As of August 1st, 2008, the Edutech web site will no longer be updated. Edutech was funded by the Swiss Virtual Campus programme, which ended on July 31st, 2008. Some activities will be taken over by the e-Learning Services group at the SWITCH foundation.
LMS Evaluation Report
show details | show criteria descriptions
| Products | IBT Server 6.1Time4You: http://www.time4you.deLast major evaluation update: Dec '02 strong points
weaknesses
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Student's Environment | ||
Student's Environment | ||
Ease of Use | The environment can mostly be used as a common web page. Pages can be printed and saved, and their fonts are scalable. Not all common navigation tools work as expected: pages can't easily be bookmarked (frame problem), URLs can't be copy-pasted (frame problem). However, the back button works as expected.
It should be possible for students to cope with the limitations, although the impossibility to copy-paste URLs (impossibility to send a web reference by email) is a severe restriction. | |
Compliant with common web technology | The environment works well with common modern web browsers like Mozilla 1.2 and IE6. | |
Functional environment | A flexible and powerful search tool allows to search for keywords in content pages, discussion forums, resource metadata, message boards etc. The search engine can also be restricted to predefined areas. A context sensitive help tool is available | |
Tutoring and Didactics | ||
Ease of use | the tools in the teletutoring workspace are fairly easy to use. | |
Communication | The communication tools are quite advanced. All basic asynchronous communication modes are available, as well as chat rooms.
The default layout of the communication tools (i.e. the forum) is less pleasant. Some developers might want to customize it. | |
Students management | The student management is powerful, and allows to create groups for teamwork activities. | |
Activity tracking | All important activity tracking functions are available, and graphicl reportc can be generated. - activity tracking ist in jeder der angesprochenen funktionen seit der v6 verfügbar. über die module ibt management information, ibt skill management oder auch den teletutoring workspace/desktop (ab v7) in je unterschiedlichen hinsichten mit standardberichten und -statistiken, die um individuelle berichte ergänzt werden können. | |
Course Developement | ||
Ease of Use | The authoring environment contains a fully featured content editor (xhtml editor) and an editor to organize the structure of a course. Both editors are web based and are extensively using JavaScript and Forms. The web authoring suite also has a so called 'rapid developer' that allows to easily assemble a default course structure in just a few minutes.
Time4You suggests to use the web based xhtml editor and structure editor to create courses. Our experience however shows, that the xhtml editor is difficult to use, and requires more knowledge about xhtml files than with desktop (x)html editors. Even on a fast network the editor reacts slowly, which is a typical drawback of complex web applications. Informal polls reveal, that many users perceive the web based xhtml editor as clumsy and hence refuse to work with it. As far as the integration of the numerous tools into a course is concerned: everything is done over the logically/hierarchically web interface. Unfortunately, this does not mean, that it is simple to use! Example: configuring a search tool for some content pages or a discussion forum is not intuitive, and we can't expect occasional course designers to do it. For an experienced support staff member however, this is a fairly easy task. | |
Flexible Development Framework | SCORM is supported, and this allows to develop complex content modules that interact with the server over the runtime API.
The platform is implemented in Java, JSP, JavaScript and XML/XSLT. It is possible to extend the functions or integrate complex content by programming in JSP, JavaScript and XSLT - the developers of Time4You have proved this, with the efficient development of custom extensions. However, to be able to make extensions, one needs to know (and have experiences) with the achitecture framework, which is considerably complex. The URL and JavaScript API is documented and examples are available. The XML-processing framework (XSLT-Pipeline) is not in the online documentation. The more advanced JSP API is dedicated to accredited developers, and not to end users. - ein ganz wichtiger punkt bei der scorm/aicc-integration ist in unseren augen die möglichkeit, eigene content-produktionen scorm- oder aicc-fähig zu machen. dies erfolgt über den cmi authoring workspace im ibt skill management. Moreover, there is no technical documentation available for the JSP and JavaScript APIs, or for the technical framework (XSLT-Pipeline)? | |
Developers support | The web-interface of all tools is fully documented, and available as printed or electronic documentation.
Course designers, who want to go beyond static xhtml pages will have difficulties. A technical documentation of the JSP/JavaScript API is missing. The use of the XSLT pipeline isn't documented either, which makes it too difficult to modify the existing stylesheets, or add new ones. (A technical documentation should however be available to certified partners) | |
Compatibility with common web authoring tools | Basically, any web content is supported in the content pages. Users have reported problems with intermixed use of the online xhtml editor and common web authoring tools - so one would have to decide for one editor.
The content pages are stored in the normal file system. Therefore it is possible to add a ftp- or WebDav-server to the machine, where the IBT-Server is running. This gives the authors transparent access to the content files. | |
Assessment | The quizz engine offers the most important quizz types, that can be automatically corrected: single choice, multiple choice, list maching, sort list, text answer. Various attributes (visibility, time limit, randomizations, ...) can be associated to single questions or question collections.
The web interface to create and edit questions and quizz banks is complex and not intuitive. New course designers are lost without documentation at hand and they initial training is essential. | |
Support for e-learning standards | The most important specification, SCORM is supported. There's also support for a subset of IMS metadata.
Entering a SCORM module does not necessarily open a new window, but can be embedded in the environment. This is an interesting and original implementation feature. | |
Adaptable look-and-feel | The look-and-feel can be fully customized using CSS stylesheets.
A more advanced approch is the adaptation of the system's XSLT stylesheets. The UI can be totally adapted (i.e. frame-free UIs are possible). Anything can be done - it only depends on the time/money that can be spent. Adapting the UI requires a higly skilled XSLT and JavaScript expert/programmer, who also has intimate knowledge of the IBT-server architecture. It's also a problem, that the XSL processing framework is not documented. | |
Multilinguality | Multiple interface languages are supported: de, en, fr, it, es. | |
XML support | XML processing is a core technology of the IBT server. The system is extensively using XSLT to generate the user interface.
It is therefore possible and and even natural to represent content in native XML and providing XSLT stylesheets to display it. Unfortunately, there is no public documentation or tutorial available, that tells how new stylesheets can be integrated into the complex processing framework, and what the pitfalls can be. (Cerified partners do have access to a internal documentation) | |
Migration of current WebCT courses | - | |
System & Administration | ||
System management | The installation of the system is impressively easy. Unpack the archive, edit a configuration file and run the server. Prerequisites are the freely available Tomcat servlet and JSP engine of the Jakarta project, and common database engine like mySQL, Oracle, MS-SQL etc.
The system requirements are moderate. Multiple instances of the server can run on a common notebook without problems. Medium sized installations up to a few thousands of users run on a single server with Tomcat and mySQL. Frequently accessed data like user account informations are fully cached in RAM. | |
Administration | The server is flexible enough to support multiple identities with different look-and-feel.
An internal API is available that allows to implement gateways etc. to make the authentication and user management system interoperable with other directory/authentication systems. A weak point is the documentation: There's almost no technical documentation and just little admin documentation (that would i.e. be needed to make IBTServer interoperable with SWITCH-AAI) | |
Flexible Licensing Model | The system is composed of modules (like plug-in components). These modules can individually be licensed for the number of expected users.
With regard to student numbers, different licensing models are available too. | |
Technical Architecture | The IBT server is entirely implemented in Java. Requirements:
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