Thank you very much to those of you who registered interest in becoming a beta tester for the Adapt Authoring Tool. The project works entirely on voluntary contributions and we very much appreciate your support.
I have emailed the 15 of you who contacted me directly with the information below. For those of you who have responded via this thread (Helen, Don, Thomas and Andrew), please have a read of the information below and add a note saying that you are happy to proceed. I will then give you access to the Beta testing credentials and instructions.
Before you get started, there are a few important general points, which I have captured in this email. Please read these carefully before confirming that you would like to go ahead.
In general:
The Adapt Authoring Tool is a free, open source product and licensed under the GPL license. All code is freely available through GitHub. As it is right now, the tool is far from being a finished product and there are significant limitations in its functionality. The tool is still in a pre-release state and we are currently working towards our pilot version 0.1 (zero point one) release. The best way to describe this is that our next release will be a ‘pilot’ and as such is not aimed at non-technical users but rather early adopters, who don’t mind tackling complex, technical issues in installing, maintaining and tweaking the output.
Having said that, we are looking for non-technical people who want to create responsive eLearning content as our Beta Testers. We are making available a hosted instance of the tool to which you will be given access so that you don’t have to worry about installing and maintaining the tool but rather can get on with the testing and content development. In summary, you will be given access to an instance of the tool, provided by the Adapt project ‘as is’ and without any contract or service level agreement. If you decide to proceed, you do so entirely at your own risk.
Limitations of the tool:
There are still many limitations – the key item is that the tool currently does not have user management functionality and works on the basis of a single user account and credentials. This means the login is shared and everyone who has access to the tool can see and do anything. For this reason, we are asking everyone who partakes:
- Not to use the password reminder / change functionality
- To create a course under their own name and avoid making changes to other people’s courses
- Not to add any confidential content
It is also not possible to change the appearance of content within the tool user interface (although it’s possible to upload new themes and apply these within the courses).
Content:
Please keep all content appropriate and professional (as I’m sure you would naturally do) and only add content, which you are allowed to do. I.e, please consider copyright and licenses when copying and pasting content or uploading graphics and media files.
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If this hasn’t put you off and you would like to pursue becoming a beta tester, we would very much appreciate your help. Please follow the steps below to get started:
- Please make sure you have an account on the Adapt Community Site
- We have set up a specific area, which contains more detailed instructions on how to test and report issues. We will give you access to this and it contains all you will need for the testing (including the URL and login details for the Beta Installation. Once you have been given access, please keep these credentials confidential and don’t share them.
- Please respond to this post saying you would like to proceed – we will then give you access.
We are looking for a initial set of around 20 Beta Testers and will assign these slots on a first come first served basis.
Many thanks in advance,
Sven
