[Building Sakai] Common Cartridge export and other Lessons features

[Charles Hedrick]

I have had several requests for Common Cartridge export. I have code now in trunk. It's in reasonably good shape, though there are still things to do over the next few weeks. The highest priority at the moment is to support contrib alternatives, initially Assignment 2 and jForum. 

I've tried a few other implementations. The best results so far have been with Canvas. They do a pretty good job of importing our exports. Their exports have an issue: they flatten out the page / subpage hierarchy in Lessons when they export. (Their Lessons clone is called "Modules.") There are details with lesser used question types as well.

Moodle does a reasonable job of import, though you have to ask Sakai to export an older format, version 1.1 rather than the current 1.2. The system I'm using doesn't have Moodle's export code installed.

Blackboard seems to do a reasonable job of import. I'm still assessing some details of that and of export. I believe with proper documentation exchange with Blackboard will work.

The code is currently in trunk. I plan to put it in 2.9.x right after 2.9.2 releases. It's a bit too late to add a feature to 2.9.2. If 2.9 sites want it, I will announce a tag here that could be used with 2.9.2. It will have a couple of minor patches, CC export, and a few tixes to CC import that I found when testing export. However I know of no serious problems with the code that will go into 2.9.2.

Once I check in CC export, the main things missing from 2.9.x will be

* The new inline question type
* Rubrics for students to assess other students' work in student content

There are also things from a couple of other institutions that will go into trunk (but not 2.9.x) shortly:

* Reprgamization of the CSS, from Michigan
* Implementaton of /direct access to the major data structures

I would normally not move these new features into a release until they've been used at Rutgers for a while, so that means sometime around fall I'll need to move a bunch of stuff from trunk to 2.9.x. Rutgers is currently using something between trunk and 2.9.x, but later this month we will move to trunk of Lessons.