OLAT News-Archive
OLAT release 6.1 planned for March 10th
(13.02.2009) We have since two weeks a beta version of OLAT 6.1 - the first fully scalable OLAT version - running successfully on three nodes at the University of Zurich. A few more bug fixes and then we are ready to release it to the public. The release is planned for Tuesday, March 10th 2009. We will be in the OLAT and the facebook chat the whole morning of the release, so join in Facebook if you have questions, comments, feedback etc.
Looking back at the Learntec 2009
(12.02.2009) At this year's Learntec OLAT had again its own booth conveniently situated next to the fair hall entry. And as we don't change
winning teams the University of Zurich was again supported by Frentix GmbH (Christian Franck) and by the Bildungsportal Sachsen
(Frank Richter). This time we put some extra effort in furnishing our booth: new posters were designed and lots of OLAT cubes
made of cardboard folded. Check out the pictures to see them hanging from the booth ceiling.
Many interested fair attendees paid a visit to our booth for a shorter or longer OLAT presentation. We got lots of positive
feedback concerning the smooth OLAT 6 layout, the bunch of functionalities and of course the Swiss chocolate we use to offer.
Furthermore, Christian Franck was interviewed for a video podcast which will hopefully be broadcasted soon.
More Photos can be found on our Facebook group page. You can also find a podcast interview with Christian Franck from frentix on YouTube.
What users say about OLAT
(11.02.2009) People all over the world are working with OLAT. We wanted to know what users think about OLAT and started a page What Users say about OLAT. If you like to contribute with a statement, send us a photo, your name and job description plus a comment about OLAT.
OLAT 6.1 successfully released at the University of Zurich
(02.02.2009) We have been working on a scalable OLAT-solution since nearly two years now. Scalable means that you can install OLAT not only on one server but on many servers and thus serve a lot more concurrent users than with only one installation. This morning we released OLAT 6.1 at the University of Zurich and the new installation consisting of three OLAT server-nodes is successfully running since five hours now. We will have to monitor it during the next days and then decide when to do a public OLAT 6.1 release. Furthermore we are still waiting for some translations to be done before we can release OLAT 6.1 for our community. So it might take another three or four weeks. We'll keep you updated!
Google Summer of Code 2009 announced: OLAT will participate
(21.01.2009) Google announced their Google Summer of Code 2009 project and it is most probable that the University of Zurich will be a
mentoring organization again. As in 2008 we will participate again with our two eLearning open source projects OLAT and 
eLML. Interested students from all over the world will be able to apply for a grant for one of our projects. Please have a look
at our GSoC project list and start contacting us if you are interested in particpating. The starting date for submitting applications has not yet
been published but it will proably be in late March 2009. More information here...
Join our OLAT social network groups at Facebook, LinkedIn or Xing
(23.12.2008) Consider it a Christmas gift: "OLAT team goes social networks" :-) You will find more information here.
New OLAT broschure, flyer, poster, logo etc. available
(17.12.2008) Check out our brand new broschure (A5, 4 pages), the flyer (A6) and poster (A0) that we created for the Online Educa conference. A fresher OLAT screen design also required new print products. Then we also uploaded our new 3D logo in various sizes. Please have a look at the material section and contact us if you need the original Adobe InDesign or Illustrator files.
OLAT@Online Educa Berlin 2008
(09.12.2008) OLAT was again present at this years Online Educa 2008 in Berlin. Our team consisted of members of the University of Zurich (Sandra Roth, Lavinia Dumitrescu and Joël Fisler), Frentix
GmbH (Christian Franck) and from the Bildungsportal Sachsen (Frank Richter). We had a lot of interested e-learning experts
passing by and getting impressed when we gave them a short OLAT-demonstration. "This looks a lot cleaner than the cluttered
Moodle-workspace" was something we heard quite often :-) Furthermore we had someone from the Educa-staff passing at our stand
and interviewing Joël Fisler about OLAT and eLML. You can find this interview on the Online Educa Podcast page. In the last session of the conference Andreas Wittke from Oncampus and Joël Fisler (University of Zurich) were holding a presentation about "Mega Content Transformation with Open Source Educational Content Project eLML (eLesson Markup Language)". Surprisingly there were still over 30 participants attending this session, which is not bad for being the last presentation
at nearly 6pm on Friday afternoon. For more pictures you can visit our new Facebook group OLAT. If you missed the Online Educa you can visit us at our next event, the Learntec in Karlsruhe starting on February 3rd 2009.
Yet another release today: OLAT 6.0.7 released!
(04.12.2008) We had to release OLAT release 6.0.7 today because there were some bugs in the chat and notification system we needed to fix! But there are more bug fixes and further improvements included into this new OLAT release. For a full list of bug fixes and improvements check the release notes. Continue to download section...
OLAT 6.0.6 released!
(20.11.2008) Today OLAT release 6.0.6 (including unplublished 6.0.5 release) was published. The new release contains improvements of the HTML editor, SCORM and IMS CP improvements, support for Java 1.5 and a lot of bug fixes! For a full list of bug fixes and improvements check the release notes. Continue to download section...
OLAT team members participated at Google summit
(05.11.2008) Guido Schnider and Joël Fisler participated at the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) Mentor Summit at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California. The summit took place Saturday and Sunday, 25./26. October 2008, and was held in the spirit of an unconference. It was very interesting to particpate at various spontaneously organized workshops and to talk to and meet some of the 200 mentors from over 150 open source projects that participated at this years GSoC. For pictures check out the Mentor Summit 2008 photos at Flickr and for more information about GSoC 2008 and the upcoming GSoC 2009 visit OLAT GSoC page.
OLAT @ Ohloh.net
(04.11.2008) We added OLAT to the open source network Ohloh.net. So please visit our OLAT@Ohloh.net page and add yourself as an OLAT user (we want to see that "I am using OLAT"-list growing fast!), leave a comment, add yourself to the development team etc. Become active and make us proud :-) Furthermore we added some Ohloh-Widgets throught our website (e.g on the download or on the development page).
OLAT 6.0.5 cancelled, waiting for 6.0.6
(03.11.2008) Due to various reasons the public release of OLAT 6.0.5 (currently only running at UZH) has not been published yet. Since we planned a 6.0.6 for November 18th we will cancel the public release 6.0.5 and you have to wait for 6.0.6. Sorry...
OLAT wins the Swiss(ness) Open Source Award 2008!
(29.09.2008)
At last weeks Open Expo in Winterthur OLAT received the Swiss Open Source Award 2008 in the category "Swissness". According to the jury members OLAT
is one the biggest Swiss E-Learning projects. We are very happy to have received this open source award and that the jury
recognized our nearly 10 years of hard work. The prize was a golden keyboard together with CHF 1600.-. Check the Swiss Open Source Award Website for more information or read the article published in the PCTipp or Linux Magazine.
Jobs available at OLAT (University of Zurich)
(16.10.2008) We are currently looking for a Java developer and an E-Learning specialist. Please check the "Jobs@OLAT" box on the right side for more information.
Video-Streams for GSoC Closing Event available
(10.09.2008)
The Google Summer of Code Closing Event took place on September 4th at the University of Zurich. All students (or their mentors)
presented their project. We would like to thank everyone for the nice and successful closing event. A reminder: most presentations
are in German. You can find the video of the presentations and photos of the social event that followed on the OLAT GSoC page.
So what has been accomplished in GSoC 2008? OLAT 6.1.x release will contain the results of the Calendar project (Udit Sajjanhar)
and also the LDAP end result (Maurus Rohrer). Also ready for publication are the two eLML projects "Template Builder" and
"DocBook Converter". They will be published in late September 2008. Not yet ready for production are Blog (Thomas Bernhart),
CP Editor (Sergio Trentini), Tagging (Marcel Karras), and Clipboard (Mayank Jain). They are very valuable prototypes enhancing
the OLAT project and probably ready for release 6.2.
OLAT 6.0.4 released!
(12.09.2008) The OLAT team has released OLAT 6.0.4 today. The release 6.0.4 contains as usual many bug fixes. But we also implemented some improvements: Better print support, optimized calendar portlet and some security issues were fixed. Continue to download section...
OLAT 6.0.3 released!
(28.08.2008) The OLAT team has released OLAT 6.0.3 today. This release includes many bug fixes for OLAT 6.0 and the final layout (new icon set etc.) and the updated user manual in four languages. Have a look at the list of chances in the OLAT 6.0.3 release notes. Continue to download section...
Google Summer of Code Closing Event
(27.08.2008) As most of you probably know the OLAT project participated as a mentoring organization at the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) project. GSoC will officially end on September 1st and we will have a public closing event on Thursday, September 4th 2008 from 4 to 6pm (Swiss time). All students will present their projects and talk about their experiences with GSoC and the OLAT mentors. The presentation will be held at the Irchel Campus of the University of Zurich in room Y27-H35/36Y35-F51 (new location!!!) and will be available as videostream afterwards. The GSoC Closing Event is a public event open to everyone (E-Learning staff, students interested in GSoC 2009 etc.) and will be followed by a social event - Barbecue and beer - in the Irchelpark afterwards. Please download the PDF file for more information.
OLAT 6 released today!
(05.06.2008) The OLAT team has released OLAT 6.0 today. This is a major release including new functionality as well as bug fixes. The most important new features of the 6.0 release are listed below. For a full list of changes please refer to the OLAT 6.0 release notes. Many thanks to the OLAT community that helped finding bugs, which helped make this release more stable. The community also did a great job in updating several language translations. Continue to download section...
- Portlets on HOME are configurable: decide how many entries will be displayed, and in which order.
- Layout updated including enlarged, new icon set.
- CSS framework YAML: increased robustness and browser-compatibility of entire layout.
- Further accessibility improvements: so called Web2.a mode (beta) which allows visually impaired users to swiftly detect parts of the screen that have been changed after the last click.
- Various chat improvements: e.g. more than one chat conversation possible, chat window remains while browsing through OLAT.
- OLAT output complies with XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
- New wizard component, used e.g. in enhanced course publish workflow.
- Course content is by default rendered in an iframe: increased navigation speed.
- New plain text editor in OLAT folders: create .txt and .css files instantly - no need to upload.
- Various SCORM improvements.
- Custom fields: user attributes are configurable by system administrators, not stored hardcoded.
Polish version of OLAT website
(28.05.2008) Last week Bartek Gajc from Olsztyn (Poland) released a translated version of the olat.org website. You can find the OLAT website in Polish at www.geomatikk.pl/olat! Thanks to Bartek and his GEOMATIKK-team!
OLAT 6 release on June 3rd
(21.05.2008) We are closing the last bugs and the next big OLAT release version 6.0 seems ready for public release. We plan to have OLAT 6 published here on Tuesday, June 3rd 2008. OLAT 6 will be based on a new layout - created with the CSS-framework YAML - and will offer some new features presented when the release is ready.
GSoC Bonding Apero
(19.05.2008) Swiss GSoC mentors and students met on May 7th for a "Bonding Drink" at the MyPlace Café in Zurich. We were around ten people,
mostly students and mentors from the OLAT or eLML project. Although the meeting was published on the Google list we had only
one guest from another project: Donat Agosti from the Plazi project. Thanks for joining! We plan to do a next event in summer, maybe a barbecue in our beautiful University Irchel park. Please
send us a note if you are interested in participating. Everybody is welcome! Check out the pictures...
Google accepts 8 OLAT student projects
(22.04.2008) This year OLAT is participating for the first time in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) project and has been chosen by Google to be one of the mentoring organizations. The OLAT team is very happy to have a total of 8 student proposals accepted. The accepted students are citizens of Switzerland, Germany and India. Read on for more information...
OLAT Conference 2008 Video Streams and Photo Gallery
(02.04.2008) The successful start of the first OLAT conference in Zurich consisted of five fully booked workshops. We discussed topics
like usage, deployment, and extension of OLAT with the participants and tried to give a deeper insight into layout issues
and content creation for OLAT. After the quite challenging workshops, we needed to relax at the bistro MyPlace. In the following
two days we listened to 45 talks on various issues around OLAT like use cases, online assessments, usability, recent and future
development, content creation and - at a special track - e-learning in medicine. This fascinating but exhausting "business"
part was framed by social events: conference diner and party at the "Giesserei" on Thursday, and a fondue diner in a sylvan
hut full of atmosphere on Friday. All the 170 conference participants mainly from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland contributed
in one way or another to the great success of the OLAT conference. We, the OLAT team, would like to thank all of them.
We are looking forward to reading your posts on the OLAT lists and seeing you again soon. Continue... (Streams, Podcasts, Photos)
OLAT accepted at the Google Summer of Code students program (new deadline!)
(18.03.2008) OLAT has been accepted at the Google Summer of Code program. The GSoC initiative offers students the possibility to work for open source projects and be paid by Google (around $5000 for a summer job). The aim of GSoC is to foster open source projects and to recruit talented programmers. Students interested in receiving such a grant should apply until March 31st April 7th, 2008 (new deadline)!
Registration closed - 200 participants at OLAT conference
(10.03.2008) The registration for the first OLAT conference (including the DOIT session "E-Learning in Medicine") closed on Friday, 7th of March 2008. We are happy to announce that a total of 170 participants 200 participants (updated 26.3.2008) registered mainly from Switzerland (70%), Germany (20%) and Austria (5%). Another 5% are from various countries like Poland, Egypt, Turkey, Palestine etc.
Program for OLAT conference 2008 online
(30.01.2008) Since today the final program for the first international OLAT conference is online and can be downloaded here. The conference starts on Wednesday (March 26th, 2008) with pre-conference "hands-on"-workshops on OLAT and eLML. The official conference starts on Thursday (March 27th, 2008) with two sessions: One session on OLAT use cases, online assessments
and usability, the parallel session - hosted by our partner "DOIT" - on "E-Learning in Medicine". On Friday (March 28th, 2008)
there will be a session for users (use cases and content creation) and a second session for developers on "Proprietary Development
for OLAT". In the evenings there will be social events where you can meet peers and colleagues or talk with the OLAT team.
Most presentations in both rooms will be recorded and be available after the conference via "streaming video" at our conference
website. Most of the presentations will be in GERMAN. Depending on the number of English native speakers we will offer a simultaneous
translation. Please let us know if you don't speak German at all!
Visit our conference website to register. You should register until the end of February 2008 but - as seats are limited - we are giving them away on a
first come, first served basis.
OLAT, Frentix and BPS @ Learntec Karlsruhe
(28.01.2008) Together with Frentix and BPS GmbH the OLAT team will be at the Learntec in Karlsruhe. If you plan to attend this conference feel free to visit us at booth C31.
First international OLAT conference 2008
(26.11.2007) We are very happy to announce the first international OLAT conference from March 26th to 28th 2008 in Zurich, Switzerland
We would like to welcome speakers from all over the world. If you would like to give a presentation or present your OLAT use case at the conference visit the conference website and submit your abstract by January 7th 2008.
For more information, registration, submission of abstracts etc. -- don’t miss the "early bird" special fee until 31 December 2007 -- visit our conference website: www.olat.org/conference or download the conference flyer.
OLAT 5.2.3 release
(22.11.2007) The latest bug fix release for OLAT 5.2. is available: 5.2.3. It contains many fixes for performance improvement under high load and instant messenger bugs. The latest release also contains a bug fix for the calendar and the change from 2007 to 2008. We therefore strongly recommend that you update your OLAT 5.2 release to 5.2.3!
OLAT and Frentix @ Online Educa Berlin
(18.11.2007) Together with Florian Gnägi from Frentix GmbH the OLAT team will be at the Online Educa in Berlin. If you plan to attend this conference feel free to visit us at booth A24.
OLAT 5.2.2 release
(24.09.2007) Last week we released OLAT 5.2.2 a minor bug fix release for OLAT 5.2.
OLAT at OpenExpo 2007 in Zurich
(17.09.2007) Next Wednesday and Thursday (September 19./20. 2007) the OpenExpo 2007 takes place in Zurich. On both days you can listen to interesting speeches about free and open source software with a business-focus
on Wednesday and a technology-focus on Thursday. Together with eLML we will have a booth/stand from 9am to 5pm with information about eLML. Come and visit us!
PTO wins public-price of MedidaPrix 2007
(15.09.2007) The eLearning project Psychopathology Taught Online (PTO) wins the public-price of MedidaPrix 2007. PTO is a University of Zurich project using the OLAT LMS. Congratulations from the OLAT-team!
OLAT 5.2 Public Released!
(12.09.2007) OLAT 5.2 - 5.2.1 to be correct, 5.2.0 was only an internal release - has been released today which is a big step towards Web 2.0 and usability. In this release we tried to implement the results of the usability report done by the University of Berne. We also rebuilt the chat client using AJAX technology and updated the forum. Here's a short list of improvements:
- Usability: New tabs for navigation, the option to create groups from within the course editor, better publishing support etc.
- Web 2.0/AJAX: Faster!
- Better chat client: Now HTML/AJAX based
- Forum: Mark threads as sticky or important, split threads
- Delete Workflow: Now you can delete users, groups, courses or resources using sophisticated filters with prior notification of users and owners
- OLAT help in German is now Wiki based (authors can help improve the manual!)
Please refer to the release notes to see a full list of changes and grab your copy from the download page.
New olat.org Website
(11.09.2007) Along with the OLAT 5.2 release the OLAT team completely rebuilt the olat.org website. Now this website is based on the eLesson Markup Language (eLML) and offers a layout similar to OLAT itself. A lot of old stuff was deleted and new sections were added. For those of you
who are interested in OLAT please check the about section; for those of you who would like to install and use OLAT please go to the download section; and for those of you who are Java programmers and would like to mess with the code please check the development section.
Roadmap for OLAT 5.2: Usability (Usage and Installation), Workflows and AJAX
(12.06.2007) We are currently working on the next OLAT release 5.2 due in late summer 2007. The main topics planned for the next release are:
- AJAX: from Beta feature to Productive
- User deletion
- Usability (usability lab results, easier group management, forum, portlets, glossary, overlays, Wizards)
- Community, installer for productive environment
OLAT 5.1.3
(08.05.2007) The latest OLAT release contains some bug fixes in the HTML and test editor. Please refer to the complete notes to see a full list of changes and grab your copy from the download page.
OLAT 5.1.2 Released!
(13.04.2007) OLAT 5.1.2 is out! It is most and for all a bug fix release to resolve problems caused by the earlier version.
Please refer to the complete notes to see a full list of changes and grab your copy from the download page.
OLAT 5.1 Public Release Available
(19.03.2007)The OLAT 5.1 Public has been released today (March 14th, 2007). Please note that OLAT 5.1.0 has only been released at the University of Zurich. The OLAT 5.1 Public Release is in fact OLAT 5.1.1.
OLAT 5.1 is mainly a consolidation release. As you can see from the notes the OLAT team contributed over 170 bug fixes and improvements. We decided that before implementing new features we needed to improve the existing features. Nevertheless OLAT 5.1 comprises some new features:
- New Wiki engine: The new Wiki engine offers a lot more functions (e.g. image thumbnails, footnotes etc.) and is superior to the one introduced in OLAT 5.0 (many bugs have been fixed). Please refer to JamWiki for a full Wiki syntax.
- Glossary: OLAT now offers a learning resource called "glossary" which can be included into one or several courses. Please refer to the manual for further information.
- The HTML editor now offers a possibility to include internal links to course elements (no need to copy and paste IDs and go-to-node javascripts)
OLAT Presented in the Newspaper ''Neue Zürcher Zeitung'' (NZZ)
(10.03.2007) One of the major Swiss newspapers, the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" (NZZ), presents OLAT in its section on "Media and Informatics" (March 9th, 2007). You can find the article "Vom E-Learning zum «Blended Learning»" online on the NZZ website. The article is available in the Press section but only in German.
OLAT Webapp Framework @ JAX
(08.03.2007) OLAT has its own web application MVC GUI framework. The essence of the separated framework is submitted under the name brasato
framework for the JAX Innovation Award 2007.
OLAT 5.1 Public Release in Two Weeks
(07.03.2007)The OLAT 5.1 Public Release was planned for tomorrow (March 8th, 2007). Unfortunately we must announce that the release has to be deferred for at least two weeks. OLAT 5.1 was released at the University of Zurich one week ago. This server hosts more than 25'000 users and more than 1000 courses. While the system is up and running we have found some hidden bugs and would like to fix them before we go public with OLAT 5.1. We would like to apologize for the delay and comfort our open source user with the fact that when OLAT 5.1 Public is released, it will be thoroughly tested and will work no matter what your setup is. Thanks for your patience and your interest in OLAT!
Using OLAT for E-Assessments at the University of Zurich
(16.02.2007) The E-Learning Center of the University of Zurich has currently presented E-Assessments in its podcast. In the last edition of the E-Learning podcast the OLAT team leader Franziska Schneider talks about "OLAT & E-Assessments". You can download and listen to this 15 min-podcast here. Furthermore the online magazine "unipublic" has just published an article on the same topic. Please visit the unipublic website for more information. Both publications are only available in German.
OLAT Team at LearnTec in Karlsruhe (Germany)
(14.02.2007) The OLAT-team visited the LearnTec 2007 in Karlsruhe.
Presenting OLAT to eLearning professionals
