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Wish list

Access groups

Provide a new facility which allows all users to see who can visit this resource. This will ensure information providers allocate correct groups and can see from where inherited rights cascade without having to follow up the tree. [Working on Oxford Dev machine, going live 10 May]

Announcements:

Text is displayed at the top of the resource list and "Where you can go from here" changes to "Please read the following Announcement". To include the option of switching text display on or off. Force the announcement to the top of the resources [All working on UHI Dev machine]

RSS News feeds

Allow news feeds to be picked up from various sources and displayed in their own room. [Working on Oxford Dev machine, going live 10 May] Allow feeds to be displayed within another resource for uses like announcements, system warnings.

Blogs

Allow access to Blogs created in a system like Pebble, controlling access through Bodington groups. [Working on Oxford Dev machine, going live 10 May]

Viewing Options

Be able to get rid of left hand panel [Now available] Be able to customise the left hand panel [Oxford working on this] Force a user to see the left hand panel no matter what preferences are set. Force on notifications for a specific resource, effectively creating a mailing list through Group Access controls.

BookMarks / Links

A tool displays a list of urls beneath the tool in the resource list. Can be used to link to files uploaded to this resource and has the advantage that the resource can be sorted along with the other resources so that uploaded files do not appear at the bottom of the resource list. Includes a quick method for linking to uploaded files. [Working on UHI Dev machine] Be able to upload files to a repository, easily link to them and sort the position of the link within the list of resources displayed in a page, rather than having files appear at the bottom of the resource. [All working on UHI Dev machine]

Integrate “best of breed” systems

Allow linkage to Sentient Discover to create resource lists , and then display these to students with links to local repositories. [Now available at Oxford – subscription service] Allow the option of using alternate bulletin boards depending on site’s preferences. [UHI use PHPBB, Leeds have MVN forum running. Looking for incorporation to 2.6] Enhance the testing facilities by providing integration with TOIA testing utility.[Proof of concept through TIP project at Oxford] Allow linkage to LAMS for learning design. [Proof of concept through TIP project at Oxford]

TinyURL Facility

Bodington URLs are currently very long and often get snapped in two when pasted into emails. We will provide a facility much like www.tinyurl.com for Bodington resources which will make URLs look like www.bodington.ox.ac.uk/h567y. The old style of Bodington URL will still be valid and can be used if desired. [Oxford to work on in May]

Admin Tools

Provide a web based interface for administrators (Helpdesk as opposed to sysadmin) to be able to perform various admin tasks such as:

Redesign of user interface (templates) for managing resources:

New Types of Questionnaire

Questionnaires – improve the current questionnaires.

  1. Facility to generate list of users who have filled in responses to the questionnaire. Scenario: group of 10 tutees - tutor wants anonymous questionnaires but wants all of class to fill them in. So we must be able to check who has not filled in the questionnaires (and maybe email them). There would be a safe guard so that if only 1 person has supplied answers then tutor cannot see who they are.
  2. Non-anonymous questionnaire resource. Sometimes it is beneficial to know who the responses belong to, e.g when on work placements with comments on employers..
  3. Single use survey questionnaire resource. These are not stored by person but in a general pile. Any number of anonymous users can fill in their own questionnaire without seeing other results. User cannot go back and edit results. This also allows an “operator” to gather results for a survey and submit to the database.
  4. Poll resource. One question questionnaire with suitable 'result' display
    • could be used in classes for quick feedback (wireless network and PDA?)
    • could be put on the front page as a pop up bit of fun!
  5. CSV file export of responses. Files of this format can be imported into a variety of other tools such as Excel or SPSS for further analysis. [Paul Trafford at Oxford to feed SQL to developers]

User Tracking

Provide tracking facilities showing all users of a resource. Tutors like to be able to see if their students have visited the resources with the VLE, and chase where appropriate. Show length of time a visitor has spent at a resource.

MyBodington

Enhance 'notification' functionality on top menu bar with personal book marking facility. Add the ability to bookmark any page within Weblearn simply. There should be a special page where students can see all of their personal bookmarks. This is really useful when you access via different PCs or public machines. It also adds portal like qualities to the VLE. [UHI wip]

Allow users to receive notifications of resource changes on a daily or weekly basis by email to a user-specified account. [Now available ]

Automated Testing

Provide a suite to allow automatic testing. This will allow regression testing to be performed when new features are added.

Better IMS Support

Improve QTI facilities; enhance to support IMS QTI v2. Enhance facilities to import from proprietary systems using IMS with non-standard extensions. Adopt IMS standard for user attributes and allow external group management to provide interoperability with institutional services.

IMS CP Support

Support the latest version of IMS Content Packaging and allow import from WebCT and Blackboard.

Allow Tutors to customise the left hand Panel

What we are proposing is that the LHS panel has the opportunity to contain an HTML page which is specific to the current room or floor - the tutor can upload a LHS panel resource for each building / floor room / etc. If the current position in Bodington does not have a LHS panel resource then the next resource higher up in the tree is searched (and so on).

This means that (say) the Biology floor can have a LHS panel which contains a list of special biology lectures happening this term. Doctor Foster's room on the floor can have a list of times when he is available for consultation; Doctor Mopp can likewise have a list of times when he is available. Inside Doctor Foster’s room each of his courses can have a list of useful resources - the list changes dependent on which room you are in. If a room does not have a specific LHS panel resource then the parent resource’s panel is used. [Oxford working on this in conjunction with CSS]

Calendar

Support for calendar. If feeds are available populate the calendar with relevant lectures. The calendar should be able to accept data in iCal format.

Online scheduler

This would allow for students to sign up to timeslots, e.g. for individual tutorial sessions. Time slots would be customisable to allow more than one student if group tutorials were run. Students could cancel appointments but a track would be kept of their signing up.

Integrate Wiki Resource

Provide a wiki resource.

Better CSS Handling

Reduce the size of the Bodington style-sheet in order to improve performance on certain platforms and across slow connections. [Oxford working on this]

Development Tools

Have a simple web accessible page that does some basic standard diagnostics on performance e.g. How long to load up certain pages.

It would be good to have a ‘development mode’ in Bodington (specified in properties file). This would show extra info on page

Create a course-oriented version of Bodington.

To provide (as an installation option) a traditionally course oriented version of Bodington, allowing students to register for certain modules and compulsory enforce cascading of access rights down a module tree.

Display file size.

For material uploaded that has been uploaded to WebLearn display the rough file size in the listing so the user has an idea about how long it would take to download.

Identifiers

Allow User groups and resource names longer than 12 chars. This depends upon the ShortURL feature happening otherwise URLs will get even more unwieldly.

SCORM Player

Integrate RELOAD SCORM player or similar functionality.

Headings

Enhance headings to allow just a block of text to be added, which can then be moved around the page at will. [Working on Oxford Dev machine, going live 10 May]

Wysiwyg editor

Add an editor similar to Word which allows information providers to enhance their text without needing to know any HTML. [Oxford working on this, have own Widget but looking to generalise]

Easybuilder

This is a wizard to help in the construction of complex suites of rooms. The wizard is customisable for different groups and will help ensure a consistent design to Bodington resources. It supports:

LDAP authentication

Delegate Bodington authentication to multiple LDAP servers. XML configuration file in which you can specify as many servers as you like, to allow for downtime etc. Fully customisable to suit your LDAP schema. [All working on UHI Dev machine]

Auto account creation

When using LDAP authentication, you can turn on auto account creation. This lets users who already have institutional accounts, in Novell eDirectory for example, to automatically login to Bodington and have an account created there and then. Group membership rules can be applied to the LDAP DN of the user to automatically enroll them in required groups for access to resources. [All working on UHI Dev machine]

Single Sign On (WebAuth)

A configuration option will be added to allow Bodington to be integrated with an Apache WebAuth institutional single sign on solution. This allows users to access a basket of Web Resources via one central login page. The user’s session can be configured to last the best part of the day and once logged in, it will not be necessary to re-enter usernames and password to access other similarly protected systems. [Working on Oxford production machine, from 4 April]

Internationalisation

Bodington will be capable of simultaneous multilingual support. This means that users can choose in which language to view content, independent of other users of the system. Language switching is immediate and independent of browser settings.[ UHI wip]

Localisation

Allow Bodington to ship with a default set of localised templates. The default language will be UK English. [Now working on UHI Dev machine] On demand localisation will be supported for Bodington Resources. Each Resource, regardless of when it is created, will have a "Translate" function that will allow a trusted user to translate the Resource via the browser. The new translation is immediately available to all users of the target language. [Work in progress at UHI]

Configurable Time-out for Guest users

The default login mechanism Bodington used to have a fixed time-out period of 30 minutes; this time period is now configurable and can be set by the system administrator. [Now working at Oxford]