Overall design

MyLMS overall design:

• Promotes a social constructionist pedagogy (collaboration, activities, critical
  reflection, etc)
• Suitable for 100% online classes as well as supplementing face-to-face learning
• Simple, lightweight, efficient, compatible, low-tech browser interface
• Easy to install on almost any platform that supports PHP. Requires only one database
  (and can share it).
• Full database abstraction supports all major brands of database (except for initial
  table definition)
• Course listing shows descriptions for every course on the server, including accessibility
  to guests.
• Courses can be categorised and searched - one MyLMS site can support thousands
  of courses
• Emphasis on strong security throughout. Forms are all checked, data validated, cookies
  encrypted etc
• Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings etc) can be edited using an embedded
  WYSIWYG HTML editor

Site management

• Site is managed by an administrator
  user
• Site is defined during setup. Defaults can be edited during setup or globally accepted
• Site can be modified by a robust
  Site administration block.
• Plug-in "themes" allow the administrator
  to customize the site colors, fonts, layout etc to suit local needs
• Plug-in
  activity modules can be added to existing MyLMS installations
• Plug-in language packs allow full localization to any language. These can be edited using a built-in
  web-based editor. Currently there are language packs for over
  70 languages.
• The code is clearly-written PHP under a GPL license - easy to modify to suit your
  needs

User management

Overview

• Goals are to reduce admin involvement to a minimum, while retaining high security
• Supports a range of user authentication
  mechanisms through plug-in authentication modules, allowing easy integration with
  existing systems.
  • Standard email method: students can create their own login accounts. Email addresses
    are verified by confirmation.
  • LDAP method: account
    logins can be checked against an LDAP server. Admin can specify which fields to
    use.
  • For example, IMAP,
    POP3, NNTP>: account logins are checked against a mail
    or news server. SSL/TLS certificates are supported.
• Students are encouraged to build an online
  Edit profile including photos, description. Email addresses can be protected
  from display if required.
  • Every user can specify their own timezone, and every date in MyLMS is translated
    to that timezone (e.g. posting dates, assignment due dates etc)
  • Every user can choose the language used for the MyLMS interface (English, French,
    German, Spanish, Portuguese etc)

Enrolment

• After a user has been authenticated by the site or allowed in as a guest, they are
  enrolled in courses.
• Teachers can add an "enrolment
  key" to their courses to only allow certain students to enter. They can give
  out this key face-to-face or via personal email etc
• Teachers can enrol students
  manually if desired
• Teachers can unenrol students
  manually if desired, otherwise they are automatically unenrolled after a certain
  period of inactivity (set by the admin)
• There are many Enrolment_plugins
  • Includes: LADP, IMS, Paypal,
    MyLMS Network to name a few
  • Any
    External database that has least two fields can be used as an external authentication
    source
  • Flat file or CSV files can automatically authenticate and enroll students in specific
    courses
• Each person requires only one account for the whole server - each account can have
  different access
• Meta courses
  get their enrollment information from 1 or more other courses.

Roles

• Roles that combine specific
  permissions for specific participants can be defined for each course
• An admin account controls the creation of courses and creates teachers by assigning
  users to courses and giving them a role in that context
• New roles can be created, copied from existing roles and edited. Some standard roles
  include:
  • Course creators can create courses, teach in them, and assign others to teacher
    roles.
  • Teachers are a role in a specific course.
  • Non-editing teacher roles are available for adjuncts, and part-time tutors.
  • Students can participate and view activities but not create them
  • Guests are view only users.

Course management

Overview

• Typically, a teacher has full control over all settings for a course.
  • This can include assigning other teachers roles with less privileges
• Choice of course formats settings such as by week, by topic or a discussion-focused
  social format
• Individual Course_settings#Force_theme
  and layout can be created for any course.
• Flexible array of course
  activities - Forums, Quizzes, Glossaries, Resources, Choices, Surveys, Assignments,
  Chats, Workshops
• Groups - teacher(s) and students can be
  placed in one or more groups
• Recent changes to the course since the last login can be displayed on the course
  home page - helps give sense of community
• Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings etc) can be edited using an embedded
  WYSIWYG HTML editor
• All grades for Forums, Quizzes and Assignments
  can be viewed on one page (and downloaded as a spreadsheet file) in a Gradebook.
• Full user logging and tracking - activity
  reports for each student are available with graphs and details about each module
  (last access, number of times read) as well as a detailed "story" of each students
  involvement including postings etc on one page.
• Mail integration - copies of forum posts, teacher feedback etc can be mailed in
  HTML or plain text.
• Custom scales
  - teachers can define their
  own scales to be used for grading forums and assignments
• Courses can be packaged as a single zip file using the Backup function. These can be restored on any MyLMS server.
• Specific course activities and resources can be imported from another existing course

Assignment Module

• Assignments can be
  specified with a due date and a maximum grade.
• Students can upload their assignments (any file format) to the server - they are
  date-stamped.
• Late assignments are allowed, but the amount of lateness is shown clearly to the
  teacher
• For each particular assignment, the whole class can be assessed (grade and comment)
  on one page in one form.
• Teacher feedback is appended to the assignment page for each student, and notification
  is mailed out.
• The teacher can choose to allow resubmission of assignments after grading (for regrading)
• Allowing resubmissions can allow the teacher to progress monitor student projects/assignments
  as they evolve.
• Advanced assignments can allow multiple files to be uploaded. This could keep together
  preplanning maps, outlines, research papers and presentations. (Not for beginners)

Chat module

• The Chat module allows smooth,
  synchronous text interaction
  • They can be limited to group members or roles, or be for anyone in the course
• Includes profile pictures in the chat window
• Supports URLs, smilies, embedded HTML, images etc
• All sessions are logged for later viewing, and these can also be made available
  to students

Choice module

• The Choice module is like
  a single question poll. Can either be used to vote on something, or to get feedback
  from every student
• Teacher sees intuitive table view of who chose what
• Students can optionally be allowed to see an up-to-date graph of results

Forum Module

• Different types of forums are
  available, such as teacher-only, course news, open-to-all, and one-thread-per-user.
• There are several options for emailing forum posts to members of the course.
• All postings have the authors photo attached.
• Discussions can be viewed nested, flat or threaded, oldest or newest first.
• Robust subscription methods for each forum
  • Individual forums can be subscribed to by each person
  • Teacher can force subscription for all members of the course, either initially or
    permanently.
• Groups features allow options for more entry and viewing limitations for students.
• The teacher can choose not to allow replies to their posts (announcements.
• Discussion threads can be moved
  between forums or split by the teacher.
• Attachments can be made to posts and shown as part of message.
• Forum ratings can be used, these can be restricted to a range of dates.

Glossary Module

• The Glossary module is
  one of the modules that best illustrates the way that MyLMS can fundamentally improve
  upon the experience of a traditional classroom
• When students contribute to a course in a public place like the glossary, their
  ideas are given weight and attention and often result in a greater pride or ownership
  of the assignment
• Allows participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary
• Student entries can be previewed by instructors before publishing
• Entries can be searched or browsed using alphabet, category, date, and author
• A glossary of terms can be easily referenced by students
• Almost any module of MyLMS can be set to hyperlink - automatically - to any word
  or phrase that is stored in or added to the glossary
• Glossary items can be grouped in categories
• Participants can comment on glossary entries
• Entries can be rated using teacher-defined scales
• Glossaries can be easily exported and imported via xml
• Glossaries can be fully searched
• Glossaries can be viewed with different display formats

Lesson Module

• A lesson is a single activity
  where a series of pages are presented to the student.
• Pages can allow students to make choices by their answers to questions or by selecting
  a button with a description.
  • This allows for a simple slide show type of presentation, with questions.
  • It allows for a branching, adaptive presentation based upon a student's specific
    choice.
  • Navigation through the lesson can be straight forward or complex, logical or random.
• Jumps are associated with each choice that
  link to other lesson pages.
  • Jumps can be to a specific page or to a random page or a page not seen by the student.
• Choices that are answers to questions and can be scored and given individual feed
  back.
  • Question pages include Multiple choice, Multi-answer, T/F, numeric, short answer
    and essay.
• Lesson settings
  offer the teacher many options such as:
  • Different scoring and grading potentials
  • Lessons can build upon each other through conditional dependencies upon one another
  • Student attempts, time limits, minimum score and retakes can be set
  • Students may see progress bars, running score, reinforcement to student questions
  • Password, start and end times, and other restrictions can be placed on students.
• Pages can be created one at a time or
  imported.

Quiz Module

• Teachers can define a database
  of questions where they can add these questions to a course quiz or have the
  questions shared over the MyLMS site.
  • Questions can be stored in
    categories for easy access, and these groups of questions can be "published"
    to make them accessible to any quiz on the site.
• and can be re-graded if questions are modified
• There are many
  quiz settings options, such as:
  • Quizzes can have a limited time window outside of which they are not available
  • At the teacher's option, quizzes can be attempted multiple times, and can show feedback
    and/or correct answers
  • Quiz questions and quiz answers can be shuffled (randomised) to reduce cheating
  • Quizzes can be attempted multiple times, if desired
  • Attempts can be cumulative, if desired, and finished over several sessions
• Questions allow HTML formatting, images and has a
  friendly tool bar.
• Questions can be imported
  or exported in many
  file formats.
• There are more than 10 question types, each with different scoring methods, such
  as:
  • Multiple-choice questions supporting single or multiple answers
  • Short Answer questions (words or phrases)
  • True-False questions
  • Matching questions
  • Random questions
  • Numerical questions (with allowable ranges)
  • Embedded-answer questions (cloze style) with answers within passages of text
  • Embedded
    descriptive text and graphics is possible in questions

Resource Module

• Resources can display of many types
  of media content files by a single link on the course page, such as:
  • Word, Powerpoint, Flash, Video formats, Audio formats
  • Internal web pages (HTML formatted) can be created with HTML editor tool
  • Internal text pages (no formatting)
  • Files can be stored locally or the link point to remote locations
• Files can be uploaded and managed (zipped,
  unzipped, renamed, moved) in the course
  • Folders can be created and managed in the course and students given a link to the
    folder.
• External content on the web can be linked to or seamlessly included within the course
  interface.
  • External web applications can be linked to with data passed to them

Survey Module

• Built-in surveys (COLLES,
  ATTLS) have been proven as instruments for analysing online classes
• Online survey reports always available, including many graphs. Data is downloadable
  as an Excel spreadsheet or CSV text file.
• Survey interface prevents partly-finished surveys.
• Feedback is provided to the student of their results compared to the class averages

Wiki Module

• Wiki module is a series of web
  pages that anyone can add to or edit
• It enables document pages to be authored collectively
• Supports groups
• There are many teacher
  based editing tools.

Workshop Module

• Workshop module allows
  peer assessement of documents, and the teacher can manage and grade the assessment.
• Supports a wide range of possible grading scales
• Teacher can provide sample documents for students to practice grading
• Being redone for MyLMS 2.0