Adapt Learning Community: Authoring tool demo this Friday

Hi Sven,

Is there any chance this can be recorded to play back later? We're in Los Angeles and it would be great to see how the authoring tool is coming along, however i'd have to be up at 2 AM to catch the webinar.

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Hi Stephen,

yes, we'll try to record and share on our YouTube channel. Sorry about the early time for you guys - it's mainly because we're flying back home in the afternoon.

I'll announce when the recording is up...

Sven

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Damn! I missed it :( got stuck in a meeting that dragged on by 45 minutes... i look forward to seeing it on YouTube.. i was really hoping to get it first hand..

K

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Hi everyone,

the recording of the authoring tool sneak preview is now up on our YouTube channel at: .

I wanted to get this up very quickly today and I'm afraid that the video quality isn't that great. I'll re-export the it over the weekend.

Thanks to all of the the Adapt Team for making amazing progress during the last year! We're confident about the release during 2014. Please keep watching this space.

Sven

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Man that looks good.. no scrap that it looks great! Working so much nicer that you had imagined. I like the super clean style it has right now :) i'm a minimalist though. Perhaps do a theme option for the tool itself :P not that i don't like the new theme, i'm just a fan of flat design.

Quick question, is it possible you have the test username and password so i can install a develop branch again. I want to play with my DragDrop component and see how the schema works and test it.

Again ... Wow, i cant wait.

Cheers

K

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Hey Kevin,

A little update on this - we've just had a design call about the look and feel. I have a requirement and put it to the team that having themes for the authoring tool is a must. The way we will implement the theme will be to separate the structural elements away from the look and feel. This way you can have a super clean style without affecting the functionality of the tool.

In terms of a test username and password - the install script will do this for you - normally the username is the master tenant details. Try downloading and installing it again. Let me know how you get on.

Thanks,

Daryl

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Hi all, just watched the sneak preview and I have to say it looks great! Really looking forward to the release of it. Everyone here agrees it's a great tool but the developers are more on the design side and not comfortable enough to wade into coding an entire course by hand. Once the authoring tool is out, I anticipate they'll be jumping on quickly.

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this does look very impressive indeed! well done to all involved.

I really only could think of two comments when viewing the how the tool works:

1) dialog boxes all have OK/Cancel buttons. Would be great to see the Apple-style button labelling system used so that buttons state what actions will be performed when clicked e.g. In an 'are you sure you want to delete this component dialog' the OK button would actually be labelled 'Delete component'.

2) 'Save' buttons - more and more these seem to be disappearing and I can't say I really miss them... particularly when there is a decent 'undo' or 'revert all changes' system available. Certainly you shouldn't have to click 'Save' then click 'back to xxxx'.

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Actually with dialog boxes - also consider how often you actually need that full-on modal dialog box.

I really love how Google introduced the subtle notification so that instead of popping up an 'are you sure you wish to delete' dialog you instead get a little unintrusive notification saying 'you have just deleted this [undo]'. Let's face it - 99% of the time you DID mean to click the delete button, so why should the system ask you to confirm that 100% of the time?

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Hi Matt

I was thinking of something very similar to this for the delete dialogs. Designing the look and feel of the modal box is on my list of things to get done!

Cheers
Mike

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I've been looking forward to this release! Will the meeting be recorded? I might not be able to attend the meeting as it will be 4am CST here in the US.

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Thanks for the demo. It looks really promising. You have come a long way in a short time.

One question that I was going to ask but did not have time for:

* Will the tool convert mediafiles to the correct types? In example: will an uploaded videofile be converted to mp4 and ogv?

* The handling of assets looks really nice and if the video/audio file versions are created on the server it will be very easy for anyone to use

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Hi Sven,

I love the idea and concept of this venture, I know a little bit of coding and understand the concepts (I created a Moodle site) but I'm very much focused on the Authoring side and involved in the customer experience.

Throughout my work (universities and colleges) I have worked with many 'course creators' most costing quite a bit and often proving useless for our tailored requirements! So I applaud the 'open source' element allowing people to evaluate and appreciate that you can grow it organically into what you want!

I would be very interested in using your authoring tool and was very impressed with the demo. I would like to contribute my course creation/design knowledge and evaluating user experience with E-learning to this project.

I did notice some issues that I think would effect some users, when going through the demo and moving from section to section, it is not indicated where the user must go to continue (it is not obvious or conventional to some, to use the back button in order to continue with their learning) If it were highlighted or clearly defined then it would be fine.

Like I have said I've used over 20 systems based on course creation, LMS and E-learning platforms and been involved in the design and structure of many of these, so I think I could, and would love to contribute here.

Thanks

Steve Banks

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Hi Steve,

thank you very much for your note and your offer to contribute. I am very keen to take you up on this and will contact you separately via email. It's great that you'd like to take an active part in this project.

All the best and hopefully speak to you soon,
Sven

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"I did notice some issues that I think would effect some users, when going through the demo and moving from section to section, it is not indicated where the user must go to continue (it is not obvious or conventional to some, to use the back button in order to continue with their learning) If it were highlighted or clearly defined then it would be fine."

You're not the only person to have pointed this out - accordingly the CGKineo team have created a component to assist with this - you'll find it as number 10 in this list posted by my colleague Paul: https://community.adaptlearning.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=416

It should be noted that the framework is very much just that - a framework for you as a developer to build on and extend. So if something isn't working the way you'd like, please just add an issue, fork the code, create a pull request, build a component/extension...

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