[Building Sakai] Sakai course on CD

[John Norman]

In addition to other comments, this sounds like a slightly unusual  
(from Sakai perspective), but very reasonable scenario for IMS Course  
Cartridge support. If you could find or create a lightweight  
distributable IMS Course Cartridge player and distribute/develop that,  
then Sakai will be wanting to support Course Cartridge export (if we  
don't already) as part of its archiving strategy. The reason I mention  
this specification is that the scenario you outline seems very similar  
to the Publisher use-cases that informed the development of the spec,  
and distributing materials on CD that include content and assessment  
is very similar to some of the online active textbook projects that  
publishers are developing and distributing using the spec.

A key issue might be around expectations of communication back from  
the system running the CD, about the activities and scores of the  
student.

John

PS there are commercial Course Cartridge players.

On 5 Jun 2009, at 11:31, Philip Fedchin wrote:

> Dear Collegues!
>
> We have a rather urgent need at our university to create CD-versions  
> of our Sakai courses.
> In relation to this need we are considering a development of  
> specific tool on the basis of OCW. We would be really grateful for  
> your comments/suggestions/expressed interest to participate.  
> Although we are very much looking forward to Sakai 3, but the task  
> is much more urgent and we are forced to base the process on current  
> Sakai 2.5.4 version with the addition of couple Contrib tools. May  
> be you have some ideas concerning more productive way of realizing  
> our short term goals in terms of Sakai future.
>
> So, we have in mind the following list of tools/functions available  
> from the disk/local workstation:
> 1) modules content (Melete and Resources, perhaps Conditional  
> Release);
> 2) tests (Test&Quizzes);
> 3) glossary (glossary);
> 4) search (new tool for the search on CD).
>
> The preliminary plan is to develop the tool on the basis of OCW. The  
> tool would consist of server and client parts. The server part would  
> be fullfilled by Sakai through the creation of standard course site  
> with modules created using Resources, Melete, Test&Quizzes. The  
> client part is a player (interface), which allows to present on the  
> CD the course downloaded from Sakai.
> And we plan to use Adobe Air (Flex) as the technology behind the  
> client part.
>
> The standard scenario is the following:
> 1) Professor creates a course in Sakai using Melete, Resources,  
> Test&Quizzes and Glossary
> 2) Using the tool the course materials files are downloaded together  
> with the XML file reflecting the structure.
> 3) The files are copied to CD
> 4) The course is played from CD using Adobe Air based player.
> There will be an opportunity if needed to create client interface  
> using SWT (The Standard Widget Toolkit) as we are planning to  
> document and make available the code.
>
> Looking forward to your reaction.
> Best,
> Philip Fedchin
> Associate Director for Information Resources
> Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
> (St.Petersburg State University & Bard College)
> _______________________________________________
> sakai-dev mailing list
> sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev
>
> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org 
>  with a subject of "unsubscribe"