Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1. continued
Criteria
Sub-criteria
Description
Object can be of any format
Multi-part
objects
One LO may consist of multiple elements: a CD consists of audio tracks and
scanned booklet images
Possibility to define read and write access rights on four levels: world, institution,
self-defined group, private
Access rights
LOs can be stored in a self-defined hierarchical structure like Institution - Domain -
Department - Teacher
Storage
Hierarchical organization
Property and
metadata inheritance
Object properties (access rights) and metadata items can be inherited within the
hierarchy. Support for predefined properties and possibility to override it
Re-uploading an object with the same ID does not overwrite the original, but creates
a new version.
Versioning system
Large objects
Support for large objects like videos of several GBytes
Strength of development community
Strength of users' community
Code quality
Documentation quality
Ease of installation
Other
2.3. Existing Technical
Evaluation Methods for Virtual
Learning Environments
'Look and feel' is configurable; Security;
Modular authentication; Robustness and
stability; Installation, dependencies and
portability.
2.3.1. The Methodology of
Technical Evaluation of Learning
Management Systems
•
Interoperability (suitable for technical
evaluation): Integration is straightforward;
LMS/VLE standards support.
•
Internationalization and localization (suit-
able for technical evaluation): Localizable
user interface; Localization to relevant
languages; Unicode text editing and stor-
age; Time zones and date localization;
Alternative language support.
The “Methodology of Technical Evaluation of
Learning Management Systems” - LMSs (or
VLEs) is part of the Evaluation of Learning
Management Software activity undertaken as part
of the New Zealand's Open Source LMS project
(2004). The evaluation criteria expand on a subset
of criteria, focusing on technical aspects of VLEs
(Kurilovas, 2005):
•
Accessibility (suitable for technical eval-
uation): Text-only navigation support;
Scalable fonts and graphics.
2.3.2. Adaptation Evaluation Instrument
for Open Source Platforms
•
Overall architecture and implementa-
tion (suitable for technical evaluation):
Scalability of the system; System modu-
larity and extensibility; Possibility of mul-
tiple installations on a single platform;
Reasonable performance optimizations;
Graf & List (2005) present an evaluation of open
source e-learning platforms/LMSs where the
main focus is on adaptation issues - adaptabil-
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