eLearning Packages: "Xerte"
I was quietly minding my own business a few weeks back when this open source application found it’s way on to Twitter.
I was going to write about it way back, but wanted to try it out first and have something to say about it. SO, now I’ve tried it, what do I think?
Developed by the boffins at the University of Nottingham, Xerte “… provides a full suite of open source tools for elearning developers and content authors producing interactive learning materials.” Xerte is a
“fully-featured e-learning development environment for creating rich interactivity … [and is] aimed at developers of interactive content who will create sophisticated content with some scripting, and Xerte can be used to extend the capabilities of Xerte OnlineToolkits with new tools for content authors.”
Well, it’s fairly easy to figure out, fairly easy to use, but requires a bit of technical know-how to get installed and working at the start. Firstly you have to installed XAMPP (Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl) in order to make this run, and you’ll need to know a little about this kind of set up (localhost server) in order to make sure the modules are running. The idea is that this kind of thing (Xerte) will run on the Institution server so the resulting packages are linked to easily and, any changes made, are instantly available, but very few of us have access to be able to install this on anything other than our own personal hosting (if we’ve got it) or locally on our own PCs (hence XAMPP).
So, what of the authoring environment? Well, it’s quite sweet, easy to move around, and really easy to add content to, here’s a screen shot of one aspect of it
Inserting and editing the various types of media is easy, although there is no spell check so be sure to write your text in something like Word and check before cut-and-pasting it in here.
Xerte can handle YouTube video as well as FLV media. You can create slideshows (with and without audio), MCQs, graphics, annotated diagrams, drag-and-drop labelling, etc. This demonstration by the Xerte team will show you the various types of interactions you can produce.
Output is intended, as I already mentioned. to sit on your Institution server, but you can output and download to ZIP or SCORM 1.2 package, but I have so far not been able to get the SCORM output to work (the below example is the standard ZIP download).
Adapted from “The Core Rules of Netiquette” by Virginia Shea, I’ve created this eLearning package as a demonstration of what Xerte can produce:
Merry Christmas…but I can give no good tidings to Xerte because it isn’t e-learning…it’s e-READING!
I don’t think that is true at all. Maybe you missed the point.
Xerte is actually a developers tool designed to create rich interactive eLearning on the Flash platform, but seperating content from structure by using an XML file as the source.
What is reviewed here is actually Xerte online toolkits, which is an ‘extension’ of Xerte not designed for technically proficient developers. The idea is that a developer will create ‘templated pages’ for other non technical users to use to create eLearning. If those templated pages are not interactive, then of course the final product will be ‘eReading’.
We use this tool extensively, and produce stuff far away from ‘eReading’ that is very interactive.
Now we’re getting into the shady world of the definition that some accept, and others don’t;
From Wikipedia – http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-learning?wasRedirected=true
Do you think that this tool can be easily integrated with tools like moodle, .LRN or sakai ?
Piotr – If you are able to install Xerte on the Institution server, or one of your Institution servers, then the packages can be linked to the Xerte server. If, like me, you install to your own PC you will need to export the packages into a ZIP or SCORM file – and you then simply upload to the VLE.
Regards, David
Moodle definitly.
I have no experience of the others.
There are two Xerte products Xerte and Xerte on-line toolkits. Xerte is a stand-alone application for developing e-learning modules. The editor that Xerte uses is powerful allowing the addition of blank pages to which you then add icons of which there are various types including text; image; sound; interaction;. Interactions can have interactive icons added to them such as buttons; hotspot; drag target; script;. Xerte offers a project template called “page templates” which provides a series of pre-defined complex pages in which the icon selection, and coding has been done for you, leaving you to build pages by completing forms. The version of Xerte called on-line toolkits is web based and only offers the interface provided by using the “page templates” project template.
The key point here is that for the more technically minded or curious user, if you use the standalone version of Xerte you can pretty much do what you want. Even the on-line toolkits version allows for a variety of interactions. Many pages support the inclusion of audio files and there is a “narration” optional property on most pages that allows for an audio file to be attached to a page.
There has also been some development work to merge the power of the standalone editor with the ease of use of the project wide “page template” template, so that developers can combine their own bespoke pages in the standalone editor with the convenience of individual page templates (aka wizards).
Xerte is capable of being used to develop some rich e-learning. It is certainly capable of much more than simple page turner projects where content is limited to text and graphics and interaction is limited to “next page” and “previous page”. It is also possible to develop learning objects that offer multiple routes through the learning object dependent on the learners responses. I looked at a few commercial authoring packages before deciding to use Xerte, and contend that Xerte compared very favourably, often offering features and flexibility that was just not available in the other packages. Add that to the fact that it is open source and the decision to use Xerte was a no-brainer.
Xerte 3.0 is currently under development and from what I have read on the Xerte web site this promises to be even more powerful.
Hi all,
Sorry to bump this.
Xerte has many interactions, some of which do involve reading, or via the text to speech accessibility option, listening.
A full example of the toolkits content you can create is at http:///www.nottingham.ac.uk/toolkits/play_560
A moodle integration patch has been developed by the community as well.
Thanks for the nice review, be interesting to see what content you have created with it?
Feel free to email me.
Thanks
Pat
Hello all,
Sorry to bump this.
Xerte has a lot of support for interactions – please see http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/toolkits/play_560.
There are many ways to integrate the tool into Moodle.
Feel free to email me if you have any questions – keen to see any content people have created in the tool. Also see xpert – http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert/
If you open the stand-alone version of Xerte and open Page Templates in the Templates menu, you get a much friendlier simpler version that non-technical people can use with a huge variety of page styles and interactions that are really useful