[saukalra]

E-Learn @ Mac Fall Launch Update

From the Daily News:

The Centre for Leadership in Learning (CLL) has successfully completed a spring/summer course pilot on McMaster's new centrally-supported Learning Management System: [email protected] (ELM). Since April of this year, the CLL has supported 21 summer courses and over 1000 faculty and students on the new system.

McMaster faculty and staff can log into ELM using their Mac ID and can explore the web site, take the many ELM workshop sessions and request course shells to develop courses for the upcoming academic year. Since WebCT will no longer be supported by the vendor, it is crucial that faculty and staff explore ELM this summer and take advantage of the available resources including face-to-face workshops and on-line material. Over the next couple of weeks, as instructors log on to the new system, many will see that their previous WebCT courses have successfully migrated to the new system.

"The staff in the CLL have done a tremendous job over the last few months ensuring that the system is ready for a full campus launch in time for the academic year," says Susan Vajoczki, acting director at CLL. "Users will see ELM continue to evolve over the next few months as more features are developed".

On the list of developments for the upcoming academic year are integrations with MacLive, iTunes U, wikis, library tools, as well as development of features such as ePortfolios, content repositories, and communities of practice.

[Taunton]

Has anyone had the chance to experience ELM? What's it like?

[Fight0]

I'm interested too. I hope it's better than WebCT.

I really hope they don't have a little icon showing that you have a new mark showing for a course; that little guy with the red 'A'.

I would refuse to click on it and whenever I logged onto WebCT it loomed over me as some sort of specter.

[AnguishedEnd]

Whats Different in ELM for WebCT Users? (This vid I guess is for instructors mostly so some of it you wont be able to view but it does show some of the new stuff you'll be able to use on ELM like chat, see whos online etc.)

You can even log onto ELM right now to see what its like although you can't do much.

[Taunton]

Heads up to fellow Firefox 3.5 users

After looking around a bit I noticed that so far, Firefox 3.5 is not supported on ELM.

It doesn't mean that it won't work/won't be accessible, it just means that there's no guarantee it will work, and if there's problems they will tell you to use a supported browser.

[lorend]

Is that Firefox 3.5 and all newer versions won't work too?

[Taunton]

Originally Posted by lorend

Is that Firefox 3.5 and all newer versions won't work too?

The most current version of Firefox is 3.5... technically we're at update 3.5.2 right now.

It's not that it won't work... it's just not supported. They don't guarantee that it will work properly.

[jhan523]

Wow, I know so many people that use Firefox, I can't believe it's not supported.

[Matt Wright]

I use firefox and E-Learn works fine for me.

[jhan523]

Awesome! That's good news ^-^

[Taunton]

Originally Posted by jhan523

Wow, I know so many people that use Firefox, I can't believe it's not supported.

Firefox 3.0 is fully supported.

I suspect there won't be much in terms of problems for FF 3.5 users, I'm just pointing out that it's not currently supported.

[jhan523]

Originally Posted by Taunton

Firefox 3.0 is fully supported.

I suspect there won't be much in terms of problems for FF 3.5 users, I'm just pointing out that it's not currently supported.

Yeah, Firefox is the second biggest in the browser market at over 34%, so you'd think they would design ELM so it's supported by FF. (IE is just under 54%)

[starlight]

Originally Posted by Taunton

Has anyone had the chance to experience ELM? What's it like?

ELM is pretty good. I've never used WebCT so I can't compare but it's really user friendly and easy to use.

[luv.ng.u]

Originally Posted by Taunton

Has anyone had the chance to experience ELM? What's it like?

[email protected] Home.jpg
When you sign in, the first page you see is the "Home page". Personally, I think it's kind of useless because it doesn't do anything at all. You have to then click "Courses" to see your list of courses.

[email protected] Courses.jpg
From this, you can see your list of courses and be able to select whichever one you want to see.

[email protected]
This is my Cell Biology 2B03 Summer course site. It could be different from other courses, but it gives a general idea. A very useful navigation bar is located on the left of the site. When there are updates, for example, grades or announcements or assessments (quizzes), there is a green star that pops up beside the word. Eg. Grades *

It's not like the Webct "A" button. Also, something I found pretty useful is the "Who's Online" function. Not every instructor will utilize this function as I signed up for Psych 1X03 in the first summer term and it didn't have the "Who's Online" button. But Bio 2B03 had it and I found it rather useful. (Plus, I was intrigued to know who else, other than me, was online being nerdy. You can also message others (similar to MSN) and be able to communicate with your fellow classmates.

There is also a calendar which you can also input personal dates and reminders. Professors can update the calendars so that students know when assignments/ midterms/exams are.

One drawback, however, is that the ELM site is slightly slower than Webct. Blackboard, the platform that ELM is based upon, apparently is a much larger than Webct. I hope they will try to fix that before school starts or else there will be many many frustrated students.

Another slight problem is that some of the summer users have noticed that older computers aren't really compatible with ELM and problems have been seen. (A student went to Mills and the computers there won't display anything.) :S

Overall, I think it's a pretty good site.

[sinthusized]

Originally Posted by luv.ng.u

Attachment 802
When you sign in, the first page you see is the "Home page". Personally, I think it's kind of useless because it doesn't do anything at all. You have to then click "Courses" to see your list of courses.

Attachment 803
From this, you can see your list of courses and be able to select whichever one you want to see.

Attachment 804
This is my Cell Biology 2B03 Summer course site. It could be different from other courses, but it gives a general idea. A very useful navigation bar is located on the left of the site. When there are updates, for example, grades or announcements or assessments (quizzes), there is a green star that pops up beside the word. Eg. Grades *

It's not like the Webct "A" button. Also, something I found pretty useful is the "Who's Online" function. Not every instructor will utilize this function as I signed up for Psych 1X03 in the first summer term and it didn't have the "Who's Online" button. But Bio 2B03 had it and I found it rather useful. (Plus, I was intrigued to know who else, other than me, was online being nerdy. You can also message others (similar to MSN) and be able to communicate with your fellow classmates.

There is also a calendar which you can also input personal dates and reminders. Professors can update the calendars so that students know when assignments/ midterms/exams are.

One drawback, however, is that the ELM site is slightly slower than Webct. Blackboard, the platform that ELM is based upon, apparently is a much larger than Webct. I hope they will try to fix that before school starts or else there will be many many frustrated students.

Another slight problem is that some of the summer users have noticed that older computers aren't really compatible with ELM and problems have been seen. (A student went to Mills and the computers there won't display anything.) :S


Overall, I think it's a pretty good site.

Yeah... I went to mills to print stuff out cause my printer at home bust and nothing came up. The computers at health sci library generally were good with ELM though.