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LMS Evaluation Report

show details | show criteria descriptions

Products

Clix 5.0

imc AG: http://www.im-c.de
imc information multimedia communication AG
Last major evaluation update: Jan '03

strong points

  • large palette of tools
  • good support for external content
  • syllabus/learning plan with branching options
  • powerful (but complex!) rights management system
  • "Mandanten" concept (one installation for several units with their own courses).

weaknesses

  • usability problems: no font scaling, no bookmarks,
  • creating a course is a complex process
  • only "flat" internal content (no folders or hierarchical structure)
  • no ftp or WebDAV support.
  • no search function in contents (only in descriptions of elements)
  • limited support for eLearning specifications

Student's Environment

Student's Environment

Ease of Use
The look and feel of the platform can (must) be totally customized when it is installed, so to a certain extent, its usability depends on how well this is done. But more generally, the students functions are well organized.

There are some problems (partly due to the frame-based display): browser bookmarks don't work, printing depends on the way the browser handles frames, font scaling doesn't work.

Compliant with common web technology
The following browsers are supported: MS Internet Explorer 5 oder newer, Netscape Navigator 4.77.
Functional environment
Clix provides most of the standard functionalities of an LMS, with some additional features: guest book for each user, address book, mediatheque (collection of various resources available to all users), who-is-who (list of all platform users with profile), site map in a separate window (facilitates navigation).

A search function is available for descriptions of course components and of items in the mediatheque and the library attached to a course, but not for their contents.

Tutoring and Didactics

Ease of use
The tutoring functions found in the "tutor center", which include monitoring student progress, publishing news for the course and using the communication tools, are fairly easy to use.

If the syllabus is planned accordingly, the tutor can give individual students access to selected parts of the course, depending on their progression.

Statistics for assessments are done with a separate function (under "Content management").

Communication
Communication tools in Clix include discussion forums, chat (web-based), pinboard, news and the document archive.
Students management
Clix is a complete portal solution, so user management is done at the portal level by an administrator. For course registration, there are several possibilities: self registration (with or without confirmation by instructor), or registration by course administrator.

Students groups can be defined, but not within a course. If groups are really necessary, then the course must be duplicated for each group.

Activity tracking
Tutors can monitor students' progress from the course syllabus in the tutor center. For each course component, its status for an individual student can be displayed (e.g. unopened, started, completed, number of points in a quiz, etc.). However, there are no statistics for the class as a whole.

Students' use of other elements in a course (i.e. library elements, communication tools) is not tracked.

Statistics on quizzes can be obtained with another tool (under "Content management"). However, if the same quiz is used in several courses, results are only displayed globally, and not for an individual course.

Course Developement

Ease of Use

The creation of a course with Clix consists of several steps:

  1. Components that will be used in the course must first be created. This is done with different tools: the service manager is used to create communication tools, the quiz manager to create questions and quizzes, and the media manager to prepare content. Each component can have various meta-data (meta-data attibutes can be configured) that can be searched.
  2. Before they can be used, course components must be published. Clix can manage different versions of each component, and the author must select one of these for publication.
  3. Components are then integrated in the course. They can appear at various places, depending on their type: in the syllabus, in the communication tools or in the library.
    The syllabus allows course authors to define a learning plan with branching and selective release options. For each component in the syllabus, the author can define rules that specify what happens when the student has completed the component (also depending on the results if it's a quiz): going to another component, sending an email to the student, finishing the course, etc. This is quite powerful, but the learning plan can quickly become quite complex (however, using rules is not required).

While each of the above steps is not too difficult per se, their combination makes course creation a long and complex task, where many (separate) tools have to be used.

Also, once a course has started, it's no longer possible to modify the syllabus (this only partly makes sense: adding content at the end of the syllabus wouldn't be a problem when the course has just started).

Finally, there is no concept of "folder" to organize contents and/or create a hierarchical table of contents. The content structure is always "flat".

Only the user with "Administratorensicht" had the possibility to upload materials. The user with "Autorensicht" was not given this option. [Is an administrator willing to deal with all the metadata that is required? This seems more appropriate for the author to enter.] After many hours of clicking around (the name "clix" is well chosen), it was possible to upload several pages. These were finally made visible to the student in the Medien-Bibliothek, but incorporating them into a course somehow was too daunting a task to take on. This app appears to put a lot of importance on meta-data; this becomes painfully apparent to the user (whose main interest is content) as they are given many more opportunities to edit descriptions than to edit actual courses.

Flexible Development Framework
IMC provides the "Clix Connect" framework for the definition of interfaces between applications based on various standard technologies (Java Messaging Services, XML).
Developers support
Three manuals (PDF format with table of contents) are available: "Front Office" (for students and tutors), "Back Office" (for course authors and administrators) and "Reference" (describes all functions).

The first two are organized in the same way as the menus in the platform, which makes them easy to use as reference. But there are no real tutorials describing for instance the process of creating and setting up a course.

Currently, support is only available by phone or email. Clix plans to setup a support-portal soon (with forums and other kinds of information).

-Documentation entitled "Bedienungsanleitung Backoffice" 1.0 is a very large document (386 pages) with no apparent quick overview of the steps required for authors/administrators to create a course or upload course material. Neither the Clix FAQ nor the "Clixionary" were available.

The link from the user interface to "Über Clix" sends you to an advertisement page for Clix.

Compatibility with common web authoring tools
Many kinds of contents can be inluded in Clix courses, including:
  • individual documents of different types: html, pdf, images, sounds, movies, etc.
  • structured RTF documents (which may contain pictures): these can be converted to a set of HTML documents with the integrated converter, and navigation and simple tracking is automatically provided.
  • WBTs in various formats (e.g. AICC). These are displayed in a new window.

If an author wants to integrated content consisting of a collection of interlinked documents, including images, style sheets, Flash animations, etc., then zip archives are the only workable solution. But this has its downsides: content is displayed in a separate window, the author must provide his/her own navigation, and only the entry page of the package is tracked.

Since Clix doesn't provide ftp or WebDAV support, updating content pages is a bit tedious: each time, the author has to go through a form to re-upload the required file(s).

Assessment
Clix offers a fairly broad range of question types: table (a table of text/images where the student must fill in the corresponding missing fields), matching, image zone, free text, yes/no, multiple choice, fill in the blank, and ranking.

Questions are first created in the question manager, and can then be used in any quiz.

Another type of assessment is also available: exercice sheets. These contain several exercises, where each exercise consists of several documents: questions, additional information, the teacher's solution, help for corrections, etc. Exercise sheets can be used in communities (Lerngruppen), but not in regular courses.

In the tutor center, tutors find the results of each student for a quiz, but without details on scores for individual questions. And global statistics on quizzes are found under "content management", not in the tutor center.

There is also a separate "evaluation" tool that can be used for course evaluations. The following question types are available: scale, multiple choice and free text answer.

Support for e-learning standards
Regarding e-learning specifications, Clix supports AICC CMI Level 1. For other specifications, there will be a discussion within Clix's HEEN (Higher Education Elearning Network) as to which specifications should be supported.
Adaptable look-and-feel
The look and feel of the platform, which is defined when the platform is installed, can be totally customized according to the customer's requirements. Customizations can also be done for each "Mandant" through a style sheet.
Multilinguality
Clix currently support Englisch, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
XML support
-
Migration of current WebCT courses
-

System & Administration

System management
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Administration
Clix supports the concept of "Mandanten" (and sub-Mandanten). A Mandant can for instance be a university, and sub-Mandanten could be institutes or schools in the University. Each Mandant can have its own courses.
Flexible Licensing Model
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Technical Architecture
Clix server is a Java-based solution (platform-independant).