Custom e-Learning Development

• Technologies and platforms: Joomla CMS, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, WEB2.0, Ajax, FlashMediaServer 3, Ioncube
• Effort: 320 man-months, ongoing
• Site: www.JoomlaLMS.com

An LMS is an e-learning software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of e-learning courses or e-learning corporate training programs. Belitsoft's PHP Developers developed a JoomlaLMS (custom learning management system). It is a fully functional Learning Management System. Due to an extensive set of features, competitive price, and flexibility, the eLearning platform gained popularity and became a widely used Learning Management System. Today, JoomlaLMS is in use by more than 1,000 organizations including higher institutions, banking, insurance, health care, retail, as well as lots of other organizations. The project is supported online by our specialists. 

Custom Learning Management System features:

• Live conferencing with collaboration whiteboard.
• Groupware tools such as discussion forum, chat, etc.
• Multilanguage support.
• Quiz module with tracking of results and a question pool.
• Survey module for creating professional surveys.
• Learning Paths with ability to import SCORM packages and all kind of embedded media and quizzes.
• Customizable templates.
• Possibility to load Joomla extensions on your site.
• LDAP authentication method.
• Reporting and tracking system.
• A tool for uploading and publishing any types of documents.
• Constantly updated, extended help and tutorials.
• Different user roles (administrator, student, teacher, CEO).
• The option of creating totally customizable course certificates.
• Import/export of the courses; self-registration and enrollment options; uploading of CSV-lists.
• Integrated mailbox, announcements and gradebook modules.
• Student/teacher toggle modes.

• Technologies and platforms: PHP, MySQL, JavaScript (Jquery), CSS3, HTML5, XML, AJAX, Apache, Mobile
• Effort: 1100 man-hours, ongoing
• Site: www.tet.nl

SUMMARY

Theorie Examen Trainer is distinguished by it’s mobile and tablet pc adaptiveness, which gives almost a full control of preparation to exams using any mobile device.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Using rich customization options of Joomla CMS and JoomlaLMS, Belitsoft development team created a scalable trainer. We’ve implemented an adaptive interface and script for answering questions regardless of screen size or mobile device type.

Theorie Examen Trainer is a good solution for quality driving theory courses. Here are 4 key criteria:

• Easy and clear interface works perfectly on mobile devices;
• E-commerce tools integration;
• Cost-Effectiveness solution;
• Deep Scalability.

RESULTS

Unique approach while creating this custom e-learning project helped to create driving theory training solution for students, who prefer mobile eLearning.

• Technologies and platforms: PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, XML, AJAX, Apache, Flash (Action Script 3)
• Effort: 20 man-months, ongoing
• Site: www.ticken.nl

The requirements this eLearning development solution were as follows: to implement online flash typing courses containing personal statistics page as well as an option allowing to compare results. Special reporting system allows students, teachers and parents to track learners' results and progress. In order to make the learning process more appropriate for younger audience flash games were integrated into the courses. Such games are not only funny and relaxing, but also educational. One of the key requirements was to enable students to take an exam and earn a personalized diploma.

The project contains a number of tools allowing to provide statistics, manage students and teachers, generate discount codes and create referral tracking system. These management and statistics tools are meant to assist system administrator in generating various reports and analyzing different aspects of the learning process, promotion efficiency, etc.

The project is appealing due to its unique functionality, handy management tools, responsive design and great usability. Rich JoomlaLMS functionality and interactive flash technologies allowed meeting all the requirements described in the project specifications.

***

Creative touch-typing method wins Europe.

Belitsoft ELearning Development belongs to Joomla community and provides wide range of Joomla development services. This includes analytics, custom Joomla development (web portals, components, systems, eLearning portals development and more) as well as custom project support and maintenance.

The TICKEN project is the showcase of our Joomla eLearning portal development. From the moment of its launch it has become extremely popular and on March 25, 2010 Ticken.nl project won 2010 Netherlands IT Startup Award of the annual Thuiswinkel Awards in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This unprecedented success was a great achievement both for its author Martin Beijer and for its eLearning developer – Belitsoft's elearning development team.

The challenge of the project was to create easy and effective yet interactive and attractive touch-typing course within short time period and limited budget. The aim was to develop custom e-learning software, implementing agile method of touch-typing teaching created by Martin Beijer. He was not satisfied with standard touch-typing course his daughter attended and he decided to let both children and adults learn touch-typing with fun and at affordable price.

The solution of the challenge was simple. The main functionality of the learning portal – touch-typing course – is developed on the platform of JoomlaLMS PRO version. 6 other Joomla components were either customized or developed to complete the portal functionality and to meet all the client’s requirements.

Custom features list of the TICKEN portal include:

• Development of a special plugin to count learners’ mistakes;
• Adding new JoomlaLMS reports types for specific course’s activities;
• Interactive games development and integration to make the course more captivating;
• Special online keyboard development.

Belitsoft eLearning software development company maintains the project and continues its development process. Currently this online touch-typing course is available in native languages in Belgium (2010, ticken.be), France (2011, ticken.fr) and the UK (2011, ticken.co.uk). German version is on the way (ticken.de).

We are glad to be a part of this great success and hope that there will be time when Martin Beijer’s course will be available in many other languages across the Globe. Contact us to get more information or discuss your Joomla development plans.

***

On March 25, 2010 Ticken.nl project, developed and supported by Belitsoft company, won 2010 Netherlands IT Startup Award of the annual Thuiswinkel Awards in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

This portal along with several other web projects competed to be the best Starter project of the year 2010. The happy founder of Ticken.nl and our customer Martin Beijer received not only a trophy, but also a sponsorship communications package worth €89.634.

The contest jury was impressed by this high-quality online touch-typing course for children and adults in an interactive and innovative manner. Beijer developed the online course, after his disappointment about the standard touch-typing course his daughter attended.

Belitsoft team developed Ticken.nl portal using JoomlaLMS as a platform. To meet the project requirement we created intuitive user interface, easy-to-use functional and followed Martin Beijer instructions!

And when you still cannot ten type, go and check this portal for help – already thousands of people are using it!

• Technologies and platforms: PHP5, HTML5, CSS3, SCSS, JavaScript, jQuery, SVG graphics, AJAX, Yandex Money Payment System, YouTube API, Third-Party Social Network/Website API, Learning Management System
• Effort: 20 man-month

SUMMARY

Our client wanted to create the educational social network for kids with the ability of parents to teach and financially reward their children once they improve their knowledge in the spheres approved by parents and interesting for a child. Money received by children can be used as their pin money and there is no need to ask parents about it next time! Moreover a child will be taught how to spend his pin money in an effective way. It’s a motivational developed project where like-minded people are able to study and teach their children.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

What concerns the roles of website participants, they can be divided into 2 main groups:

• Parents. Parents are able to purchase the courses and books for their children. The price for each of these courses is not specified, which means that parent is able to spend any sum for his child. 10% of the sum for the purchased course will be transferred to the author, 10% will take NaPlotu and 80% will get a child. So there is a good motivation for everybody to engage!
• Children. Children are able to read and examine the purchased book or course from his parent and get ready for test and essay. The main motivation for passing the test and writing an essay is money that was spent on a course, because after the confirmation of children’s essay results he/she will get these money back.

So the main process of education for children looks in the following way:

• Children need to read a book, examine the video course.
• Then he/she will pass a test on that book or video. Or simply will write an essay.
• As a result his/her educational process will be checked by his/her parents.

Also there is an option to pass a video course and in the end children need to create video podcast as a reply on video.

RESULTS

Due to use of many modules and APIs Belitsoft e-learning developers created a custom e-learning solution with educational purpose. This social network offers an innovative and unique way of education and a great variety of powerful features. If you are looking for place where your children can learn something new and leave a feedback of what have been learned, or if you are an author of courses and looking for place where you can earn money feel free to start your process of kids’ education.

• Technologies and platforms: SharePoint, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, AJAX, MSSQL, WebParts, MSVisualStudio, Sharepoint Designer
• Effort: 500 man-months, ongoing

As a result, we have provided the distant learning software using the Microsoft platform functionality for many end-users and customers who use our custom eLearning solution today. Microsoft capabilities merged with our expertise and skills resulted in a new eLearning product with many opportunities for learning institutions and companies from totally different areas and of different scale.

We have developed a SharePoint e-learning application with easy-to-navigate user interface, enhanced views and menu structure for online learning. This distance learning system is easy to manage due to full integration with familiar Microsoft Office application. It uses native SharePoint tools for authoring, publishing, organizing, and finding information, for registration and user management, etc.

Considering the tutors' requirements and learners' needs we have developed custom learning software that incorporates all the necessary and requested specifications. SharePoint learning solution combines the most wanted features for various eLearning tasks including interactive delivery of information, course catalogues, loads of assessments, remote registration / course creation, group/mentor rooms with file sharing, tracking / reports on progress and skills attainment and so on. It offers active directory for work, posting and editing documents and files of different formats, web conferences and even more!

Currently we have started using new Microsoft LyncServer 2010 as the platform for our web conferencing feature. This server offers highly effective communication what makes no difference between full-day learning and distance learning. All the learning process participants are engaged in work, they can share video and audio information during online lectures, exams, seminars, etc. Moreover they can exchange files during conference.

Suit of web parts for our developed Sharepoint VLE represents an incorporated set of controls for creating web pages in the VLE part of the system that enable end-users to modify the content, appearance and behaviour of the page directly from a browser. When users change pages and controls, the settings can be saved to keep user's personal preferences in the future browser sessions. These web parts capabilities allowed our developers to empower end-users to personalize a web application dynamically, without developer or administrator intervention.

If a user wishes to apply our VLE web parts he has the following options at his disposal:

• Individualizing page's content: users can add new web parts to a page, delete them, minimize them like ordinary windows, and reset them.
• Modifying web parts' content changing its appearance and layout, and restoring web parts' content.
• Exporting controls: users can import or export web parts control settings to use on other pages or sites, retaining the properties, appearance, and even the data in the controls. This reduces data entry and configuration demands on end-users.
• Adding items to web parts and modify their content.
• Opening and hiding the edit mode of the parts.

The suit of web parts created for our Sharepoint learning management system provides users with a friendly and nice-looking interface that they may personalize according to their preferences and usability.

It is possible to see and use for some time a free trial version of this SharePoint learning software or purchase software on request. We continue the system development and provide support and maintenance for all current users of this SharePoint-based LMS all over the world. The system has thousands of installations and the number of its users constantly grows.

• Technologies and platforms: JRE1.6+, BlackBoard 9.1+, Moodle 2.7+
• Effort: 7 man-months

BlackBoard LMS course may include quizzes/tests, web pages, video, audio, SCORM packages, book sections and documents of other types and their combination in a learning path/program. Our converter can process all this data and make the exact copy of course to be added and deployed into Blackboard LMS.

The conversion process is simple. You need to give several ID's for a new courses, attach the courses to be converted and click «submit» button to start the process. There are 3 settings while converting the courses into Blackboard:

• Ignore if exists
• Update if there is something new in the course
• Remove old

When system finishes its work, you get a full course from Moodle, ready to be deployed and used in the BlackBoard LMS.

Developing of this tool saves plenty of time as well as funds when we speak about 100+ courses and more to be converted. Once created course shouldn't be developed from scratch each time if you decide to add it into another LMS. Just use converter and copy content from one system into another.

• Technologies and platforms: C#, JavaScript, XML, XSLT; SharePoint 2010 platform, with extensive use of jQuery
• Effort: 70 man-months, ongoing

The goal of this project was to empower SharePoint-based learning management system with composition of social communication features allowing students and tutors to collaborate quickly, interact and share ideas and content using document libraries, blogs, wikis, chats, short messaging services and other popular social features. Another tricky task was to totally revamp SharePoint User interface according to provided designs.

Bringing social to the LMS makes learning process more open, easy and comfortable for students.It increases their level of involvement in learning process and augments their interest to learning. Social features move tutors to the next level of tuition as well. More simple educational process makes it closer to students; allows tutors to get early feedback on materials, disciplines and teaching methods. Also it attracts students to what they learn and enforce them to take part in education not  just by learning the materials, but also discussing them with mates and even contributing their own part to the learning society.

To achieve most effective results in learning with LMS the following social collaboration features were added:

• Most popular features like blogs and wikis are brought to the next level with enhancements making them a truly social collaboration tools.
• Social tools like chats, feed readers, short messaging, ‘Ask the Expert’ service are designed to increase collaboration speed, make communications simple and bring tutors and students closer to what they learn.
• With customized User Profile with well-known social metadata you can always find people with similar interests around you or let the world know who you are and what you are good at.
• Fully customized, specially designed UI respecting the user experience.
• A user interface with everything is at hand at any time.
• Permission-based access management allows administrators to quickly and easily configure access levels to any groups of people involved in educational process.

SharePoint-based LMS with the listed above features and new design is the easiest way to join social collaboration while learning, making a handy contribution and sharing your thoughts with like-minded people around you.It brings learning to the upper level and provides easier ways of communication and learning.

• Technologies and platforms: .NET Framework, SCORM, Microsoft Word, API, DHTML, CSS
• Effort: 12 man-months

The composite work over this application resulted in the below-mentioned opportunities available now to anyone who needs a quiz-generating tool:

• customizing the layout, colors, text and graphics;
• adding different graded and survey question types;
• providing feedbacks;
• using images and sounds;
• integrating with our PowerPointToFlashProduction for courses and presentations;
• integrating with LMS;
• saving quiz results via email or LMS.

As a rapid authoring tool QuizProduction gained popularity in the teaching process of many educational institutions where regular quiz composing is indispensable. In addition according to the testimonials, the interactivity and complexity that quizzes provide get students more interested and involved.

The component improvement process yet never stops. The product's potentiality is modernized. When time elapses, QuizProduction gets steadily more sophisticated.