Educational Technology Blog

Evaluating – Xerte OnLine Toolkits

Xerte OnLine Toolkits (XOLT) is a server-based open source authoring environment developed by the Information Services Learning Team at the University of Nottingham. It can be downloaded from the Xerte home page.

XOLT is distributed free of charge under the GNU public licence. (Note: XOLT should be distinguished from the original desktop Xerte authoring tool, a different product, which is available from the same address.)

Wizard for Reflective Case Study

XOLT is easy to use, allowing authors with no programming skills to build elearning activities through a simple browser interface. Authors use a wizard to enter text, media and interactions into a range of template pages. There are nine types of interaction available including multiple choice, gap fill, open answer, hotspot and diagram labelling.

Images, movies and multimedia elements can be added to XOLT. A template for adding movies to interactions is under development and will be available shortly. Authors can also integrate content from external sources such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps and Delicious.

As a server-based system, XOLT enables team members at multiple locations to collaboratively develop content.

Xerte was designed from the outset with accessibility in mind. The interface is consistent with navigation buttons on the top strip. The user can resize text and select a contrasting colour scheme. All interactions and navigation can be controlled by the keyboard as well as the mouse. Text to speech is enabled to allow all content to be heard as well as read.

Completed Xerte projects can be exported as zip files for web publication or as SCORM 1.2 compliant learning objects for importing into a VLE such as Blackboard or Moodle.

Like Flashform, Xerte projects are written in XML and interpreted by a Flash player at runtime. Programming skills are necessary to create new templates or additional functionality.

In comparison with eXe, XOLT is also easy-to-use and suitable for use by academics or other authors without programming skills. XOLT has several significant advantages over eXe:
• Additional interactions such as drag and drop and open answer questions
• Entire project can be exported as a SCORM compliant object
• Allows collaborative online development
On the downside, XOLT
• Lacks a visual interface for text formatting which has to be done manually using HTML tags
• Is difficult to install (or at least would benefit from better installation documentation) Having said that, the development team provided excellent support.

XOLT is undergoing considerable development at the moment. The developers are quick to answer questions and it has an active online community.

For these reasons, Media Services have decided to use XOLT to develop elearning materials in Psychiatry for the UCD School of Medicine and Medical Science.

3 comments September 1st, 2009

Authoring Tools – Still in Use

With the growing interest in user generated content there has been a decline in the perceived importance of authoring tools. However, UCD Media Services has developed several lessons on taking medical case histories using Flashform (now ProForm) from RapidIntake.  Flashform allows less technically-minded users to create Flash content by filling in forms. It is possible to create a range of question and page types incorporating audio, video and other media. We have created some templates (forms) of our own.  Flashform is quite a powerful product though more attractive layouts could be created with a visual interface.

After several years the time has come to evaluate the alternatives.  I looked at eXe a few years ago when it was in its infancy. It seemed promising but not developed enough for our needs.  We also evaluated Course Genie (now Wimba Create). This time round I will only look at open source mainly for practical, budgetary reasons. eXe,  developed by an academic consortium in New Zealand, now seems quite widely used and definitely worth a second look.  Xerte, a web-server based tool developed by Nottingham University, also seems promising.

Through the ALT mailing list, I have come across a series of podcasts, Crossing the Foord by Dave Foord. Episodes 7-10 cover authoring tools. I would be interested in hearing the experiences of other users of either of these tools.

4 comments February 19th, 2009