11 July 2012, 2:41

Hi everyone,

I'd like to investigate whether Mahara could integrate with the new Tin Can e-learning standard (the successor to SCORM - though actually it does something rather different to SCORM). Tin Can creates statements like "I did this" (subject, verb, object). there's lots more at the Tin Can website here.

I know that we usually say "Moodle is the place for e-learning" but TinCan emphasises the need for a "learning record store" rather than a LMS/VLE. So my thought is that something like the current Journal function could work well, as a reciever of TinCan statements.

So - learners can learn anywhere around the web (see, for example, the Tappestry iOS app here)  and have their learning journey and outcomes automatically recorded in their Mahara e-portfolio.

When this is added to OpenBadges, we get something really powerful (TinCan powering the learning journey, OpenBadges powering the milestones/achievements).

I want to investigate part funding from my clients, but before I do that I'd like to know:

• whether this makes strategic sense for Mahara
• whether it's feasible
• how we'd work out an approximate amount of effort/cost.

Thanks!

Tim Newham

www.think-associates.co.uk

11 July 2012, 2:43

(sorry just realised I've probably posted this in the wrong place, but don't think I can now move it......)

14 July 2012, 6:25

Great idea Tim! The Tin Can e-learning standard would be an awesome integration! / Jonas

15 July 2012, 2:55

Hello Tim,

Thanks for the info and pointer to Tin Can. I think we will see more moving of data from a LMS to an ePortfolio in the future so that certain information from the LMS (or something similar) is kept in the ePortfolio as a record of learning. Thus, I think further investigation into how that could be achieved with connecting Tin Can to Mahara is a great idea.

Cheers

Kristina

16 July 2012, 6:24

Cool, thanks for the encouragement Jonas and Kristina!

What do I do next? I'm quasi-technical (business analyst focus rather than coding). Is it worth me sketching out some possible workflows and data flows? Or attending one of the developer calls? Or something else?

Tim

18 July 2012, 20:02

Hello Tim,

I think it would be great to have a sketch of the basic work flow which you can then put on the wiki under Specifications in Development and then discuss at a developer meeting so that people have something to go by with.

Cheers

Kristina

19 July 2012, 6:34

I think this should also be brought to the attention of the Open Badges for Moodle and Mahara team. Maybe there are ways to loosely couple the two functions.

Very exciting!

22 July 2012, 6:55

Implementing native Tin Can support in Mahara wouldn't be a small task but it would be a lot easier and possibly more cost effective to write a plugin for Mahara to connect to the Rustici SCORM Cloud which contains full support for Tin Can. That way we could just pull in the content from their Statement viewer using their API and when Moodle (and other LMS) implement Tin Can we could import the content from a users statement viewer into Mahara in the same place. That way we could leave the hard work around the maintenance of the Tin Can player to Rustici/Moodle

Of course - if the funding was available we could definitely implement native support - it would be even better if we could write some form of generic PHP library that could be used by other Open source projects (like Moodle) 

For those that don't know me - I maintain the SCORM module in Moodle - I'd be very interested in being involved in this sort of project.

Over the last couple of years I've mentored a couple of GSOC projects with the aim to finish SCORM 2004 support in Moodle but I'm contemplating running a Tin Can project next year but it's hard to gauge what sort of demand there is for Tin Can support - I'd be interested to hear feedback!