10 october 2006 – The ETH World program is pleased to announce the
release of the dynamic Learning Content Management System. Developed by
the Center for Organizational and Occupational Sciences of ETH Zurich,
the dLCMS is a CMS for web based learning materials that supports easy
editing and user-friendly compilation of learning content, advanced
scalability, and flexible use of materials in various didactic contexts.
This is the first public release of a system that has been under
development since 2004 and is now in production at ETH Zurich. The
release is a beta of dLCMS 1.6 (1.6b1).
What is the dLCMS?
------------------
The main goal of the dLCMS is the enhancement of learning content’s
reusability through the separation of content and graphical
presentation, the consequent use of small, modular learning objects that
can easily be rearranged into new learning units, and the collaborative
use of learning content by teachers and content designers via the Internet.
Complete learning units can be exported as packages compatible with IMS
Content Packaging or conformant to SCORM. dLCMS packages have been
successfully imported into the learning management systems Moodle,
ILIAS, OLAT, and WebCT.
Features, architecture, and component model
-------------------------------------------
* Learning objects are stored in an XML format in a centralized
repository
* An online editor enables authors to create content focused on
their subject matter without having to care about graphical design, data
formats, or programming languages
* Graphical style and layout can be defined through the use of a
flexible page templating system
* The dLCMS is an extension of the open source Silva CMS and uses
the Five/Zope3 framework
* The dLCMS is open source with a BSD-style licence
The dLCMS functional architecture is separated into four primary
components: authoring, repository, assembly and linking, and publishing
and export. The dLCMS Content Model consists of three component types:
assets, content elements, and learning units.
Why a dLCMS?
------------
Because of the increasing complexity it has become difficult to develop
web based courses direclty with HTML, JavaScript, etc. The aim of the
dLCMS is to ease and coordinate this process. A learning content
component model defines different levels of learning components, their
properties and granularity, and how the components can be aggregated
into larger learning units.
Where can I learn more?
-----------------------
For complete information including the dLCMS Roadmap, documentation, bug
tracker, web-based translations, mailing list, and SVN repository, see
the dLCMS site at http://www.dlcms.ethz.ch/
The dLCMS can be downloaded from http://www.dlcms.ethz.ch/download
Professional support, further development, and hosting of the dLCMS is
available from Infrae, based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands:
http://infrae.com/
Credits
-------
Thanks to:
* The ETH World program at ETH Zurich
* The Center for Organizational and Occupational Sciences for
continued support
* Launchpad for development resources:
https://launchpad.net/products/dlcms
* The many professors, developers, affiliates, and students listed
on the site
Contact
FMI contact Dr. Samuel Schluep: http://www.zoa.ethz.ch/people/staff/schluep
--
- eric casteleijn
http://infrae.com
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