Forum Higher Ed & Training Forum: Re: Underpinning Discussion?

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Richard, Michael,

One of the features we've been discussing for a while now is the ability to have non-sequenced activities within a sequence.

The idea is to have one or a set of activities that students can always do or go into at any time while they are running a sequence.

We have sketched the author and learner's interfaces to demonstrate how we are thinking in this regard.

In the links, you'll see that the author interface shows a set of sequences activities as well as three non-sequenced activities. Then, when a sequence is assigned to a class, students will see the activities within a sequence as well as the "Optional Activities" (which might not be the final name as it contradicts the existing Optional Activities), which they can jump into at anytime regardless of what part of the sequence they are in.

So in this case, you can have a Forum as you guys need, but also any other activity or set of activities as well.

Now in LAMS 1.0.x, you still can have Forums -as part of a sequence- where students can always go back to and keep posting/reading messages regardless of whether they have finished the activity. While editing the content for a Forum in Authoring, you will see the Option "Lock when finished". If this option is not checked, then LAMS will allow students to come back to this Forum and keep posting messages, even if the student has completed the whole sequence.

Note that the difference with 1.0.x is that the Forum is part of the sequence. Whereas the previous approach the activities are more support or reference activities that aren't sequenced.

Any ideas and or comments are very welcome.

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione