Dave,
In general, we do the "minimal" set of functionality for integrations as that allows people to at least have single sign on with LAMS. We've followed that path to get as many integrations done as we can given the development time we can allocate to the integrations. Anything beyond that depends on whether someone else can do the work on the integration side and/or can work with us to do it.
In the specific case of the learner status - we've started work on way for an external system to get this from LAMS. Not sure when it would be released. We have to keep taking that developer off the task to do other stuff! We are hoping that it won't be a huge task on the LAMS end - all going well days rather than weeks.
All you would get back is whether or not a student has completed the sequence. We are also trying to include a text message describing their current activity but we have to decide what is the current activity - if the user is in a Chat/Scribe session, within an optional activity, within a branch, do we say the user is in the branch, the optional activity or a Chat/Scribe session? Or do we say they are in all of them?
Then we have to get it into the integrations. That time varies depending on the integration itself. If the LMS had a gradebook then it would be the addition of one or two URL calls to LAMS to get the status data, unpack the XML and to call the LMS's API to update the gradebook. Not a huge amount of work if you know the LMS's API, but a right pain for us as every LMS is different. If the LMS doesn't have a gradebook then a new screen would need to be added into the LAMS module.
My guess is about a week of work on the LMS side, including trying to work out the LMS's API. For someone familiar with the LMS it might be much quicker. So once we have the support on the LAMS side, we will publish the details so that someone who is familiar with the LMS APIs could have a go at the LMS side.
And that is a guess. The integration work we have done so far has taught us that sometimes what seems simple requires jumping through a lot of hoops and what should take 2 days seems to take 2 weeks to work out "the <insert LMS name> way" of doing it.
Until then, you are stuck with having to start the LAMS monitoring client to check the learners' progress.
Does that help?
Fiona Malikoff
Posted by Fiona Malikoff
