LAMS The Learning Activity Management System James Dalziel

LAMS: The Learning Activity Management System James Dalziel Professor of Learning Technology & Director, Macquarie E-Learning Centre Of Excellence (MELCOE) Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia james@melcoe. mq. edu. au www. melcoe. mq. edu. au Presentation for Penn State University, USA, October 12 th, 2006

Overview • Introduction to LAMS • Demonstration of LAMS • Integrating LAMS with LMSs • LAMS Community • From e-learning to learning • e. Research workflows - RAMS • Questions and Discussion • Hands on

LAMS • World’s leading software for digital lesson plans – 1000 s of users across 80+ countries • Visual “drag and drop” approach to designing activities • Teacher designs activities, then “runs” them with students, and monitors student progress • Freely available as open source software

LAMS • LAMS is successful in all areas of education – Higher education – Schools – Vocational training – Corporate e-learning • Easy to use – can build a lesson in less than 10 minutes • **Lessons can be stored, re-used, adapted and shared

LAMS • LAMS has many uses, eg, it can be used for: – live collaborative activities in a computer lab – online homework activities completed at home or in the library – individual instruction or small group work in classrooms with few computers – dynamic presentations in conjunction with an interactive whiteboard or projector – personalised learning and presenting content (Learning Objects) – collaboration across several educational institutions, even in different countries

LAMS • There is no licence cost for LAMS – it is freely available as open source software – LAMS is freely provided by the non-profit LAMS Foundation • Fee-based services and support for LAMS are provided by a commercial company – LAMS International • Both LAMS Foundation and LAMS International are supported by Macquarie University

LAMS • LAMS users include: – UK Department for Education and Skills together with the UK Specialist Schools Trust – supporting over 40 UK schools – New Zealand Ministry of Education – supporting over 30 NZ schools, together with polytechnics and universities – UK Joint Information Systems Committee (“JISC”) supporting 15 Further Education and 16 Higher Education institutions in the UK, and development work – Oxford University – Cambridge University – Australian National University & University of Canberra – Nanyang Technological University, Singapore – University of Sussex – National Library of New Zealand – Tasmanian, NSW and South Australian Departments of Education

LAMS • LAMS V 2 full version due end of October 2006 – Many new features – Much greater scalability – “Pluggable” activity tools – Support for languages other than English

LAMS Demonstration

Login Page of LAMS/Sakai test server – includes further information links

Sample course in Sakai that uses LAMS

Adding a LAMS sequence to a Sakai course – Sakai page

Adding a LAMS sequence to a Sakai course – LAMS authoring page (pop-up)

Sample course in Sakai with links to LAMS sequences shown in central area

Student view of LAMS activities as pop-up window from Sakai course page

LAMS monitoring page for live student sequence – popup from teacher area

Sharing Lesson Plans: The LAMS Community • The “LAMS Community” is global website for communities of LAMS users. www. lamscommunity. org – Discuss the use of LAMS, new features, technical issues – **Share sequences, search for sequences, comment on and rate sequences, and get statistics on downloads – Find colleagues with similar interests, form sub-communities • We use Creative Commons “open content” licensing of LAMS sequences • Approximately 1600 members, 86 countries, 100 shared sequences, 600 discussion postings

LAMS Community – View of various communities & forums

LAMS Community – Repository Summary

LAMS Community – Public Sequence Repository

LAMS Community – Detailed view of individual sequence

LAMS Evaluations • Public evaluations from UK JISC (UK higher education and vocational training) and UK BECTA (schools) • Internal evaluations at NSW DET and NZ Mo. E • Some common themes: – Both teachers and students very positive about LAMS – Students enjoy collaboration and structure flow of tasks – “know what I’m meant to be doing” – Students demonstrate good “time on task/focus” – Teacher find authoring interface easy to use and intuitive – Teachers report LAMS helping them to reflect on their pedagogy and teaching style (“unlike other technologies”) – Sharing and adaptation is very rapid, but learning the features of the system at the start takes a bit longer

From “e-learning” to “learning” • LAMS V 2 allows any activity to be run in online or “offline” mode – If you select online, LAMS will configure the relevant environment, link to other activities, etc – If you select offline, LAMS will be able to print off a set of instructions about how to run the activity without technology, including potential for student worksheets • LAMS becomes a general lesson planning tool, with technology-based delivery of activities as an option

The future of educational tools? Stand alone Sequenced Offline Online Teacher led Student led

LAMS V 2 – Getting involved • Programmer – Explore source code, start writing new tools or help with core – Co-ordinate with core team via LAMS Community tech forums • Translator – See translator information on LAMS Community – ready to go • Bug hunter – Start by reviewing Jira existing bugs, then hunt down new bugs and post good descriptions to LAMS Community • Educational feedback – Post comments to the LAMS Community on features, look and feel, suggestions for the future, things you don’t like, etc

Upcoming for LAMS V 2. 1 • The LAMS V 2 architecture provides the foundations for many new features which are not yet visible, eg: – – – Branching Conditionality Advanced grouping “Data in/data out” Combinations of the above • Also planned for the future are: – – “Edit on the fly” Instant messaging Pedagogic planner creator/editor Student-led tools and sequencing (LAMS PLE? )

Introducing RAMS • The “Research Activity Management System” (RAMS) builds on the LAMS V 2 workflow core (+ new e. Research features) • A new suite of activity tools appropriate for peoplebased e. Research activityflows – Plus multi-purpose tools that apply across e. Learning and e. Research • The result is two different domain-specific applications (LAMS for e. Learning; RAMS for e. Research) that draw on a common workflow core • Everything is open source

Introducing RAMS Teachers Researchers LAMS Application e. Learning specific tools RAMS Application Multi-purpose tools e. Research specific tools “Education Workflow Engine” (LAMS core + new RAMS development) Admin Author Monitor Participant

Sample e. Research Activityflow Use Cases High level use cases from RAMP proposal: 1. Managing the research enterprise lifecycle (from grant planning to grant submission, to project initiation, to project lifecycle management, to research outcome dissemination), 2. Implementing auditable evaluation processes for assessing research quality (RQF assessor workflows, journal/conference peer review management, etc), 3. Designing and tracking article submission processes for Institutional Repositories, 4. Flexibly configuring and running online research collaboration processes (such as staged collaborative analysis and discussion for Ph. D/Postdocs around raw data, leading to interpretation, visualisation, and ultimately publications), and 5. Process-oriented research data collection from human subjects (such as in the humanities, and social and cognitive sciences).