Event Review

On 4 July 2006 the beta version of LAMS V2 was launched at the London Knowledge Lab by Professor James Dalziel. It was attended by over 60 participants, including several members of projects in the Design for Learning Programme, two of whom also gave presentations.

Version 2 is an exciting prospect for teachers and researchers in e-learning. LAMS V1 has already been widely used in schools, colleges and universities across the UK, as more teachers discovered it could provide so much more than their standard VLE. Its success created a demanding user community who have been clamouring for more features and facilities as they become more innovative in their learning design. The LAMS team at Macquarie University have been remarkably responsive to these demands, and V2.0 is the result. With the new features it will build an even larger community of users, no doubt with ever more demands for further development.

Here is just a small selection of the new features:

• Assigning groups: you can now set up student groups by deciding on the number of groups, or the number of students per group, or by assigning individuals to each group manually.
• Controlling the pace: you can decide how students move to the next learning activity in the sequence by giving permission when you are ready, by setting the time and date, or by defining it as when they have all completed a certain activity.
• Portfolio export: you and the students can print out all the contributions they have made, organised by activity, for use in assessment or in e-portfolios.
• Parallel activities: you can group activities in parallel so that, for example, students can discuss in the Forum the Resource they can refer to in parallel.
  

The all important 'branching' mechanism will be available in V2.1. Meanwhile, the Constructing2Learn project at Oxford University is using the new 'tool deployment' feature in their games and simulation project. For our pedagogy planner project (http://www.wle.org.uk/d4l/) we are still finding V1 offers sufficient flexibility for enabling lecturers to take their learning and teaching innovations well beyond what their VLEs can do.

There is much more information about the new features available at http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/LAMS+2.0+Feature+List

It would be interesting to hear about other projects' experiences with using LAMS, in either version...

Original Event Announcement:

Following almost two years of redevelopment, the LAMS Foundation is pleased to announce the beta release of LAMS V2. The beta release demonstrates a wide range of new features, as well as significant improvements in architecture, scalability and robustness. While not yet recommended for live use with students, the beta release is ready for evaluation and feedback from educators. The production release of LAMS V2 is planned for October, 2006, and will incorporate feedback from the beta release where possible.

The London Knowledge Lab is pleased to host the LAMS Version 2 Beta Release and accompanying workshop. This workshop follows on from an earlier LAMS presentation in February 2006. The workshop will be led by Professor James Dalziel, Leader of the LAMS initiative and Director of the Macquarie E-Learning Centre Of Excellence (MELCOE) at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. The workshop will also include a presentation about the technical requirements for building a LAMS tool by Alex Little of the Open University, a presentation about LAMS V2 and games and simulation making by Ken Kahn and a discussion of an approach to pedagogic planning using LAMS by Professor Diana Laurillard.

Cost: There is no cost for this workshop
Registration: This is a past event.

Timetable:

Workshop 1 - General Introduction to LAMS V1.1