Rafael Pastor Vargas, Miguel Ángel Córdova Morales, Mario Aguado, Alberto Pesquera Martín, Raúl Morales Hidalgo, Marcos Serrano Sánchez, Joaquín Urrutia González, Luis Ignacio Bacas Riveiro, Juan Ignacio Fernández Diez. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia {mac, maguado, apm, rmorales, mserrano,jurrutia, lbacas, Alvaro Rodríguez, Vivian Aguilar, Rocael Hernández Viaro Networks {alvaro, vivian, Blocks Organizer For.LRN Valencia, 18/11/2008

Outline What is blocks? Usage Technical details Conclusions/Future work

What is blocks? Planning tool based on aggregated resources in a temporal/content space called block. Allows an integrated view for the development of learning courses, making easy to get information of actual state (date/content).

Type of “blocks” (1/2) Weekly Format –Each block represents a week, the weeks start to count the day the community starts, this value is set in the Course Settings of the Blocks View. –The current weeks is highlighted.

Type of “blocks” (2/2) Topics Format –Each block represents a topic, all the activities and resources in this block are related to the topic, so in this format the start date of the community is not relevant. –This format lets the teacher selects the current topic and highlights that topic automatically until the teachers marks it as not selected or another topic is selected, only one topic can be selected at a time.

Course settings The format by weekly or topics The start date, this is used to set the start day for the weekly format. The number of blocks, if the number of blocks selected is greater than the current blocks, the extra blocks needed are created, if the number of blocks selected is lower than the current blocks the rest of the blocks are simply not displayed but never deleted.

Navigation menu Edit Mode Help Quick links to resources “Blocks” configuration

Add/Create resources Each course has many tools available, inside each block there is an option to add a resource/activity, the supported packages are: evaluation, assessment, forums, file-storage, content, pages and chat. Add new Just Created

Add resources Label Pages (HTML and text) Files Folders URLs Content sections

Add new activities Activities: forums, assessments, evaluation and chat

If activity is in course…. Choose typeCheck the item in the list Accept

Items and blocks operations Show/Hide, we can choose which object we want to make available for students. Move, the objects can be ordered inside the same block or moved to a different block by using the drag n drop option. Indent, the objects can be indent right or left, this is just for visual purposes and it has no side effect on the behavior of the objects, each object can only be indent five spaces more than the parent upper object, if any. Edit, this link lead us to the specific edit interface depending on the object type. Delete, this link deletes the reference of the object with the block and if the object is not referenced by another block it deletes the object as well, objects from file-storage are never deleted.

Demo

Technical aspects

To link activities from other packages there are 3 steps needed: –Extend the ad_page_contract to receive as a parameter the page_id of the page that will be linked to the activity –Extend the ad_form to send the parameter on the submit action to be able to use the value in the on_submit section –Add a special line in the on_submit section to link the new activity to the page

Technical aspects Callbacks –search::url, returns the url for the object –dotlrn::blocks::edit_url, returns the url for the edit action of the object –dotlrn::blocks::delete_url, returns the url for the edit action of the object Any kind of object is linked by the object_id –We obtain the object type –Then we get the right callback

Technical aspects Special case: File-storage –The interface was modified to allow the association of the resources –The changes are activated using a cookie and a parameter to allow navigation

Technical aspects New package: “Pages” –Create a new package to add individual pages linked to the planner –The link process is done in the xowiki form using mixins in the procs: new_request, new_data –Special policy to set the permissions needed in each page, students have only read permission

Conclusions The block system is a simple but yet powerful organizer for any course, and uses the most important packages and applications available in.LRN, while more applications can be easily integrated. Blocks systems is independent of.LRN, so it can open an space to use OpenACS in courses without using.LRN and / or its portal system.

Future work View/Hide items/blocks automatically in weekly format to center on actual course date/topic. Adapt items blocks to learning path, IMS-LD?