Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: moodle/lams presentation on moodle congress in Vienna and some questions

By: James Dalziel

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Hi Ralf,

Many thanks for presenting on Moodle and LAMS! I'll leave it to Ernie to comment on the other questions, let me just touch on one - how to integrate Moodle (or any other LMS's) tools into LAMS.

The simple way is to use a URL link from LAMS to a tool you've already set up in Moodle - we showed this in the original screenshots for the integration - see especially figure 13 from http://lamsfoundation.org/integration/moodle/walkthru.html

The more complex question is direct tool integration, so that, say, you could author a sequence within LAMS authoring, then run the sequence using Moodle tools. This turns out to be much more difficult than it might sound. I won't rehash all the issues here, but for a discussion of them (together with links to other past discussions of this issue), see my postings to a commentary on Sakai at Michael Feldstein's blog - my posts are 14 and 18. http://mfeldstein.com/index.php/weblog/comments/262/

The quick answer is that although this may be possible in the future, it will take *alot* of work. The two key things needed for this are (1) a tools contract/API that specifies how a (Moodle) tool communicates with the (LAMS) sequencing core; and (2) all tools need to be "sequencing enabled" (or to use terms from another context, all tools need to be "Learning Design aware").

Posted by James Dalziel

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Ralf

Once again, thank you very much for sharing the integration at the Vienna congress. Really cool.

> There were some questions that I couldn't answer.
> One guy asked that he thought, you planned also to integrate
> moodle functions of the activities in lams.
> Are there such plans?

As James mentioned previously, it's possible but it requires some changes in the Moodle activities to fit the LAMS tools API. For instance, in LAMS a teacher can go to Monitor and view the progress of a particular student (see Activitiy Tab in Monitor). A teacher then can click on the activity for that student and view what that individual student has answered or viewed. Although Moodle has similar functionality, this interface (for each Moodle activity) would have to be create it to accommodate for this feature. This is only one example of modifications that will be required on Moodle tools to fit LAMS Tools API, but there are plenty others (Define in Monitor, groupings, etc).

However, it's not impossible

> What are the plans about the further development of
> activities in lams?

Indeed. You can have a look at LAMS in the Future presentation

> An other point was the technical aspects of the integration.
> Is LAMS a separate server and how is it connected to the moodle system?

Good question.

LAMS and Moodle are two separate applications.

Having said that though, it doesn't mean that you need two separate hardware servers to run them. As a matter of fact you can have them both in the same server even sharing the same web server (and sharing the same port).

In terms of how these applications are "connected", we use web services to exchange information between the two. In the LAMS&Moodle integration page, there's a document that explains in details the technical aspects of the data exchange between the two.

> Is there a solution with a one server installation including moodle and lams?

Yes, you can have them both running in the same physical server no problems. We will share a document on how to set this up shortly as we've done it before. Additionally, Clive Gould in the Moodle community also did it even before us and documented a bit the process.

> Is it possible to add lams to an existing moodle installation?

Yes, just like you would add a new tool in Moodle, you add LAMS. In all fairness, LAMS has a new Moodle PHP tool which acts as a connector to an external LAMS server.

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> How is the lams course content included to the backup/restore concept of moodle?

At the moment, it is not at all. If you export a course that contains a LAMS sequence as an activity, neither the LAMS sequence or the contributions to that LAMS sequence from the learners will be export as part of the course backup.

In LAMS 1.1, it will be possible to export a sequence with all its content

Hope that helps, and again, thanks a lot for your presentation and questions

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Ralf Hilgenstock

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Thanks for your answers.

moodle & LAMS are a very complex system together. Yesterday I had a discussion with the conclusion, that most of our schools haven't the ressources to install and administrate moodle systems. If I see the moodle & LAMS system toghether I see lots of pedagogical solutions and ideas. But in reality we need service provider for the schools.

I will support the moodle & LAMS integration with my ressources. We can publish and present on differentevent. But I will do in the moment when we are working on the german translation. I hope you give me some informations if we can start with translations. Perhaps you can sent me first the Wink-files. I can make some first steps.

Ralf

Posted by Ralf Hilgenstock

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Ralf,

Yes, services for schools with limited resources are critical from Moodle and LAMS perspective as well.

I'll send you the Wink files so you can translate them into German. That will be really cool. Would you be able to send me the German flash movie? I would like to add it to our Moodle integration site as well.

LAMS in multiple languages will be available in the 1.1 version. The current 1.0.x version is not capable to support internationalization Yeah, a pity.

Nevertheless, as soon as we have an alpha version of 1.1, we will start with the translation effort, and you are at the top of the list for German

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione