OLAT Newsletter

Dear Community,

Yet another 6.x release and we would like to use this as an occasion to publish our OLAT newsletter no. 2! Actually this is not just a maintenance release but it also will be the last 6.x release. Since we plan to make some major changes we have decided to pass on to 7.x for the next summer release!

But first things first! Read more about the latest Release 6.3.x providing some fine and cool new features.

Have fun and enjoy the newsletter.

Kind regards
Your OLAT Team

#new OLAT release

On the 18th of March the new version 6.3.0 was released. Some major enhancements were included and many new features added.

There are four new learning resources: podcast, blog, topic assignment, and calendar. Furthermore the notifications section has been revised essentially.

A podcast enables users to upload audio or video files that can then be made available in OLAT. Podcasts can either be heard or viewed directly in OLAT or subscribed via portals such as iTunes, to copy single podcast episodes to mobile devices. Students can rate and comment podcast episodes in a simple way.

In a blog, specialised or personal information can be easily published and updated. Blogs are often used as a kind of online diary or journal. Students can rate and comment blog entries in a simple way.

With the ‘Topic assignment’, lecturers can supply topics (e.g. for a master thesis or term papers). Course authors can appoint topic managers who can then create topics of their own. Depending on the configuration, students can select one or more topics. Lecturers are able to review the applications received and accept one or more students for handling a topic.

The learning resource "Calendar" embeds a course calendar in the course structure and thereby offers an alternative view of the course calendar (previously accessible via the box "General"). A course author can specify a date for the calendar view, for instance the current week of the semester, and enter weekly appointments. In the tab "Calendar Configuration" you can specify which date should be displayed whenever the course calendar is called up from the course structure. In addition you can set the course calendar to automatically appear in the personal calendar of your students. You can also create links to other course modules. When you configure a calendar to display a certain semester week and add links to learning resources, this calendar will serve as an overview page of appointments and tasks of that week.

In "Notifications" of your Home you can now view any changes of your subscribed resources in form of a list or RSS feed to manage your subscriptions. A brand new feature is the direct link from any notification to its resource. By default you'll see all notifications of the past 24 hours. But you can also call up changes from a specific date on. The RSS feed displays notifications of the last 30 days. Via the settings within your Home you can configure how often you want to receive emails containing new notifications.

We've done a complete rebuild of the logging infrastructure; and it comes with a new graphical score statistics tool. Read more about it at the #How to... of this newsletter.

Some more features in a nutshell:

• A ‘peak view’ of a course is now possible in one or two tables
• First steps towards refactoring the Group Management
• For a better evaluation of the forum the number of written characters and words are issued per person
• Enhanced full-text search: the full-text search is now also available within the following elements: course, forum, wiki, folders, CP, and context-sensitive help. Search results are shown in an overlay.

The most important note to developers is: Maven is now the build tool used by OLAT and we encourage you to become familar with it. In addition OLAT uses its own Maven plugin (introduced to migrate specific OLAT Ant targets). Furthermore the Maven build process results in a significant smaller file. Have a look at the complete Logging & Statistics Documentation within the documentation section!

#new OLAT member

The Federal College for Security Studies (Bundesakademie für Sicherheitspolitik, BAKS) is Germany's top interagency training facility in the field of security policy and offers as flagship program in its training catalogue a six-month seminar on security policy once a year. Since January 11, 2010 its new study platform is based on OLAT.

The Greek company TechNet has started the portal TechNet LMS, which is based on OLAT. TechNet offers commercial support of OLAT and assists in developing and translating it further.

#news from the community

Easily convert content or tests from Blackboard to OLAT.

For the simplification of content and test-migration from the Blackboard LMS to OLAT, the German company BPS GmbH offers two conversion tools. One of these tools converts data stored in the Blackboard HTML files (including text, pictures, etc.) into an IMS-CP which then can be imported directly into OLAT. The other tool, called ELQUES, provides an additional import function for Blackboard tests or test questions. Subsequently these tests can be converted to QTI 1.2 (specific to OLAT) or to its latest version QTI 2.1.

#OLAT@events: Recent and Upcoming

LearnTec	02 – 04 Feb 2010	Karlsruhe, Germany
Open Expo	24 – 25 Mar 2010	Bern, Switzerland
Professional Learning	13 – 14 Apr 2010	Zurich, Switzerland
OLAT Core Community Meeting	28 – 30 Apr 2010	Zurich, Switzerland
Learning Impact 2010	17 – 30 May 2010	Long Beach, California, USA
IADIS International Conference e-Learning 2010	26 – 29 Jul 2010	Freiburg, Germany
OLAT User Day	Aug, Sep or Oct 2010	tbd

And some news on events in a short outline:

• The Open Expo has been canceled for Winterthur from 2010 on. So we will participate in Bern from now on (as we already did last March).
• There is a new Open Source event in Switzerland called FrosCamp from 17-18 September at the ETH Zurich (this is not an official follow-up of the OpenExpo in Winterthur). Feel free to participate or just to meet us or all other Open Source projects!

#how to...

This time we would like to point out a new documentation for a major revised tool and a hidden info on olat.org.

...work with the Logging and Statistics Documentation Tool

The user activity logging infrastructure changed substantially in 6.3. Prior to this version user activity events used to be written into a file in addition to each course. From 6.3 on all such user activity events are written into the database to allow easier processing later on. Depending on the traffic of the particular OLAT instance, this database can grow rather large. It is strongly recommended to monitor this table and keep its size reasonably down.

This new logging infrastructure enables you to process any logging information into meaningful statistics thus providing better e-learning controlling from both points of view, the author’s and the administrator's.

Have a look at the complete Logging & Statistics Documentation within the documentation section!

...understand the relations of tables in the database

Have a look at the diagram!

#imprint

OLAT Team
University of Zurich
http://www.olat.org
info@olat.org

If you like to unsubscribe from this newsletter, send a message to newsletter@olat.org

If this newsletter was forwarded to you and you want to subscribe to it, send a message to newsletter@olat.org

Dear Community,

OLAT grows continuously and so does the number of users and developers. This results in interesting news and information we want to share with you. So, here it is: the first OLAT newsletter.

There was one major event this year: the 10th anniversary of OLAT! And we celebrated this appropriately while and with the first OLAT User Day. But read more below...

Have fun and enjoy the newsletter.

Kind regards
Your OLAT Team

#new OLAT release

On 29th of September the new version 6.2.0 was released. Some major enhancements were included and many new features have been added.

The calendar now provides an import/export function: Import your calendar from applications like Thunderbird via an ical link into OLAT (read more in Wikipedia on icalendar). Same with exporting your OLAT calendar into an external application. Hint: Usually you cannot edit an imported calendar in the external application or OLAT lacking writing access.

You can now create IMS-Content-Packages (CP learning content) directly in OLAT. The new CP editor allows creating, copying and importing of single HTML pages. You also can export your CP for the use in other applications: Make sure you’re in the “Detailed view” of the learning resource. On the right side in the box you have the link "export content" to start the download of your CP as a zip-file.

We upgraded the integrated WYSIWG editor. The special feature that comes with this is a formula editor. No more inserting mathematical formulas as pictures is needed, just edit it right away with the "jsmath" editor. The forum obtained another upgrade in formatting: Now you can use special characters. All in all the editing is much more comfortable.

And some more in a short outline:

• the export function for group lists is extended: you can now choose different Excel formats in a dropdown
• in the glossary synonyms can be defined, text formatted and you can call flexions
• notifications of new events in a subscribed calendar are now possible
• a new course function "close" to mark a course as finished but still keep the content accessible
• e-mail workflows are enhanced
• some improvements in the forum: e.g. reply with quotation and an extended sorting/viewing of threads
• enhanced editing of the user’s profile and visiting card
• learning resources (test, wiki, etc.) can now be created from within the course editor

#new OLAT member

Since February 2009 OLAT has got a new member in its community: the University of Hamburg.

With about 38.000 students, the University of Hamburg (UHH) is one of the top 5 of Germany's largest universities. Even though its roots date back to the 17th century, it was officially founded in spring 1919. As an e-learning-strategy was formulated at the UHH in 2006 a new portal has been established under the name „MICHeL - Media | Internet | Community | Hamburger eLearning”. The decision for OLAT fell last February and it is already productively in use. From April 2010 on it will be the main LMS at the UHH.

www.michel.uni-hamburg.de

#news from the community

The University of Macerata (Italy) developed a platform-independent tracking and monitoring toolkit.

E-tutors have to spend much effort to deal with issues concerning students who are stuck somewhere in their e-learning environment. To adjust a pedagogical model, it is up to the e-Tutor to collect and remember all these issues. To facilitate this process the University of Macerata (Italy) developed a platform-independent tracking and monitoring toolkit. The idea is to enhance already available Open Source LMS to "support e-Tutors recognizing and dealing with pedagogical patterns stored in a decentralized knowledge base". The toolkit is not a feature to be patched to OLAT, but as a matter of fact OLAT 6.1 is the first LMS for which an interface is provided.

#OLAT@events: recent and upcoming

21st Century Learning	17. – 19. Sept 2009	Hong Kong
Open Expo	22. – 23. Sept 2009	Winterthur
Technology Enhanced Learning Conference 2009	06. – 08. Oct 2009	Taipei
ICEIT 2009 conference	20. – 22. Oct 2009	San Francisco
E-Learn 09 by AACE	26. – 30. Oct 2009	Vancouver
DevLearn Expo by the eLearning Guild	10. – 13. Nov 2009	San Jose
Online Educa	02. – 04. Dec 2009	Berlin
Learn Tec	02. – 04. Feb 2010	Karlsruhe

Read a short report on the OLAT User Day:

The first OLAT User Day was held on September 11th at the University of Zurich. So far we can say: it was a success! The OLAT User Day gave the participants the opportunity to meet up others from the OLAT community. Just to come together, share ideas and to discuss matters of common interests. Main issues were the work with and on OLAT: Developers, authors and users were swapping ideas on workflows, problems, news and particularities the whole day through. The feedback was throughout positive.

The User Day was organized as an "unconference”. This yet young concept - sessions can be proposed and are determined by vote - did work very well. Besides previously proposed sessions, last-minute contributions were considered. All sessions and minutes, as well as further information about the OLAT User Day can be accessed online: http://wiki.olat.uzh.ch/xwiki/bin/view/Main/

At the end of the first OLAT User Day we officially celebrated the 10th anniversary of OLAT.

#how to...

This is somehow funny: often forum threads start with "I really used the search function, but couldn’t find anything regarding my issue..." And if not, most first answers point out to the search function.

There is a well detailed documentation on how to install and customize OLAT fitting your needs. Here, we would just like to refer to some basic, but important things!

...change the title in the address bar of OLAT

The title in the browser window is combined by "page.appname - page.title - browser name". First two can be adapted easily via OLAT without editing the code.

• Go to the tab 'Administration' and click the 'Language adaption tool'.
• Use the search for the term "page.appname" (check 'Translation key', 'Language' and 'All packages')
• As a single result the package "org.olat.core" is shown. Just click 'Adapt'
• By default it is set to "OLAT".
• You can now insert your own title within the field “Adaptions”
• Save it and you’re done

It is the same with "page.title" that is set by default to "Online Learning And Training".

Don't forget to make the changes in each language!

There are some other keys that might be of interest to you, too:

• login.header
  title on top of the login page
  
  
• welcome.header
  title on top of the welcome page after logging in
  
  
• guestwelcome.header
  title on top of the welcome page after logging in as a guest
  
  
• guestwelcome.message
  lines right under the guestwelcome.header
  
  

...adapt the design

It is possible to adapt the layout of a course according to your own design needs by overwriting the OLAT layout, which is loaded by default. You only have to create your own CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) file, upload it to the storage folder and select it via "Modify properties" (in the box on the right in the detailed view).

As a matter of fact, there are many OLAT CSS selectors, classes and id's defined. Below we refer to a few of them, so you can see what’s possible.

• body element
  With the body you can define e.g. the font, its size and the color:
  h3 { font-size: 200% }
  
  
• headings
  There are different headings in use structuring the content. For example the heading of a single page is defined as 'h3'. Would you like to increase its size?
  body { color: red; font-family: Arial; font-size: 77.00%; }
  
  
• background-Image(s) and -color
  On the left the course menu, in the middle the content area and on the right the tool boxes: these three are arranged like columns (left to right). You have to set the background-color to transparent:
  #b_col1 { background-color: transparent }
#b_col3 { background-color: transparent }
#b_col2 { background-color: transparent }
  
  Around these three there is a box where you can place a background-image:
  #b_main { background-image: url(path and filename) }
  
  Or just give all of them a unique background color:
  #b_main { background-color: dedicated color}
  
  You can also give each column a different color or background-image.
  
  
• page width
  You can limit the size of the whole page width (within the browser window):
  #b_page_margins { min-width: 540px; max-width: 80em; margin: 0 auto; }
  
  
• Hide Header/Footer
  You can hide the OLAT Header and/or Footer via:
  #b_header { display:none; }
#b_footer { display:none; }

#imprint

OLAT Team
University of Zurich
http://www.olat.org
info@olat.org

If you like to unsubscribe from this newsletter, send a message to newsletter@olat.org

If this newsletter was forwarded to you and you want to subscribe to it, send a message to newsletter@olat.org