Summary: Install the eFront open source LMS and create courses with multiple Articulate content.
Difficulty: Medium to Difficult

Without a doubt, you can best track scores and progress in Articulate content with a Learning Manangement System (LMS), also known as a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).  These online systems protect your content by attributing user names and passwords and allow you to see what each individual student achieved. In a previous post, we looked at Dokeos Campus.

In this second post in the series we look at eFront. Greek company Epignosis developed the system of which the Community editon is open source. As it is SCORM 1.2 compatible you can import Articulate content and track scoring.

Interesting features in eFront

eFront is not the perfect LMS by any means but it does have some advanced features which make it worth exploring for schools or non-profit organizations.

• You can force users to view content sequentially or specify any prerequisites you like. ie. to see item 1 you must complete item 2 first.
• You can schedule certain courses for certain dates.
• Inbuilt forum and chat functions.
• Certificates are available for downloading if you successfully complete a course.

Demo of eFront with Articulate content

Have a look at this demo site I have set up. To give you an idea of how the sequential conditions work and the certificate, I have set up one course with four very short test presentations that can only be taken in order. To get access to the course, you need to set yourself up as a student.

Click to open demo account in a new window. 

1. Click on Create an account.

   

2. Enter details. You make up the information since it is only me who is going to see it but don’t forget your password. (All the fields are mandatory except Comments).
3. IMPORTANT: Once logged in, log out immediately by clicking on the Log Out button at the bottom left.

   

4. Log in again with your user name and password.
5. Click on Group key

    

6. Enter 1234 as your unique group key and click on Submit.
7. You’ll have access to “Test Presentation with Certificate”.

   

8. You’ll notice that only Presentation 1 is accessible. You need to complete Presentation 1 to get access to Presentation 2 and so forth. When you have completed all four presentations, you’ll be able to print a certificate.

Here is a Screenr of the process showing you how to test the LMS and you get a glimpse of the certificate you should receive if you complete the presentations.

It should take you just a couple of minutes to work through the courses. You’ll see how you can set learning games, Articulate Presenter presentations without assessments, presentations with Quizmaker quizzes and stanalone Quizmaker quizzes to show as complete if you complete and/or pass the lesson.

The teacher is also able to see your scores for each section of the course.

eFront allows you therefore to group a number of quizzes and presentations into one course, track each individual quiz and give a certificate if the course is finished.

Drawbacks of eFront.

In spite of some of these advanced features, there are a number of drawbacks.

• Tracking is limited. Unlike Articulate Online or some other systems, you are unable to track individual responses to questions. The only information recorded is the percentage score.
• The system is not the most intuitive to use. With the three levels of access, you find yourself hopping from one level to another as you build the course. This is particularly tricky at the beginning. If you click on your avatar (top left) you can map access to different levels which gives you quick access in the bottom left.
• There are some major bugs.  The biggest bug I found in my testing was the necessity to log out after registering the first time. If not, lessons would not self-complete.
• The appearance of the system could be better to my taste. It does seem rather school-like though some may see that as good. 

How to install

If you are an “expert” in installing these kind of systems, then go straight to eFront website and download the source files.

If, like me, you are looking for a relatively ‘simple’ method of installation, then you might want to consider first purchasing a hosting solution.

For eFront, I’d recommend Siteground,  because

• a) I know it works there and
• b) because eFront have created detailed documentation on how to install their system on Siteground. 

On top of that, Siteground have a “secret” special Christmas offer which gives you free hosting for one year for ony $9.95 !! I am not sure of the details of this particular offer but I can tell you that for small setups, Siteground has worked well for me for over a year now. I challenged their support yesterday, and they changed my PHP settings within ten minutes. Of course, with this kind of offer, we are talking about a server for small-scale use.

Importing Articulate into eFront

There are three levels of access to eFront. To import an Articulate presentation, you’ll need access to the Admin and Professor levels.

1. Log in as an Admin and create a lesson. You can later associate that lesson with a course.
2. Now log in as a Professor and go to the lesson main menu. Select SCORM.
3. Select Import SCORM content and navigate to your Scorm 1.2 Articulate zip file you produced in Studio ‘09. (Publish –> LMS –> SCORM 1.2).
   

   Don’t forget to check your tracking options when you publish in Presenter. You can track according to the number of slides or a particular quiz or Choices learning game.

   eFront should be able to tell if you have imported an assessment or a content item so there is no need to change the default settings.

4. Still logged in as Professor, go into the Administration section of your lesson and you’ll be able to set how the lesson will appear.
5. Log in now as a student and your course is ready to take.

Here is a Screenr demo of the above process.

Grouping Articulate lessons into courses.

1. In Admin level, create a lesson for each of your Articulate units. Make the lesson available only through course.
2. Still in Admin, create a course and associate the lessons you just created with that course.
3. In Professor level, click on Course rules for your course and set up the dependencies.
4. From the same view, click on Certificates and choose your settings.
5. Click on My lessons and for each lesson, import your SCORM content as described above.
6. For each lesson, select Lesson rules, and go to the Lesson completion conditions tab.
7. Make sure that Auto complete is set to Yes, if not click on it to make it change to Yes.
8. Click on Add condition and select the condition properties for it to show as complete. ie. the student must have passed a specific test, and then choose the appropriate test from the drop-down menu.
9. The course is now ready to be viewed by the student.

Notes

• If you wish to track a Choices learning game, make sure that you keep the result slide. Otherwise, eFront will not track completion.
• As mentioned already, eFront will not track a user immediately after registration. The user must logout first and then log back in again. If you register a student yourself from the Admin level, they won’t have a problem. You might want to deactivate self-registration anyway which you do via the Admin level –> System properties.
• eFront is available in a number of languages. This is configurable from the Admin level.

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