One aim of POCKET is to develop techniques for generating content in a format suited to the VLEs in use in the partner HEIs (Blackboard and WebCT). It states in the project plan that this will benefit not only users of POCKET materials but also those who use the OU’s OpenLearn content on VLEs other than Moodle. This wiki is intended to provide an area for the project to share its experiences on the issues surrounding interoperability of the POCKET materials.

Aims and Objectives

• To research current standards used in interoperability between VLEs
• To find the most suitable format that will enable interoperability between OpenLearn units and project partner VLEs
• To find the best method to enable interoperability between OpenLearn units and project partner VLEs
• To find out how the academics working on POCKET would prefer to handle the material within their own institutional VLE

Current situation

• All the POCKET units have been written in XML and validated against the specific OU XML schema.

• University of Derby uses Blackboard

  • CourseGenie is a popular package to upload onto Blackboard at Derby.

• University of Exeter uses WebCT

  • Exeter provided their module material for POCKET in the format they use on WebCT: HTML web pages. 

• University of Bolton uses WebCT

• The situation with new partners is slightly different:

  • UHI does not intend to use the material within their VLE. The material is intended to be open and is available on OpenLearn and on Wetpaint: http://climatechangecourse.wetpaint.com/?t=anon

  • The CRED-PRO material is intended to be used globally, so will not be restricted to one VLE