extended discussion boards in Dokeos. Another area of interest are the knowledge networks, connectivity with other installations. It's noted that the LCMS is a big step forward already in that direction. Metadata is ofcourse very important for this.
BM: We just saw some tasks being divided among the people here, but one item that is still left on the table and is quite important is the Roles and Rights system. The LCMS has some form of R&R already from the community release but this is only on the level of the applications, while the LCMS would also need a level of R&R on the repository. No decision was made about this.
Release target?
The current target for May 2008 doesn't seem reachable anymore with the current state of affairs. Thomas adds that there is also no emergency to release the new Dokeos. He will keep selling Dokeos 1.8 for at least another year for commercial reasons. A new target is set at June 2009 for Dokeos version 2.0, the LCMS. This will allow also for addition of more features and a longer testing period. The Interface as well as the usability will need to be looked at as well. Thomas notes that he had a report made about the usability of Dokeos. He will send it to the dev list.
To make it easier for everyone not working yet on the LCMS branch, Bart Mollet will give a session about it in november, he will post about it on the mailing list and will create a wiki page. The analysis meeting will take place the day after, to make travelling arrangements easier. 7 and 8 november seem to fit for most.
The planned discussion about the SVN is moved to the meeting in november.
E-Portfolio
Roel talks a bit about the history of the E-Portfolio developments at VUB and shows a demo of the current state as an application of the LCMS repository. Remarks are made that it's important that it will follow the discussion around standards for e-portfolios, although they are quite unclear atm. BM notes that the portfolio itself should be a learning object as well, not only the subpages of a portfolio. Roel will change this. The goal at this time is to have a testable version by january 2008. As it is first developed for doctoral students with extensions for these students, the priority is ofcourse to have those parts working.
As the general idea of the portfolio is to be as generic as possible the use of templates will certainly be wanted. As any learning object in Dokeos could have templates.
Thomas notes that also the help system in Dokeos needs to be revised. The little icon in the top right is overlooked, but big messages on screen are sometimes in the way, a general consensus is to make it a small icon that when you hoover over it will give the info is the way to go.
Community website
The previous plan of setting up a completely seperated community website is dropped as we feel we don't have the manpower at the moment to completely support this. Ideas are looked into on how to still make a part of the current Dokeos website the community place. Drupal is suggested by Bart to be a good candidate. Thomas will look into it.
Users Day 2008
The next Dokeos users day will be organised by Patrick in Geneva, the date is set for december 2008 to give enough time for planning. Both technological and pedagogical subjects will be placed on the agenda. There will be a call for papers at the start of next year for this. Roel suggests that it may be a good idea to combine this with a developers meeting if the developers stay for another day. Maybe we can also plan the release of 2.0 around this event?
Meeting minutes by Roel.
