ILIAS

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ILIAS Learning Management

Introduction

ILIAS is a powerful Open Source Learning Management System for developing and realising web-based e-learning. The software was developed to reduce the costs of using new media in education and further training and to ensure the maximum level of customer influence in the implementation of the software. ILIAS is published under the General Public Licence and free of charge.

Course Management

ILIAS allows efficient creation of courses and course materials. It offers standardized tools and templates for the learning and working process including integrated navigation and administration.

Groups and Collaboration

Groups in ILIAS allow cooperative learning and working on the platform without additional tools. Learning groups, working groups or groups for certain fields of interest could be contructed. Groups can use all ILIAS tools like forums or file sharing. Users can create groups that are open for everyone or have specially defined access restrictions, e.g. access with a password.

Learning Content

ILIAS offers multiple ways to deliver learning content. All types of document files can be uploaded, SCORM 2004, SCORM 1.2 and AICC are supported. <(p>

ILIAS includes an internal authoring environment to create XML-based learning modules, that can include images, flash, applets and other web media files. It is possible to create glossaries and reuse term definitions within other learning modules.

Since ILIAS 4.0, ILIAS is also offering an integrated SCORM 2004 content editor with several supported export formats.

Communication

ILIAS supports standard ways of communication as chats, forums and mails. The personal desktop includes an awareness function, that shows users, that are currently online. ILIAS also sends information via RSS to the user and displays external RSS feeds in the system.

Webcasting

Beside RSS support, ILIAS offers the ability to manage podcasts. To create a podcast is as easy as uploading a audio file to the web. The author decides whether items are available throuh the web, or within the LMS only.

Online Surveys

In ILIAS you can use surveys to easily collect information from a large number of users, for example to evaluate courses or other events. ILIAS surveys are easy to create and administer, even for non-experienced users. With a sufficient basis of survey questions, teachers could create their own evaluations fast and efficient.

Google Maps

A learning management system is a virtual meeting place for your teachers and learners. But in ILIAS users may also share their real locations to meet each other. ILIAS supports Google Maps for user profiles and adds maps of all members to groups and courses.

Personal Desktop

Every user in ILIAS has his or her own Personal Desktop. It collects all resources, that are needed by the learning to fulfill the daily learning tasks. The personal desktop features News, Personal Messages, Learning Resources, Personal Notes, Bookmarks, External Web Feeds and other information. The learner can re-arrange these blocks of information according to his needs.

Test & Assessment

ILIAS offers an integrated enviroment for the creation and enforcement of tests & assessments. This can be used for the monitoring of learning progress by the users as well as the tutors and examiners. ILIAS Test & Assessment supports multiple choice, single choice, allocation questions, cloze questions (free text, select box), ordering, matching, hot spot and more question types.

Standard Compliance

ILIAS accomplishs the e-learning-standard SCORM 1.2 and first of all open-source-LMS, it achieves the maximum conformance level LMS-RTE3. It also supports LOM metadata standard, AICC and IMS-QTI.

ILIAS is the first open source LMS that has been certified to be compliant to SCORM 2004 3rd edition. See the list of SCORM certified products at adlnet.org.

Authentication

ILIAS supports a lot of different authentication methods: Standard Login/Password Authentication (Database), LDAP, Shibboleth, CAS, Radius and SOAP based Authentication.

SOAP Interface

Today learning management systems are integrated into a larger environment of institutional administrative systems. To enable information exchange with these systems, ILIAS offers a SOAP interface, that allows to control almost everything in ILIAS with an external application.

Personal Desktop

This is the personal working space for each user in ILIAS. Here users begin their session in ILIAS, and continue using it for a course for instance or enter a virtual working group.

Main page of the Personal Desktop is the Overview where all Personal Items, News, Mails, Notes, and Bookmarks are displayed. The list of Active users shows which other colleagues, course members or group participants are online at the moment.

From the Personal Desktop a user has access to the Personal Profile with the settings of each user and to the personal Learning Progress too.

Features:

• Subscribed courses and content modules (incl. last visited page)
• New and unread internal mails, e.g. course mails or system messages
• Subscribed own forums and groups
• Administration of the personal profile, for instance the language setting or vCard
• Administration of the personal bookmarks for internal and external links
• "Who-is-online?"-feature incl. invitation to the chat
• Calendar and time scheduler
• Overview and administration of personal notes (Desktop and all content items of the repository)
• Overview for monitoring of the personal learning progress
• Push-feature for the contents (tutor can place all contents on the Personal Desktop of the users)

Repository

In ILIAS, e-learning content is not only offered in courses as often seen in other LMS. All available resources for learning and working like learning moduls, SCORM mudules, wikis, discussions forums, files or working groups are stored in the repository. Of course, you find there courses as well. While the Personal Desktop is your private workspace in ILIAS, the repository is your e-learning library where you find everything that could be interesting for your e-learning session.

The repository can be structured in different ways. A lot of institutions are using a structure that represents there own organisation structure, e.g. faculties and institutes, chairs and classes. But you can create the categories of the repository also according thematical structures.

Different modes of presentation (flat view, tree view, filter view) and an internal search engine support user additionally to find the appropriate content easily. For further use all these content objects can be put on the userīs personal desktop by subscription until cancelled.

ILIAS Content Modules

ILIAS offers different possiblities of importing and creating content for e-learning. Therefore, ILIAS is more then a course player. It is a platform for creating and publishing content.

The following table shows the ability of ILIAS for content management:

Learning Management Features

ILIAS offers several possibility to manage the learning process of users. Learning objects can be made accessible under pre-defined conditions, e.g. a user needs to fulfill one or several preconditions before getting access to a new learning object. It is also possible to create learning pathes based on the assessment of each learner's knowledge.

• Time-controlled and test-sensitiv release of learning materials in courses
• Learning objectives oriented allocation of learning materials
• Overview of the monitoring of the personal learning progress on the level of courses for course members and tutors (storage period in the learning moduls, test results, articles in the forums etc.)

Test and Assessment

ILIAS offers an integrated enviroment for the creation and enforcement of tests & assessments. This can be used for the monitoring of learning progress by the users as well as the tutors and examiners. The test & assessment supports the following types of questions:

• Multiple choice
• Single choice
• Allocation questions
• Cloze questions (free text, select box)
• Arrangements duties
• Hot spot (search images to click on)
• Unsettled questions

Questions are desposited in a question pool and arbitrarily re-usable. All kinds of types of questions can be combinated in setting the tests. The different weighting of the answers, the determination of the schemes to evaluate and the margin of error in announced answers (for instance slips of the pen) are supported. The examination performance of a participant can be used to activate self-controlled new, previously arranged contents.

Also the configuration of (anonymized) assessments is available via the integrated authoring tools and can so be appointed in every learning scenario very easily. Basic descriptive scores (for instance frequency of occurrence) are directly announced by ILIAS. So among other things can be requested the quality of courses.

All results of tests and questions are exportable in formats of excel or CSV and so deeper evaluable in specific evaluation tools (for instance SPSS).

Course Management

ILIAS offers a comprehensive and flexible course management to create a choice of eLearning courses. Arbitrary learning modules of the respository can be arranged to courses with forums, chats, groups and other objects. Different entrance rules and current times are supported.

The close functional linkage of the course management with test & assessment in ILIAS allows the individual check-up of previous knowledge and accomplished learning target of the course members.

The tool "tracking of learning progress" supports the course tutor in aiding the course members. So he catches at a glance which course member didn't yet access certain contents and which course member already attended successfully certain partes of the courses.

Communication

For communication purposes ILIAS offers an internal news system, discussion forums and an combinated PHP/Java chat. Tutors can moderate forums and chats.

• An internal news system for all users incl. the administration of the own news and profile
• ILIAS supports the delivery of internal mails to internal and/or external e-mail addresses as well.
• News to groups
• Discussions forums with different modes of presantation ("Who answered last?" / "Who answered whose questions?")
• Notice of new articles in forums by email
• To attach files to articles in discussions
• Administration of the forums and contents
• Invitation to the chat by the "Who-is-online?"-mode
• Port to virtual class rooms (iLinc)

Group System

Because of an own internal group system ILIAS allows cooperative learning and working on the platform without additional tools. Learning groups, working groups or groups for certain fields of interest could be contructed.
Users can create groups that are open for everyone or have specially defined access restrictions. Other users can be invited or get access with a password. All necessary tools for the administration of group members and resources are part of the system.

• Groups with different access settings (open or no registration, required registration, required invitation, private or public groups)
• Administration and delivery of group resources, e.g. learning modules, forums or files
• Administration of group members and invitation of new members
• Access control an permission settings to tools and features
• Construction of cascading groups (groups could contain subgroups)

Supported Standards

ILIAS version 3 supports the following e-learning standards:

• SCORM 1.2 (LMS-RTE3 compliant) and SCORM 2004
• AICC
• LOM metadata
• IMS QTI (Test&Assessment Tool)

System Administration and Terms of Use

The new setup makes it very easy to install ILIAS on a server and configure clients. After installation the entire system administration can be done in ILIAS itself.
This contains the creation of roles for certain circles of users or the administration of the clients as well as the construction of a systematic of knowledge and organisation to categorise the angled contents.

• System settings (for example, whether an anonymous visitation of the platform is possible or not)
• Language settings (over 20 languages available)
• Enable modules, partial modules and tools
• Construction and Configuration of clients
• Administration / import of users and courses (LDAP, SOAP ports)
• Role based access control of repository objects
• Creation and modification of role templates (global roles, local roles)
• Administration of categories (structuring in form or content)

Due to the openness of its source code ILIAS can be adapted easily to specific requirements and coporate identity of an institution. For changes of the "Look&Feel" only little modifications of the HTML layout templates are necessary. The user can additionally choose among different user interfaces ("skins"), which are controlled by style sheet.

ILIAS is available as open source software under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) and can be used without any restrictions. Schools, universities, educational institutions and every interested person may use the system free of charge and contribute to its further development. Users, authors and administrators need only a browser and Internet access. Several operating systems like Unix, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows can be used for the ILIAS server with MySQL and PHP. All additional third-party software (e.g. MySQL, PHP, Apache) is available as Open Source software as well and can be downloaded from our website for free. The software is adaptable to specific claims and can be enhanced to own ideas.
Users worldwide contribute already to the software development coordinated by the ILIAS open source team (www.ilias.de) at the University of Cologne, who is the contact for for all interested people.

A combinated use of ILIAS with the course system Stud.IP is easily possible. Corresponding ports to integrate ILIAS learning modules are available in Stud.IP.

For further information please contact the ILIAS open source team:
info@ilias.de!