Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: LAMS-Moodle integration: navigation problems

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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> Running a LAMS sequence inside Moodle, one does not see a
> Moodle frame anywhere.

Well, my question is: do you have to?

If you have designed a sequence with a chain of learning activities that you want your students to follow, would you want your students to be able click on Moodle and leave the sequence right away?

Moreover, currently when students click on "Open LAMS Learner" LAMS popsup on a separate browser window. If they want to go back to Moodle, they easily can but closing the window.

You can embed Moodle activities in LAMS (see 3. Linking to a Moodle activity from within a LAMS sequence in LAMS& Moodle walkthru http://lamsfoundation.org/integration/moodle/walkthru.html).

The other way to do it though is using the LAMS Course format and you cab run LAMS sequence straight in the Moodle course page.

I'm due to create a LAMS Course Format animation... as soon as I get LAMS 1.0.2 out of the way, I'll be working on this. It should explain the benefits and how to use it effectively.

Hope that helps. Please post all your comments here so others can benefit from them as well.

Thank you,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Josep M. Fontana

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I think Ernie is right. It wouldn't make much sense to have Moodle bread crumbs or any other sort of Moodle internal navigation within the LAMS windows. However, it is also true that for some users (above all at the beginning), whether they are coming from a Moodle course or from a course in a different LMS, it might be easy to forget that they've come to the LAMS window after they clicked the given activity link within the course. Technically and conceptually the the two things are sufficiently distinguished and hence it is logical that they be on different windows and that they don't share navigation elements, but many novice users might be a little lost and might hesitate about what to do after the sequence in LAMS has finished.

I think it might be useful to add a little button that says 'Close the LAMS window' or more explicitly 'Close the LAMS windowand return to your course page'. This button could be placed only in the screen for the last activity in the sequence or in all windows since in LAMS you don't need to finish the whole sequence once you've started.

Josep M.

Posted by Josep M. Fontana

By: Roel Scheepens

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I like that suggestion very much, Josep. Having a 'return to main base' button would certainly help to avoid confusion.

Posted by Roel Scheepens

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hola Josep,

Yeah, I think we can do this. I'll get Dave to help us out on this one as he's our Flash guru. Maybe the "Exit" button could exit the sequence and close the browser window too (when LAMS is not running standalone). I'm sure we can put some text that explain to the learner that clicking on Exit will return back to Moodle.

Dave?

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Josep M. Fontana

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Yes, that's what I meant: when you click on 'Exit' or whatever the browser window closes. As I said, this would be useful not only for people who access from Moodle but from those who access from any of the other LMSs (Sakai, etc.) After you've been working with the LAMS window for a little while you can forget where it all started :-}

Josep M.

Posted by Josep M. Fontana

By: Dean Shankle

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I agree that this is a good idea. With several windows open working on different projects, it is sometimes easy to get lost, at least for me. :)

Posted by Dean Shankle

By: Dave Caygill

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Yep - it certainly is possible to close the browser window when the Learner clicks the [Exit] button. As you say its important to only close it if the Learner window has been launched to run a specific sequence, as opposed to open for the Learner to choose one or more sequences from the 'Available Sequences' panel. To accomplish this the behaviour of the [Exit] button will be to:

a) Close the window is a LessonID has been passed to the Learner's flash object

b) Just exit the sequence if the no Lesson ID is passed.

BUT!

What if the Learner has started the sequence, got confused and wants to exit and re-start? Then they can no longer use the exit button and then click the sequence title to resume. A minor point perhaps.

In order to flash to close the pop up window, the window must be opened by a JavaScript window.open(), not a html target="_blank" link. So I will have to check to see how it is done now. The JS method will also give us the advantage of removing the standards buttons and address bar which expose the potentially risky Refresh, Back, Forward nav buttons.

Thanks,

Dave

Posted by Dave Caygill