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SPIP as an LMS (in English)

Can a Squirrel become a teacher ? Voir descriptif détaillé

SPIP as an LMS (in English)

Can a Squirrel become a teacher ? Voir descriptif détaillé

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The ever expanding Internet was a major revolution for human communications ; we can find almost anything on every kind of subjects, exchange videos, phonograms, images, text, databases...and of course, the learning of trades and scientific knowledge met a remarkable evolution on account of that. It’s inconceivable nowadays to have a school or University that doesn’t use the Internet as an indispensable tool.

Apprendre sur ligne ? Oui !
Apprendre sur ligne ? Oui !

For NGO’s like OSI, using a CMS (Content Management System) like SPIP brings great advantages - to share information, but also to write on-line collaborative articles, where everyone contributes and develops its knowledge - sharing information, photos, experiences and know-how.

Nevertheless, SPIP is not a miracle-working software (well...almost) and it can’t really do certain things beyond its capacities. Like, for example, to be used as an LMS - or can it ?...

 LM...what ?...

Claroline : an example of the students interface.

LMS (Learning Management System) is software designed for learning and knowledge management - that is, software which provides on-line classes and allows the accompanying of students during their training - with plenty of additional tools and plug-ins, such as quizzes, exercises, polls, file archives, etc.
We can find many applications of this type, which can be downloaded and installed on servers - most of this software is designed to run as an interactive website and database, that everyone can use over a simple browser.
There are many LMS available out there : Claroline, Moodle, Atutor, Dokeos, Anaxagora, Chamilo, Ganesha...with many similar functions, some a bit different, and written for many languages and software platforms.
Among the most popular and most distributed are Moodle (mainly popular with anglo-american users) or Claroline (more commonly used in French speaking countries).
Both of them are FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software), distributed with a GPL License. The source code is available to the users and can be modified to improve the software and suit their needs - and they can contribute to its improvement and evolution - like SPIP, which is also Free-Libre Software.

So ; can SPIP be used as an LMS, if we install the right tools and plugins ?

Before you continue to read, watch this video...for inspiration !


In the fall of 2011 Peter Norvig taught a class with Sebastian Thrun on artificial intelligence at Stanford attended by 175 students in situ — and over 100,000 via an interactive webcast. He shares what he learned about teaching to a global classroom.

 The functions of an LMS

Among the most common functions of LMS software, we can list a few :

- Identification and description of courses ;

- Writing and authoring on-line articles, by an administrator, teacher or even students ;

- Creating and managing users with different permissions : student, teacher, administrator...

- Creating on-line courses and classes with different access levels and permissions, for each student enrolled and registered on the website ;

- Publication of documents on several digital formats : .pdf, .doc, html, videos, images, phonograms and archives of documents and links ;

- Building questionnaires with multiple choice, free text or pre-determined options ;

- Composing exercises, which can include audiovisual data for consultation (for example, a video of a chemical reaction, to identify the components via text or quiz ; images or sounds of animals or plants to identify and classify them, etc).

- Publishing of statistical data from the results of questionnaires, quizzes, polls, surveys ; the students learning path, for classes and individual students, in a graphical output ; check the statistics of attendance and completion of exercises ;

- Creating public and private forums for discussions ;

- Publication of calendars, public or private, for each class or student, with the calendar of exercises, classes, evaluations, etc.
Structuring of calendars with specific tasks and deadlines.

- Collaborative writing with the wiki ;

- Publication of information by e-mail or internal messaging (for example, a teacher can communicate with its students, by selecting classes or work groups defined by him or an administrator of the website, before sending a message).

So, here’s our challenge : how can we gather all these features and make them available on SPIP ? As a CMS, SPIP already has a good number of tools to achieve most of these tasks.
And, of course, we can use and adapt the many plugins available for SPIP, created by its very active community.

 Building LMS Tools for SPIP !

Publishing
- Identification and description of courses ;
Writing and authoring on-line articles, by an administrator, teacher or even students ;

- Collaborative writing with the wiki ;

SPIP is already capable of doing this. And in a collaborative fashion ; each article, with different permission levels, can be edited by several people and published after final approval from a top-level user.

Permissions
- Creating and managing users with different permissions : student, teacher, administrator.
Creating on-line courses and classes with different access levels and permissions, for each student enrolled and registered on the website.

SPIP configures access levels automatically, according with default categories, which are editable. Some available plugins provide additional features :

Restricted Access
(all versions of SPIP)
This plugin gives you the capability to protect and restrict access to certain sections only to authenticated and authorized visitors.
If a visitor is not identified or is not allowed, then the entire section (which includes the sub-categories, articles, links ...) will not be visible to the visitor.

Authority
(all versions of SPIP)
Allows you to tweak permissions (add your own !). Some people find the permissions of SPIP too rigid : for example, only the editors that you trust (and can be promoted to « Directors ») are allowed to change the published articles. Since version 1.9.2, SPIP provides an API (application programming interface) that centralizes all the different and varied authorization checks. The « Authority » plugin is the first to use this API to provide other modes of hierarchical functions and editing.

Groups Access
(for SPIP 1.9)
Restrict access to Sections by groups of authors.
One of the common needs when a site is managed by SPIP is to restrict access to certain sections so that they are accessible only to certain users. To allow complete management in an easy and ergonomic fashion, it is essential that the authorized users are managed by groups. So, for you to have sections (courses) specifically assigned to user groups (classes), this may be the tool that most resembles a common LMS function.

Publications, exercises, questionnaires...
- Publication of documents on several digital formats : .pdf, .doc, html, videos, images, phonograms and archives of documents and links ;

It is always possible to add multiple document formats on SPIP - and even embedded video and audio files.
All SPIP articles can include digital files, like pdf, doc, odt, ods, xls, jpg, etc., added during the writing and publishing.
Has added the time of writing. And even convert them into pdf.

- Building questionnaires with multiple choice, free text or pre-determined options ; ;

SPIP is not able, for the moment, to have complex questionnaires, but if anyone in the community wants to develop these tools...that will be most welcome !

Forms & Tables 2.5
(for SPIP 3.0 ; older versions are available)
Management and administration of editable forms. This plugin also allows the publication of opinion polls and surveys, collecting responses in the database and allowing the download in .csv format. This plugin allows you to display text fields with questionnaires, email, multiple choice (complete or not). The results can be public or private and can be exported - which is very convenient to compose exercises for multiple students.

Plugin Forms
(all versions of SPIP)
The Forms plugin allows the creation of forms with different types of questions and even the ability to add files. In addition, the results of the form are accessible through the private interface or by receiving the results by email and exporting them to a .csv. Read the documentation.

Formidable
(for SPIP 2.1 and 3.0)
A form generator easily configurable for non-technical folk and easily expansible for developers.


- Composing exercises, which can include audiovisual data for consultation (for example, a video of a chemical reaction, to identify the components via text or quiz ; images or sounds of animals or plants to identify and classify them, etc) ;

Simple e-learning platform.
(for SPIP 2.0 and 2.1)
The e-learning plugin for SPIP tries to implement some basic LMS functions ; read the complete description.

Multimedia player for sound and video
(all versions of SPIP)
Playing sound and video embedded directly on the articles ? Yes, it’s possible.


Statistics and monitoring of students progress
- Publishing of statistical data from the results of questionnaires, quizzes, polls, surveys ; the students learning path, for classes and individual students, in a graphical output ; check the statistics of attendance and completion of exercises ; ;

Certification and competences : how can we make sure that students actually master the results of their learning process ?


Big Brother
(for SPIP 2.0 and 2.1)
Manage visitor and user statistics, student monitoring, etc..
This plugin has the ability to monitor how much time a user opens an article and is working on it, how often downloads documentation archived on SPIP, etc.. This way, a teacher can tell if a student has already read or updated an article, downloaded a required document, and so on.

Analyclick
(for SPIP 2.1)
Download counter for SPIP documents.
You want to know if your students download the exercises and texts that require reading ? This plugin might help you.

Communication
- Creating public and private forums for discussions.

Forum
(for SPIP 3.0 ; other forum plugins are available for older versions)
Management of private and public forums on SPIP.
The learning process is much more comfortable and stimulating if we cooperate, debate and share our knowledge ! The forums are an invaluable learning tool for the entire classroom.

- Publication of calendars, public or private, for each class or student, with the calendar of exercises, classes, evaluations, etc.
Structuring of calendars with specific tasks and deadlines.

Plugin Google Calendar for SPIP
(all versions of SPIP)
The GCalendar plugin provides an interface for a SPIP site with Google Calendar.
As impressive as the Agenda 2 plugin is for SPIP, some editors refuse to use it. This plugin aims to facilitate the work of publishers offering them the possibility to add events from gadgets available on iGoogle or vista.


Simple Calendar
(for SPIP 2.1)
This plugin provides a new « editorial object » event. It allows to create events in the same way that you can create articles or brief news.

Organiseur
(for SPIP 3.0)
Editorial tools for group work - this can be used to publish the dates of exams, assessments, beginning of classes for all students...

- Publication of information by e-mail or internal messaging (for example, a teacher can communicate with its students, by selecting classes or work groups defined by him or an administrator of the website, before sending a message).

Annonces Publiques
(for SPIP 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0)
Announcements for the private messaging space.
Through announcements, site administrators can communicate information to all editors at once.

Facteur
(for SPIP 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0)
SPIP offers a generic function to send an email, such as « envoyer_mail ». It is fairly easy to use, but that may seem limited when you want to configure more complex options : sending SMTP, adding attachments, etc. The Factor plugin proposes to integrate the PHPMailer library to SPIP in a proper way.

Contacts
(for SPIP 2.1 and 3.0)
This plugin adds some contacts managing features. It distinguishes organizations from individuals, conserving all the attributes of the SPIP authors. In conjunction with the plugin Coordinates, it allows you to extend both the unit fields (name, date of birth ...) and multiple fields (phone numbers, email addresses ...), which is very useful for managing classes and enrolled students.

If you have more suggestions for plugins and alternatives - add your own contribution !

What do we seek at this moment at OSI ? A plugin that allows you to convert SPIP articles directly into slide presentations (Microsoft Powerpoint - ppt, Open Document Presentation - odp ...). If you know how to do it ... it will be very welcome !


 Further Knowledge :

SPIP

Plugins for SPIP
Many plugins for SPIP, for several versions, to be able to do... almost everything !

http://contrib.spip.net/
Downloads, plugins, contributes...we can find many useful add-ons for the SPIP universe, on this website.

LMS
http://demo.moodle.net/
A demo page for Moodle, one of the most popular LMS.

http://demo.claroline.net/
A demo for Claroline, the widely known French-speaking LMS.

Comparaison Moodle - Claroline - Atutor

A comparison between the possibilities of Moodle, Claroline and Atutor, three different LMS (Learning Managament System).







EDUCATION

Vídeo : What we’re learning from online education
Daphne Koller is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free — not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. With Coursera (co founded by Andrew Ng), each keystroke, quiz, peer-to-peer discussion and self-graded assignment builds an unprecedented pool of data on how knowledge is processed.

Free MOOCs by the EU
OpenupEd is the first MOOCs initiative which goes Europe-wide, with the support of the European Commission. At the start around 40 courses, covering a wide variety of subjects, are available, in 12 different languages. OpenupEd has been initiated and is coordinated by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) and mostly involves open universities. The 11 launch partners are based in France, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, and the UK, and outside the EU in Russia, Turkey and Israel.

20 tips and resources for using learning technology in higher education.
Information technologies bring us new and exciting opportunities ... so, why are we using them to teach as we always did ?...

What is a MOOC ?
MOOC - « Massive Open Online Course » are on-line courses that many universities already use as a complementary resource to their regular classes. LMS software plays a very important role in this context.

MOOCs : a massive opportunity for higher education, or digital hype ?
Not everyone agrees about the benefits of Moocs. In fact, its limitations are well known. This article discusses some of its problems and limitations.

The Professors Who Make the MOOCs
A more optimistic view of the prospects of on-line teaching and learning.

MOOCs – The Opium of the Masses
A very critical article on the mechanisms of inequality brought on by MOOCs, and its consequences on the access to a quality education.

An interesting list of MOOCs available on the web.

Learning Ecology, Communities, and Networks : Extending the classroom
« In order for learning institutions to be relevant in an era of life-long learning, they must move past the concept of start/stop learning. Learning is fluid. It impacts other areas of work and life. It’s ongoing. »

Photos / Vidéos

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