Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: LAMS 2.4 coming up!

I've been meaning to do this announcement for such a long time!

As you might noticed, we've been working on this release quite hard in the past few months. We are almost done (less than 20 development tasks to go!).

So if everything goes alright, we should have LAMS 2.4 ready by the end of this month (March!).

Now, there's a ton of features in this release. However for the sake of summarising them, the following list compiles probably the most relevant. Each of these links shows a description or animation of the feature, so please have a look to see how they are implemented.

LAMS 2.4 Key Features list

For teachers

Conditional lesson release

When creating a lesson teachers can specify if another previous lesson must be completed before the lesson is available for students. Once the learners complete the pre-requisite lesson(s), then the lesson becomes available.

Scheduled and instant notifications

A very powerful new feature that enhance LAMS tracking and communication capabilities.

Date restrictions for lessons

Specify restrictions to finish lessons by certain deadlines.

Mobile devices support for learners

When a learner uses a mobile device (like iPhone, iPad, mobile phone) to access a lesson, LAMS automatically detects it and switches to a non-flash interface. Additionally for the most frequently used tools, it will display a mobile friendly interface.

Faster Gradebook excel exports

Now teachers can download gradebooks for an entire course or specifically for a subgroup.

Date restrictions on activities

For each activity teachers can specify a date for completion. Past this deadline, students cannot longer view or participate in the activity (although they can complete it).

Ratings for Q&A and Forum

Learners can now rate each other answers and postings.

Assessment now implements Question bank

A much needed feature that provides flexibility to create exams. Now teachers can export and import their questions into any assessment activity and specifically select which questions to be used.

Webcam profile picture upload

Directly from a webcam upload your profile picture.

Newer, faster online HTML Editor

A new and quicker version of Online HTML Editor with tons of improvements and easier to use.

For admins

New Moodle2 integration module

As Moodle2 has become stable, we have rewritten our integration to use all of the features of this new version of Moodle. Demo site available.

Overall server statistics

General and course specific statistics about a LAMS server.

Clone courses

Want to move all the lessons to a new semester course automatically? Just use this feature in the sysadmin menu and it makes it in just a few clicks.

New Tools

• IMS Common Cartridge / IMS Basic LTI
• Web conferencing using BigBlueButton
• Kaltura video integration
• Wookie widget engine
• Adobe Captivate and Articulate tool

Improvements

• Integration improvements (images, bulk user creation, etc)
• Improvements for faster forum, assessment and Q&A
• New optional signup module
• New fonts in online HTML editors
• New formulae editor
• Better timezone support

Technical improvement

• Newer application server JBoss 5
• New and faster clustering setups
• Fixed issues with UTF8 Characters
• Support for SMTP Authentication
• Improved LDAP support
• SAML2 authentication/integration support
• Upgrade testharness

And over 400 fixes and improvements, see LAMS 2.4 Release Notes for full details.

Looking forward to hear your comments.

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione