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Course Platform Evaluation Report
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| Products | ATutor 1.5.1Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto, Canada: http://www.atutor.ca/Last major evaluation update: August 2005 About product About producer Strengths Weaknesses | |
General | ||
Multilinguality | The primary interface for ATutor is English. Instructors can set a default language for their course, and students can override it with their own preference. Translations in French, German and Italian are under way (they already existed in previous versions). The current version has 13 completed languages, with about 10 others nearing completion. | |
Student's Environment | ||
Ease of Use | ATutor is generally easy to use and navigate, with a nice and clean interface. Course elements (tools or content pages) cannot be bookmarked, however, since the system uses sessions to store the current course. ATutor is W3C WCAG AA compliant, which encompasses most other international accessibility guidelines. | |
uses browser functionality | Ok (Back button works.) | |
browser bookmarks | Bookmarks don't work, as the system uses sessions to store information about the current course. | |
URL access possible | No | |
in-system bookmarks | Not available. There is a 'continue' function which bookmarks the last content page visited so students can continue from there when they return for a new session. | |
print current page | Ok (no frames) | |
save page on local disk | Ok (no frames) | |
find word in current page | Browser find works. | |
no frames | No frames | |
scalable font | Yes (and scalable images) | |
Compliant with common web technology | No problem on Windows Firefox 1.0.4.0, Windows Internet Explorer 6.0.2 or Macintosh Safari 2.0. ATutor also functions with text based browsers, such as lynx, which may be used by blind users, or those on low bandwith connections. | |
Firefox 1 ok | Ok | |
IE 6 ok | Ok | |
Safari ok | Ok | |
Functional environment | Straightforward navigation, with fast access to most tools. There is no assignment tool. | |
keyword search | Search is available in course content, even across several courses (but not in documents linked from File Manager). No search in forums. | |
configurable environment | Students can change interface language, selectively show/hide some menus, and choose a preferred theme. | |
effective navigation aids | Several navigation tools are available : content menu (global and section level), a tools menu, a toolbar for course elements, previous and next buttons in content. There are also breadcrumb links so students can retrace their steps. | |
context sensitive help | Student help is minimal. | |
Collection of Tools | Forums, glossary (with links from content documents), chat, links, tests & surveys, polls, wiki, announcement, search for external packages, directory. | |
Tutoring and Didactics | ||
Ease of use | Managing a course is mostly straightforward. Contextual online help is available for many instructor tools. | |
Communication | ATutor provides standard communication tools : forums, chat. Instructors can also send regular emails to students from within the platform. Participants can subscribe to forums to get notified by email of new postings. There is no search function in forums. ATutor courses can also make use of ACollab, a complete collaboration/groupware from the same developers. ACollab has a completely different interface however, so its integration with ATutor is not really seamless. | |
forum threaded | Forums are threaded. However, threads are displayed in an unconventional way (the same message can appear several times on a page), making it difficult to follow a threaded discussion. | |
forum searchable | No search in forums | |
private workgroup forums | Yes (within ACollab tool). | |
internal mailing system | Instructors can send an email to their class from within a course. | |
mailing system interoperable with emails | Outgoing, but not incoming. | |
chat | Web-based chat. Chats can be recorded. Chats are accessible to adaptive technology users, and can be created for private group discussions. | |
whiteboard with integr. chat | Available with the AComm addon | |
Instant Messaging | Semi instant messaging through the Users online tools. | |
Student management | ATutor offers different modes of enrollment : self enrollment by student (with/without confirmation), enrollment by uploading a list of students.
Students who are enrolled in a course can also be assigned course administrative privileges, e.g. to define teaching assistants. This allows them to perform actions like managing content or creating and marking tests. Groups are only used to administer different tests to different groups of students. | |
class enrollment by tutor | Tutors can upload lists of students. | |
class enrollment by student | Yes (with optional confirmation by course tutor). | |
tutors can build groups | Yes. Groups are only used to allow the instructor to administer different tests to different groups (ACollab tool provides group functionality). | |
students can build groups | Yes (if assigned group creation privileges) | |
Activity tracking | Statistics by class and student are available for course usage and tests, but not for other tools. | |
individual page/tool access | Hits per content page are available for each student. No statistics for tools usage. | |
class page/tool access | Hits per content page for the whole class. No statistics for tools usage. | |
tracking of individual activity in forum | No | |
tracking of class activity in forum | No | |
individual performance in tests | Yes | |
class performance in tests | Yes | |
class assignment performance | No specific assignment tool (can be managed using ACollab) | |
Course Development | ||
Ease of Use | Course development is usually easy. There is however one problem, due to the fact that there are two different kinds of content : "internal" pages, which are edited directly in ATutor, and files uploaded with the File Manager. Uploaded files can only be linked from internal pages, and are not considered when searching. This might be confusing for course designers. | |
can define course structure | Content can be hierarchically structured with a web interface. Student tools can be made visible on the course home page and/or on the course toolbar. | |
up/download of resources and content | Individual files, zip archives, ATutor/SCORM/IMS Content packages can be uploaded. No ftp or WebDAV access. | |
Hypertext linking | Links between files uploaded in the file manager work. Links to other tools don't always work, since ATutor uses sessions to store the current course. | |
Flexible Development Framework | ATutor provides no way to extend the standard functionality of the system. | |
extensible architecture | Architecture is not extensible. | |
support for client side scripting | Yes | |
support for server side scripting | No | |
server side scripting API | No | |
custom navigation scheme | Through themes it is possible to create custom navigation schemes. | |
Developers support | ATutor provides an online handbook for administrators, instructors and developers. The developers forum is not very active, since development is done by a small group of people (most developer communications happens outside the forums). | |
basic manual/tutorial for authors | Ok | |
advanced manual for programmers | Yes | |
complete documentation of APIs | No APIs | |
responsive support | Questions in the support forums are answered quickly. | |
online user forums | Yes | |
Compatibility with common web authoring tools | Documents (HTML, images) created with other programs can be imported in the file manager and also into content pages using the Content Editor. There is no ftp or WebDAV access. | |
compatible with standard web content | HTML, CSS, javascript, flash, commonly used media files. XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2 compliant. | |
Assessment | ATutor provides a limited number of question types. Management of tests/surveys is easy, and detailed statistics on submissions are available. | |
Online Quiz Editor | Yes | |
Offline Quiz Editor | No | |
Broad Range of Quiz Types | Question types include multiple choice, true/false, open ended (one word/sentence/paragraph or page) and likert (scales such as 'agree/disagree'). Custom scales can be created. | |
Extensible Quiz Engine | No | |
Support for e-learning standards | ATutor can import and export content packages in IMS 1.1.3, SCORM 1.2 or ATutor formats. These appear as normal content. There is also a SCORM RTE (Run Time Environment) that can play SCORM 1.2 Sharable Content Objects (SCOs). SCOs remain separated from the course content as complete learning units. | |
SCORM package import | Yes (SCORM 1.2 content package) | |
IMS-CP import/export | Yes (IMS 1.1.3). If enabled, students can also export content for offline viewing. | |
IMS-QTI import/export | No | |
Adaptable look and feel | Themes can be used for changing the look and feel of ATutor. Administrators select a default theme, and users can choose among installed themes. Administrators can also apply specific themes to categories of courses, disabling the personalised theme preference. Administrators can quickly create custom themes. | |
course level look-and-feel | Themes can be applied to categories of courses. | |
multiple corporate identities | No | |
System & Administration | ||
System management | ATutor is based on a php/mySQL architecture, which can be tuned for improved performance. | |
Performance | Standard PHP/mySQL optimization techniques can be applied. | |
Security | ATutor can be run over SSL. All form input is validated. | |
Administration | Multiple instances of ATutor can run with the same code base (configuration options are set in a single file, which makes this easier). Only internal authentication is currently supported. | |
One server - multiple institutions/faculties | Multiple instances of ATutor can be run with a single code base. | |
Flexible Authentication Scheme | The only supported authentication scheme is with ATutor internal user database. | |
Documentation | Good documentation for administrators. | |