Desire2Learn Learning Repository 4.0 September 30, 2009
Posted by YvonneMonterroso in : Comms, Technology , trackbackI thought a good introduction might be to talk a bit about the last release of the Learning Repository. Our development team is busily working away on the next release (Spring 2010) and hopefully soon, I will be in a position to share some of the exciting things coming there. LOR 4.0 was a landmark release for our team as we were finally able to nicely showcase the pieces that we had been putting together beneath the covers for some time.
For me, one the most exciting features was the ability to directly edit metadata on objects after they’d been published to the repository. It was very important to not lose sight of the importance of packaging objects in the repository to provide good support for complex learning objects and thus significant thought and effort were involved with the design to ensure package integrity while still providing the flexibility to edit metadata without forcing users to republish. With the metadata firmly integrated on the Learning Repository side as well as from Manage Content, several other nice features were enabled in this release such as searching metadata based on custom vocabularies and new browse capabilities.
Support for easy tagging with Creative Commons licenses was something that had become imperative from clients perspective given a main goal for the Learning Repository is to share resources and ensuring that content was clearly labeled with usage rights streamlines the sharing process. These new features accompanied by friendlier new interface with a customizable welcome area, browse counts and improved feature visibility continue to contribute to the success of the product and our clients. We’re very much looking forward to seeing how NTU will put these new features to use and working to understand how our future development can help assist NTU and our other clients.
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Sound like you are talking our language Yvonne. The developments seem to be picking up the needs of the learning and teaching community. The ability to edit the the metadata after the objects have been published is an important advancement which will be appreciated. And we look forward to looking at customised vocabularies and investigating the issues associated with Creative Commons.