Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Plans for SCORM support

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Dave,

I think we have embedded the Moodle SCORM tool within LAMS. You can check it out in the Moodle-LAMS testing server. If you use the Moodle tool adapter, then you don't need to do the linking and all that.

As part of native SCORM support in LAMS, we are planning to add a SCORM tool. However, we haven't come across a good, robust SCORM player in Java and that is what has been slowing down the process.

We are currently working with La Salle University in Barcelona, as they have implemented a SCORM 2004 runtime engine that we can potentially use within LAMS. It's still early stages, but Jun-Dir is there (in Barcelona -lucky man) working on this.

I'll keep you informed.

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Dave Bauer

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Thanks! Embedding Moddle SCORM in LAMS works for us. How far away is that from release?

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Caroline Meeks

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Hi Ernie,

Any estimates on when in-LAMS support for SCORM will be done?

Thanks,
Caroline

Posted by Caroline Meeks

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Caroline, Dave,

Sorry for taking so long to reply. We are moving forward the release of LAMS v2.3 and that is keeping us very busy.

This is not release as an installer but you can get the code and build it. The code is here:

http://is.gd/qa3z

You would need to get this from CVS with the date for before March 25 so it would work with LAMS 2.2.

In the Moodle side, there are some slight modifications you need to do to Moodle core (see Modifications to Moodle):

http://is.gd/qa4H

The actual Moodle SCORM Tool is here:

http://is.gd/qa7f


This has been tested with Moodle 1.9.3

If you have any questions or get stuck, please let me know.

Thanks

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Dave Bauer

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Thanks, this is very helpful.

The next issue we have is reusing the LAMS sequence with embedded Moodle will need to be edited for each Moodle class.

That is, students within a class only have read access on that one class. If the LAMS sequence has links to a particular Moodle class, it will only work for that one class.

(Note, I haven't gotten the Moodle integration code actually working yet, so I might be missing something here.)

Is there any workaround or accomodation for this in the Moodle embedding or does it have to be customized for each Moodle class?

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Jun-Dir Liew

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If I've read this right, you're wondering whether a Moodle activity in a LAMS sequence has to be 're-inserted' by a teacher when it is used in a different Moodle course?

I think the answer is no. LAMS does a lot of duplication of the moodle activity - when you preview the sequence, when you create a lesson, when you import a sequence - each time, it creates a new instance of the moodle activity. I didn't write the LAMS-side code, but I'm pretty sure it takes into account the course id passed by Moodle when you tell it to 'add lesson'. So it creates a new instance of all the required Moodle activities in the sequence, in the course you're adding the lesson for.

Posted by Jun-Dir Liew

By: Dave Bauer

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You got it right. Thanks for your response, that is exactly what I needed to know. I'll try to test the development version of this soon.

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Dave,

I don't know if you have seen this but Jun-Dir has put instructions on how to add the Moodle tool adapters to LAMS and Moodle in this thread.

If you are about to do this, would it be possible for you to help us out to document the process? Perhaps write it on the wiki?

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Dave Bauer

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The design here, to add "is_lams" to the Moodle tables and to customize the scripts to hide "is_lams" specified items seems to need a little work.

We have seen this problem in our own custom installations. Sometimes you want to hide something in the display, but still allow students to access the content. Perhaps there is a way to work with Moodle to add this to the course_modules table as a generic flag to display or hide the item without disallowing access completley.

Otherwise, this looks very useful, and since we are already customizing moodle, we'll be testing it out for use by our clients.

Thanks!

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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I've been working lately on merging the changes we've done to Moodle 1.9.3 but now with Moodle 1.9.5.

As you say, the is_lams is critical so these instance of tool aren't show in the course page or in the index.php page for the mods. It works quite well though.

The only problem I forsee in the future is that evertime a new version of Moodle is release, the code for each mod would have to be merged. It's not difficult but tedious.

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Dave Bauer

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SO in this case it looks like working with Moodle to allow this support generically would be a good option. I don't know how well that will work, but I guess it is worth asking.

Posted by Dave Bauer

By: Dave Bauer

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Since the SCORM player runs in the browser, I'd think that Javascript would be a much better alternative. I have seen some other Open Source LMS that use javascript for this. You might want to look into that.

Posted by Dave Bauer