HomeGrown Courseware Management System

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Home-Grown Courseware Management System

• Mr Andrew Dunbar
• Dr Joe Luca
• Dr Arshad Omari
• Edith Cowan University

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Overview

• The evolution of courseware management systems
  for TL
• Development and Implementation
• Technologies
• Live Demo

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school of communications and multimedia

• Have been involved in building online CMS for
  almost ten years
• staff interested in online learning
• staff interested in software development
• 2000 students across 8 disciplines
• Mixture of novice users in both staff and
  students

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scmONLINE web system

• Is a custom built system based on the following
  core functions
• Unit and course information
• Programme awards
• Courseware management
• Document delivery
• Messaging, news, and events
• Pedagogical tools (Components)

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System overview
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scm courseware evolution

• Over the past years years we used used a number
  of different systems, all built in-house
• Generation 0
• Misguided, everyone can do html
• Generation 1
• Content management
• Generation 2
• Groupware tools
• Generation 3
• Highly contextualised groupware
• Generation 4
• Generic groupware tools with courseware management

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Issues

• Off the shelf products?
• Price (SCAM site 10k, Blackboard x,000,000)
• Flexibility
• Locked in upgrade paths
• Interoperability
• Logins? Students, staff
• How easy it to add new features/modify existing
  tools?
• Complexity of the management, unit maintenance
  and access tools
• Ease of use for academics
• Simplicity for students
• Reducing the need for IT support

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Issues..cont.

• Blackboard, webCT.. etc
• Start up time
• Associated costs
• IT infrastructure
• Training
• Open source (and relatively cheap) software made
  it attractive for in-house development
• Have access to the technical expertise - flexible
  and cost effective
• Tailored system to OUR requirements

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scmONLINE characteristics

• Lecturer in control
• Maintenance of materials and selection of tools
• Ease of management/maintenance
• Integrated into ECU ADS system
• Students automatically enrolled
• Onshore/offshore supported
• Flexible, component based pedagogical tools
• Easy to add new tools at the request of academics
• Encourages development and experimentation
• Tools available to all units

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Characteristics cont.

• Cost benefits
• In-house development and open source tools
• Generation of IP

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scmONLINE (Gen 4)

• The latest version of scmONLINE incorporates all
  the the previous systems into a single generic
  courseware management application
• Scheduler/calendar of events into a portal
• File manager
• Messaging
• Discussion boards and URL posting
• Problem solving
• Group creation/management
• Individual student contracts
• Unit evaluation
• Self and peer assessment
• Tools are available to ALL units
• As optional components

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Technologies

• Open source technologies
• Apache Webserver
• PHP 4
• 12,000,000 domains in 4 years (PHP,2003)
• MySQL 4
• 4,000,000 customers (MySQL, 2003)
• XML XSLT
• Mac OS X Server
• X-serve deployment
• Open source technologies
• Reliable?

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Open source

• Isnt it great?
• Support?
• Upgrades?
• Bugs?
• Not me. Ask the developer.

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Technology implementation

• ADS Integration via LDAP
• All student and staff accounts automatically
  available
• MySQL
• Direct connections to ECU courses and units
  databases
• MS SQL Server portable

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XML

• XML Structured objects
• Parent/child relationships
• Ability to create new object types
• Allows greater flexibility within tools

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XML Explained
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More XML
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scmONLINE

• Available at
• www.scam.ecu.edu.au

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QA