Chamilo LMS 1.9 Starter Guide

Chamilo LMS 1.9 Starter Guide A brief guide to a great e-learning platform Alberto Torreblanca, Steve Miller & Yannick Warnier This book is for sale at http://leanpub.com/chamilolms19starterguide This version was published on 2015-01-15

This is a Leanpub book. Leanpub empowers authors and publishers with the Lean Publishing process. Lean Publishing is the act of publishing an in-progress ebook using lightweight tools and many iterations to get reader feedback, pivot until you have the right book and build traction once you do. ©2014 - 2015 Alberto Torreblanca, Steve Miller & Yannick Warnier

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Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How this book is structured . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2 3

Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4

Create a teacher account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6

Create your first course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

Describe your course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

Customize your course’s appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12

Add content to your Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Upload course content to Chamilo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Create Content within Chamilo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13 13 14

Link to the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

20

Create online tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

22

Set Assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

26

Use Forums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

Lay the Learning path . . . . …or learning paths… . . . Planning the Learning Path Building the learning path

. . . .

28 28 29 29

Manage your students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

34

Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37

Appendix: How to install Chamilo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

38

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Preface This starter guide provides a brief introduction to the e-learning software “Chamilo LMS”. It is designed to be read through alongside a hands-on exploration of the software, and introduces the main tools to facilitate authoring and managing materials, designing tests, constructing learning paths, monitoring students’ progress and encouraging interaction and collaboration. It introduces how these tools are designed to support and motivate students and suggests ways teachers can best use the software to optimise the effectiveness of their e-courses. Chamilo LMS is an extensive, multi-faceted software package, and a full description of every aspect of its features is well beyond the scope of this brief introduction. Readers wanting a more extensive and detailed manual can download the official Teachers Guide¹. We have directed this guide primarily at teachers who have just discovered Chamilo LMS and are interested in learning how to use it to develop online courses and enhance teaching and learning. It doesn’t assume any prior technical skills or previous experience with Learning Management Systems or e-learning. As such we’ve avoided going into the technical and administrative details of the Chamilo platform here. Instead, to help understand how the system works and learn through hands-on experience, a free live teacher’s trial account can be created at http://campus.chamilo.org. We hope this guide will also be useful for teachers with prior experience in Learning Managements Systems, who would like to explore how Chamilo LMS compares with other e-learning platforms. Those interested in learning how to install a Chamilo portal and administer all aspects of the software should have a look at the official admin guide to Chamilo². Further technical support is available from the forum³ on the official Chamilo Association website. If you are looking for professional hosting and support for a Chamilo project, any of our Official Chamilo Providers⁴ can offer quality hosting and professional support. Chamilo LMS is Free Software (and so is also Open Source software), distributed under the GNU/GPLv3 license⁵. This means that it is free software, in the sense that it involves the freedom to use, study, change, distribute and share the software (and changes made to it), in accordance with the terms of the license. It is trademarked to the Chamilo Association, a non-profit organisation established with the main goal of keeping the software free and open into the future, according to the spirit of Free Software philosophy. The Association welcomes the contributions and support of anyone who wishes to be involved with Chamilo, as a developer, translator, writer, designer or as an enthusiastic user with ideas to share or time to help. ¹http://cdn-chamilo.cblue.be/docs/en/chamilo-teacher-guide-1.9-en.pdf ²http://cdn-chamilo.cblue.be/docs/en/Chamilo_19_Admin-guide-final.pdf ³http://www.chamilo.org/forum ⁴https://chamilo.org/community/providers/ ⁵http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

Introduction Chamilo is free software, providing a platform for e-learning and collaboration. It is what is often referred to as a Learning Management System (commonly abbreviated to “LMS”) - a popular term used to describe any kind of software platform designed to facilitate the management and delivery of courses and the monitoring of students’ progress. Fundamentally, an e-learning platform provides you (usually in a teaching position) with means to store and organise your educational materials online, and to share these with students to save them having to carry piles of books back and forth to and from school. But this is only the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of what you can achieve with an incredible LMS like Chamilo. It can offer huge time-savings by taking over a range of repetitive administrative tasks, allowing you to focus on supporting students. It can be used to create many types of teaching materials. More importantly, it can provide students with a range of motivational tools supporting effective independent study at their own pace, as well as a means to interact more completely with their teachers and fellow students. With a platform like Chamilo LMS, you can easily build courses and configure the platform to make it your LMS⁶, LCMS⁷, VLE⁸, PLE⁹ or MOOC¹⁰ platform. It all depends on what courses you have to offer, and what configuration options you pick!

www.chamilo.org ⁶Learning Management System ⁷Learning Content Management System (more details put on the learning objects properties) ⁸Virtual Learning Environment (synonym to LMS) ⁹Personal Learning Environment (a personal LMS or a system that provides a personal space to learn) ¹⁰Massively Online Open Courses (a relatively new tendency to offer open courses on the web that get thousands of participants learning as a

group.

Introduction

3

How this book is structured This book is designed to serve as a “hands on” guide. Ideally, you should immediately try out what you read. That way, you’ll achieve a far sounder grasp of what you’re trying to learn. That said, you won’t find a chapter here on software installation. Instead, we invite you to use our free public demo portal (http://campus.chamilo.org) to try out what’s described in this book. If you want to install your own Chamilo portal, please check the installation guide provided with the software¹¹ (it’s also worth checking out the references in the Appendix on how to go about installing your own Chamilo portal). We’ll explain first how to create a course, then take you through how to create content for your courses which generate assessment information for later use. Having assessments implies you have students, so the third part of this book focuses on organising and monitoring students. Finally, we’ll provide a set of example courses to help you get the most out of using Chamilo LMS. So go and make yourself a cup of coffee, settle down with your laptop, and we’ll take our first steps on the path to learning Chamilo LMS… ¹¹https://campus.chamilo.org/documentation/installation_guide.html

Getting Started We will be referring to Chamilo’s Free Campus portal (or website) to show you the interface and introduce the key vocabulary used in Chamilo. Your first step should therefore be to go to the Chamilo Campus¹² and register an account. The Chamilo Campus is a public portal hosted by the Chamilo Association specifically in order to to allow people to try out Chamilo. Your business or institution (e.g. a school) can set up its own Chamilo portal, which will essentially work the same way. Here’s how: Open your web browser and go to https://campus.chamilo.org. You will see a page similar to the following…

This is the main portal homepage, the “front door” of Chamilo. The welcome display, to the right, may differ according to settings decided by the portal administrator. The color of the top bar might also change. You will, however, find the same menu on the left hand side of the homepage, allowing you to select a language, log in, register as a new user, request a new password, or seek help on the main Chamilo forum. It’s important, before registering, to understand that there are different “levels” of users registered on any Chamilo portal. A student or learner has relatively restricted access. A teacher or trainer (the terms are used interchangeably), although seeing what the student sees, can also access a range of tools (invisible to students) which control content and interactions. Administrators have access ¹²http://campus.chamilo.org

Getting Started

5

to the complete (and extensive) range of settings which control the behaviour of the Chamilo portal. In this guide, we will assume you are a trainer.

Create a teacher account To create a teacher account, click the Register link below the login box. Fill the relevant fields in, making sure to select the “Create training” option (this option is important). Read the terms and conditions and, if you agree, click the Register button (clicking this button indicates that you have read and agreed to the terms and conditions, so please don’t ignore them). Self-registration is available on this portal, so your account will automatically be enabled (unless the username you have given is already taken, in which case you will need to change it a little, e.g. by adding a numeral to it). Once your account is created, a confirmation screen appears with a button suggesting you create a new course:

Before doing anything else as a teacher in Chamilo, you will need to create a course. The course is the fundamental element of Chamilo - all materials and interactions relevant to your students’ online learning experience are located within and around courses. As such, it is important for you, as a teacher, to get a good understanding of the nature and features of courses in Chamilo. One teacher can handle many courses, and one learner can subscribe to several courses at the same time. Each course in Chamilo offers teachers and learners a wide range of tools (documents, tests, wikis, assignments, forums, assessments, etc). which, used effectively, will guarantee a rich online learning experience for your students. Click the “Create a course” button and move to the next chapter to continue.

Create your first course To access the initial “course creation” page, either simply click the Create a course button illustrated in the previous chapter, or the Create a course link in the My account box shown on the side of your homepage once you have logged in:

The course creation page details the information required in order to create your course.

Let’s say you want to create a course entitled Spanish to English Translation. Just enter this title in the Course name box and click the Create this course button (there are some advanced options including language selection and course categories you can use if you wish by clicking the “Advanced settings” link). Within a few seconds you will see a screen like the following¹³: ¹³icons might change depending on the specific version of Chamilo

Create your first course

8

You have the option here to enroll students, add a course description or alter course settings. You can do these later - for now click on the “Course Home” link (ot the link with the title of your course) to take you to the course homepage which (initially) will look something like this:


9

Congratulations! You’ve just created your first course in Chamilo! Of course, it’s still awaiting your content, but for now, feel free to explore a bit before moving on to the next chapter. Don’t worry if some of it seems a bit overwhelming for now - we’ll take you through the key tools shortly. Clicking on the grey “Home” icon in the breadcrumb navigation will always take you back to the course homepage. This is where you will be taken to, whenever you log in to the portal, unless you have more than one course, in which case you will be taken to the My Courses page, where you can simply click on any course to go to its homepage (don’t confuse the Course homepage with the


10

Portal homepage! Use the breadcrumb navigation, not the tabs, when working within a course). As you work through the screens described in this book, you will be able to quickly switch between “teacher” and “student” view by clicking on the button the top right hand side of the page to get an idea of how the pages you are building will appear to the students.

In most cases, this will be very similar to the teacher view, but without the options to edit the course (don’t forget to toggle back to “Teacher” view to resume building your course).

Describe your course The first item in the menu is the course description. This is invaluable for students at the start of a course to get an overview, as well as for prospective students who are browsing the course catalogue. For a user new to online teaching, it can serve as a useful starting point in planning a new course. Click on the Course description icon and have a quick look at the various description options to get an idea what information you can give here.

As you’re just having a first look at Chamilo, you don’t really need to complete any of this now. When you begin authoring courses “for real” you’ll find this an important tool to both promote your course and structure it.

Customize your course’s appearance Don’t like the look of your course? There are many ways to customize its appearance, but this guide is a little too short to explain all the options. For now, be aware that: • you can hide tools on the course homepage individually from your students: just click the open eye icon and any greyed out icon will be invisible to students. • you can add an introduction section to the homepage, using images, audio, video etc. • you can extend this if you wish to produce a completely customised course homepage, including your own layout and links to the various elements of your course • you can select an alternative theme to change the global look of the campus from inside your course (so long as you have been authorised to do so by the administrator). Please note that making a too invisible to students does not make it unavailable. Knowing the URL to a tool will allow you to get inside if you are authorized inside the course itself.

Add content to your Course In online teaching and learning, the quality of course material and the effectiveness of its presentation and delivery are of paramount importance. When creating an online course, the most common and straightforward approach is for the teacher simply to upload existing files and resources to the course as documents. In Chamilo, this is a quick and easy process, so we’ll look first at how to do that. We’ll also have a look at the powerful authoring tools that Chamilo provides to enable you to create rich multimedia content within the platform itself. Then we’ll see how to create basic exercises (or tests or exams - depending on the options chosen). Finally, we’ll have a look at the learning paths tool which is essential in organising and monitoring learner progression.

Upload course content to Chamilo To upload your own files as documents, click on the Documents tool on the course homepage. You might see a list of documents and folders. Don’t be alarmed - these are just empty default directories to help you organise your content, mostly greyed out to indicate that they are invisible to students. To upload a document, click on the upload icon in the toolbar above the list:

Add content to your Course

14

You’ll see a page a little different than the “traditional” upload page - and much easier to use. Just drag the files you want to upload from an open window on your desktop and drop them on the green area:

Now sit back and watch the progress bars indicate a successful upload. Once finished, click on the blue left-arrow to get back to your documents list. You can now see your documents in the list. You can open them, download them, and (more importantly) make them available to your students to view in Chamilo as they work through the course, or to view and/or download to their own computer. By default, documents will be listed alphabetically in the documents folder. • You can organise documents by arranging them in folders using the move element arrow: • You can use the default folders or create your own using the create folder icon: • There are other, more traditional, ways of uploading content to Chamilo from your computer, for example via the rich content editor (see below), but the method described above is the quickest and easiest to get going with.

Create Content within Chamilo Chamilo includes a range of powerful (online) tools which allow you (and, where appropriate, your students) to create material online without having to leave the chamilo platform. These tools can all be accessed by the teacher in the Documents area as illustrated above. A full explanation of these tools is beyond the scope of this beginner’s guide, but here is a brief introduction to help you explore them.


15

Create a rich media page This opens the main content creation tool in Chamilo:

This is a rich content editor, sometimes referred to as a “WYSIWYG” editor (“What You See Is What You Get”). If you have worked online creating web page content (e.g. while doing a course online, or using a Wiki), it will look familiar. In essence, it allows you to create web page content without the need to know HTML code. You can simply write and format text in the editor, but you can also include text, video, audio, flash objects, templates, HTML code, tables, links etc. The editor is an exceptionally powerful tool for authoring course material and is used throughout Chamilo, accessible where appropriate by students as well as by teachers. You should take the time to explore it fully. Note that the editor tools are sometimes discreetly hidden at the top of the field, and you will need to click the small arrow to reveal them:

The editor can display even more tools if you click the expanded view button: up the editor in full screen mode, and offer a wealth of “goodies” to explore!

. This will open

Note that using the HTML format (by using this editor) also makes your content more portable than PDF and Word formats, as the HTML format is an open standard that can be viewed in any browser, including mobile devices, without the need for additional tools.

Draw The Draw tool provides you with a means of developing graphic material for your courses, such


16

as a diagram or poster:

It includes a range of standard drawing tools allowing you to draw, position, resize and rotate shapes, import images, add text, control colours, lines, positioning and to save or export these.

Edit photos You can click on the above icon to access Pixlr from within Chamilo to edit and retouch photos and images online.

While it shares some features with the Drawing tool, this tool is really for editing pictures rather than for creating diagrams. You will have to decide which of the two tools suits your purposes better.

Take a snapshot You can use the webcam clip tool to take a snapshot using the webcam on your laptop:


17

You will need to click in the “Adobe Flash Player Settings” box to use the tool (this is a pretty standard procedure when sharing video and audio online). The screen will then show you your camera’s view from which you can take and send a snapshot. This provides a quick and handy way to take pictures for use in Chamilo - not least for “mugshots” for profile pictures! Students can access this feature only if you gave them a group space with access to the documents tool.

Record your voice Click on this icon to make a recording using your microphone. (You may have to click “allow” again on the Adobe Flash Player settings.)

Give your clip a title, then start/stop the recording using the button displayed. The audio clip will automatically be sent to the documents folder.


18

Transform text to audio You can render written text as audio by selecting the “create audio” icon:

You have two choices: • Google audio services allow you to choose from a wide range of languages, up to a maximum of 100 characters or • Pediaphon audio services which offer only four languages (English, French, German and Spanish) but offers a selection of different voices for each, which can be rendered at various speeds, plus it gives you a larger text allowance

…and more… These descriptions only scratch the surface of what can be achieved by using Chamilo LMS to author and manage materials and resources. Other functions include: • Generating your own document templates


• • • • • • • •

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Defining watermarks to be added to all documents created in the platform Adding meta-data to any document Marking a document as “favorite” so it appears in your portfolio on the social network Hiding/Showing any document from/to your students Exporting a document created in the platform as a PDF archive Uploading SCORM courses and Hot Potatoes quizzes Uploading and converting Microsoft â„¢ Powerpoint presentations to SCORM¹⁴ Exporting folders of documents, and even entire courses, as a zip-file for backup or transfer to another Chamilo portal or even another LMS

These and other features all combine to enable you to create and organise a rich variety of compelling course content. There’s no limit on document size¹⁵ - a document could be an entire book! Bear in mind, however, that in an e-learning environment, you’ll want to provide learners with content in small easily digested “chunks”. That way, it’s easier to monitor students’ progress through the course. It also supports the broadly agreed principle that students learn best in relatively short bursts - minimising excessive strain on the old “grey matter”! ¹⁴This requires a special install over and above the basic install ¹⁵If installing your own Chamilo LMS portal, documents upload and maximum volume per course will have to be defined on the server

Link to the Web The main content for your course is likely to be your own material, securely saved on your server for students to access as appropriate. There will be times, however, when you want to direct your students to external pages and sites on the World Wide Web. They can view such (public) material without having to leave the Chamilo portal by using the Links tool.

To set up a link, click on the Links icon on the homepage. You will be presented with a simple form to complete which will determine how the link will appear in Chamilo (only the first field is mandatory):

Link to the Web

21

You can show the link in a list for students to access it, or they can view the link page(s) through a “window” from the course platform, just as they view the course documents (see Learning Paths, below).

Create online tests So you’ve uploaded and created a heap of informative, richly illustrated, meaningful content - guaranteed to stimulate and motivate your students to new heights of achievement! Excellent! However, a good e-learning system involves more than just providing quality content. As a teacher, you need to know how well your students have understood and can use your material. More to the point, learners want and need feedback, at various levels and in various ways. They want personalised grading and written feedback for assignment papers submitted (Chamilo offers an Assignments tool for this purpose) and may seek your help and support using the platform’s forum, chat* and even **video-conferencing¹⁶ tools. However, a particular strength of a LMS like Chamilo is that it can offer automated feedback to students on their learning, in the form of tests and quizzes whenever they want (and repeatedly if they choose) allowing them to work at their own pace without the pressure of a teacher “looking over their shoulder”. Tests can offer scores as well as verbal feedback and as such can serve as a highly motivational learning tool. Such tests are motivational for teachers as well - no more continual repetitive marking! Hurray! Joking aside - computers do this kind of things better than teachers. To create your first online test select the “My courses” tab, click on the title of your course then click on the Tests link. You will see this toolbar - click the create a new test icon on the left :

You will be asked to enter a name for the test. You can also provide a brief introduction to the test and select various options in the Advanced settings - but don’t worry about these for now. Click the Proceed to questions button and you will be offered the following menu of question types:

¹⁶Video-conferencing using BigBlueButton needs an additional installation over and above the basic install.

Create online tests

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The first icon represents the most common type of test question: multiple choice - single answer. Click on it to create your first question.

The form looks quite big and (well)….empty! Let’s fill it with a challenging question and clear answers. If your question is a short one, write it in the “Question” field. If your question is more elaborate, use it to enter a title for the question and use the rich content editor by clicking enrich question to enter text and illustrations as appropriate. For now, just put a short title for the question. Something like “Dealing with incomplete texts”. Pick a difficulty level (this is just for your benefit it doesn’t appear to the learner). Now open the description box and write the full question in detail (if you want, try uploading an image and reformatting the text). For example:

Of course, a short question may be all you want for the test, in which case you won’t need to bother with the option. But be aware that by using the “enrich question” option, you can present any question you like - long richly formatted text passages, diagrams and images, even sound and video. The only limit is your imagination!

Create online tests

24

Now for the answers. Filling the answers is just as easy (don’t be daunted by the size of the form.) • In the first column, write a list of plausible answers, and check the “true” radio button against the correct answers. You should also set a score to the right of each answer (it can be a negative and decimal value if you wish). • Offer some feedback to students. This is optional but strongly advised - students value scores, but value qualitative feedback even more. • You can offer as many alternative answers as you wish - click add answer to display more options or remove answer to display less.

You may be beginning to realise the potential of this tool to support learning. Notice that each answer and feedback field has an editor with which you can enrich the various responses. In the above example, the feedback just includes emoticons, but you could use pictures, formatting, sound etc. This way, a teacher can use the test tool to present students with a rich, stimulating interactive learning experience, not just evaluating, but also reinforcing and enhancing prior learning. An entire course could even be built using just the test tool to provide a series of interactive exercises. Once you’re ready, click on the Add this question to the test button. This takes you back to the questions list, now showing your question as a listed entry. Click on the question title to check how the question will appear to the user. You can now choose the same or another question type to repeat the process and create another question.

Create online tests

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Students can really benefit from having good online tests available in their course. They are free to take the test at any time that suits them once you make it available to them online. The real beauty of online tests is that they allow students to effectively self-assess - they can go over the test as many times as they wish (so long as you have configured it this way). It’s well worth taking the time to develop effective, high quality test materials which are motivating and enjoyable for students by themselves. The test tool offers a wide range of features which aren’t covered in this brief guide. Feel free to explore the different test types and settings - here are some pointers: • • • • • • • • • •

import Excel(R), HotPotatoes and IMS/QTI tests set time-limits for tests schedule the appearance of tests so they are not shown until a specific date and time configure tests to pick random questions from a list import questions from another course index the questions text (separately from the answers) to enable a full-text search view students’ results comment on students’ answers grade “open” answers (i.e. those which can’t be automatically graded) limit the number of attempts for one test (e.g. in an “exam” situation) or configure it so students can test themselves an unlimited number of times (e.g. for revision purposes) • show or hide grades • show or hide “correct” answers in feedback This may all seem like a lot of work, but as with any process, creating tests becomes a lot quicker and easier with practice. Bear in mind that once it has been created a question can be “recycled” and used again in other tests and in other courses. It can be edited and amended to suit in any way at any time. You will not have to repeatedly offer basic feedback to every student individually - this will be done for you, along with the work of marking and scoring results, freeing you to focus on less tedious and more valuable tasks, such as supporting “struggling” students. Finally, tests can also be imported in a number of formats that might (or might not) suit your way of working a little bit more. The Excel and Aiken import formats, available since Chamilo 1.9.6, should be the first ones of particular interest to you if you want to try that.

Set Assignments There are times when automated feedback is not what your students want or need. From time to time, they want personalised feedback on their own work. This is what they will get in the “open question” test question format, which required direct scoring and feedback from the teacher. However, for more extensive assignments, e.g. an essay or a composition, students may wish to upload a document which they have been working on extensively outwith the Chamilo environment for assessment, grading and feedback by the teacher. This might be a Microsoftâ„¢ Word file or Microsoft(TM) Powerpoint presentation, an image file, even an audio or video file etc. Since the latest versions of Chamilo, they can even “type” them online directly. The assignments tool provides a means for the teacher to set the assignment, (including maximum scores, deadlines etc.) and for the student to submit their work, in whatever file format you suggest (or even a text, for that matter). Take a look at the assignments tool, looking at the advanced options as well as the editor again. You might want to consider using images, sound files and other multimedia as a stimulus to get students started with their own compositions.

Use Forums By now, you should have gained a fair idea of how, using Chamilo, you can present students with ready access to high quality online materials (which you have created and/or uploaded) and provide them with automated tests to allow them to assess, revise and rehearse what they have learned, as well as how to set assignments for more direct tutor feedback. You may want to take online interaction a little further than this, and to establish more of a direct, running personal dialogue with students. In real-time, synchronous activities, this might be accomplished using Chamilo’s chat facility, or even video-conferencing¹⁷, but you can also achieve effective dialogue via the forum tool. You will probably be used to reading and posting to basic forums on blogs and websites. While the basic structure of Chamilo forums is essentially the same, there are some differences between most public forums and the “teaching” forums used in Chamilo. They’re not public, for one thing! For another you, as a teacher (even if you’re not a site administrator), have significant control over the settings for student use, display etc. in each forum you create. And both you and your students can include whatever kind of content you want in each post using the WYSIWYG editor. Setting up a forum is quite straightforward: Click the forum tool in the course homepage. Note that the forum tool is listed under Interaction in teacher view. Click on the create category tool (unless a suitable category is already listed), and give the category a title and description using the (by now) familiar screen. Click on the Add a forum tool and give your first forum a name and a title. Then click Advanced options to configure this forum they way you require. When you go to your forum by clicking its title in the forum listing, you can get a discussion going using the Create a thread tool. Your students can now reply to this thread by clicking on the Reply to this thread icon. You and your students can also use the Reply to this message icon ( ) to reply to individual messages, and can include the text of the previous message using the Quote this message ( ) icon. This is particularly useful for the teacher to correct and comment on students’ posts. ¹⁷Video-conferencing using BigBlueButton needs an additional installation over and above the basic install.

Lay the Learning path OK. You’ve created a bank of rich learning materials and developed stimulating interactive tests. You’ve provided some links, and you’ve set some assignments. The next piece in the online learning jigsaw is the provision of a meaningful structure for your content which will provide students with a framework for progression so that they can work their way through the course effectively. For this, Chamilo provides the Learning Path tool. The learning path tool provides a means to structure your content so that your students know in which order to read the documents available to them. It also, thereby, enables you as a teacher to track their progress, individually or as a group. It provides a means to link tests to reading and study materials, and beyond this to link together a whole range of experiences and activities into one coherent progression. Put simply, ascribing a learning path transforms a pile of learning materials and activities into a course. In creating a learning path, you can combine documents, tests, forums, assignments and links in whatever order you wish, and establish prerequisites (e.g. successful completion of a previous exercise) for each stage of the course in order to ensure students work through the materials in an appropriate sequence to complete the course. In this sense, learning paths form an intrinsic part of your course’s pedagogical methodology, ensuring that online assessment can be appropriately linked to students’ next steps in learning.

…or learning paths…

Your course may comprise a single short lesson, intended to last an hour or so, but is probably more likely to involve a series of linked activities intended to be undertaken over a series of days, weeks or even months, depending on the subject matter of the course. Just as a textbook is broken into chapters, Chamilo allows you to create several distinct learning paths within a course, each comprising a separate, but related, module or unit of study. In the following sections, we will explore how to use Chamilo to create a simple learning path for an element of a course intended to take the student 2 hours over the course of one week. Creating a learning path can be a little daunting the first time but it’s a powerful tool. Let’s take a look at the process.

Lay the Learning path

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Planning the Learning Path If you have experience teaching, you will be aware how important good planning and course design is to the success of your courses and programmes. In online learning, organisational clarity and coherence are equally (if not more) critical, inasmuch as (by contrast with a traditional classroom) you are not always present to direct and steer your students. Your learning path needs to be logically structured, but it also needs to be crystal clear to the learner who is undertaking the course for the first time. Take a little time (maybe using just a pencil and paper) to outline a schema for your path. For example, you should begin with a brief introduction and explain the educational objectives. Then you’ll probably include some content for the student to read, followed by an online test. Next, you could provide a link to some web content for the student to view after which you might set an assignment. The final steps in your planned learning path might involve a few questions and a discussion to round-up.

Building the learning path Decide on a title for students to see as they use the course.

If you have a single learning path in your course you may just use the heading “Content” or “Activities”. If this learning path is one of a series in the course, you may call it “Translation Unit 2” or “Module 5” or whatever term or title you choose. This is the heading that will appear to the student on the main course workspace and on the course homepage:


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Adding documents, tests, links, assignments and forums Once you have entered a title (and configured the advanced settings as appropriate) you will be invited to add a learning object or activity:

You could:

Create a document, or use any document already uploaded to or created in Chamilo

Create a test, or re-use/edit an existing test


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Add a link or select a existing link

Set an assignment

Start a forum discussion

Create a section header (useful for organising long learning paths) As you select/create the above elements they appear in the order you choose in the learning path, which is displayed as a contents list in the student’s workspace. You can rearrange elements, and, crucially, establish prerequisites (e.g. successful completion of a previous activity) for students to view each element. Students can view their progression through the course, and this progression is automatically logged, allowing teachers to also monitor the progress students are making. An option allows you to automatically define each step of your learning path as a prerequisite for the next step, which will save you a lot of time for long, sequential learning paths. Once created, the learning path outlined in the schema above would appear to you, the teacher, like this:

However, it will appear to your students like this:


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Notice that when a learner enters the “learning path” he is effectively beginning to work on his course, and the course content will be viewed full screen, without the headers and tabs usually displayed elsewhere in the campus. He can view the navigation pane on the left which lists the activities and indicates his progress through them, although he can hide this using the toggle arrow at the side of the pane

More learning path options Sometimes you need to provide a path almost identical to an existing learning path in structure but differing in a few details (e.g. using different documents, headings etc.) You will find the copy option very useful here to provide an instant “template” for your new path. Once you have created a learning path, no matter how simple, you will want to back it up, for use in other courses or even in other LMS platforms. You can do this easily by exporting your course as a SCORM-compliant Zip file simply by clicking the export icon in the authoring options column in the learning paths page. You can export your learning path as a pdf, to provide a printable version of the course. Students will be able to do this as well. Obviously, this does not include dynamic content like video, audio and flash. By the same token you can import learning paths by choosing to upload a SCORM compliant course in the main learning paths page. Just click the Upload SCORM icon in the learning paths page.


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You may be wondering about synchronous activities. Like class lessons, lectures and tutorials, online conferencing and chat sessions in real time may seem so distinct from the type of online activities described so far that they have no obvious place in the learning path. Far from it. By including a reference to and description of such activities in the learning path, whether or not you use Chamilo’s own chat and conferencing systems, you can help your students perceive the learning experience as a whole and integrate synchronous and asynchronous activities together e.g. by offering an online test or survey following a conference session.

Manage your students In this guide we have focussed on the core function of using Chamilo LMS to build engaging and effective online courses. But a good learning management system needs to be more than just an effective authoring tool. It needs to provide teachers and institutions with the tools to enrol users, organise groups for learning, enable effective and timely communication with students (including feedback on their learning), survey students’ views and needs through questionnaires, schedule activities and track the involvement and progress of individual learners and class groups. It needs to provide learners with the means to organise activities and pace their studies, to monitor their own progress and achievements, to work collaboratively with fellow students, to keep notes, to seek advice from tutors and give support and encouragement to others. Chamilo provides easy and effective tools for all of these functions. A detailed explanation of these features is not the purpose of this guide, but here is a brief description of some of the tools and features of Chamilo not discussed so far. You can use the Chamilo Free Campus to explore these features further. Below is a list of tools accessible from the course homepage, with a brief note about the function of each tool.

Reporting This is your big “Teacher’s File” where, as a teacher, you will be able to access all the necessary information held in Chamilo about your students - profile info, attendances, grade info, etc. You can also access details here about courses and about elements used (documents, links, learning paths etc.)

Users You can view information about users here, including students and other teachers. You can also subscribe and unsubscribe users to your courses and import and export lists of user details in CSV or Excel(R) format.

Groups You can organise users in groups for various purposes and configure various settings for each group of students e.g. which documents, diaries etc. they can view and share.

Manage your students

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Agenda You can set up a course diary for users and groups to access to ensure that information such as events, deadlines etc. are readily available to all users as necessary.

Alerts You can make global announcements for your course to ensure students don’t miss important information relevant to the course, configuring exactly who receives the alert.

Surveys You can compose and distribute an online survey about the course, e.g. to gather course evaluation information from users. A variety of online question types is available, similar to those in the “Test” tool.

Attendances Here you can organise and record specific details about course attendance. You can input information about sessions other than online sessions e.g.attendance at classes/tutorials/events attendance.

Course Progress With this tool, you can specify and monitor a class or group’s progress through the several topics/themes making up the course, as opposed to monitoring the progress of individual students.

Assessments This is where you go as a teacher to view, mark and grade your students’ work. This could be a test submission not automatically graded, an assignment or any other activity you wish to include, including offline class activity. Students will use this tool to view their grades and feedback.

Dropbox This tool can be used to share files between users, between teacher and students or between learners. It includes a list of documents “sent” and of documents “received”. It can include any filetype.

Manage your students

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Wiki The wiki tool provides an area for students to work together - effectively building a web page together as a way of facilitating online communication and collaboration.

Notepad This is a simple but useful tool, allowing a student to keep a list of personal notes and records within the Chamilo platform while embarking on a course.

Projects This is an organisational tool allowing you to describe a project and organise groups of participants to undertake given roles in completing a list of set tasks. The project description, tasks and roles can readily be shared online via the course homepage.

Glossary This allows you to provide a handy glossary of terms used in your course which students can access at any time from the homepage. The glossary can be easily amended and imported and exported at any time as a simple CSV list. In addition to this, outwith the course area so far discussed, other functions can be accessed via the main tabs: Personal Agenda - a diary for users to manage themselves Reporting - quick access to a range of info on students and users Social Network - an important global networking area for each user Dashboard - a quick overview/access page for teachers

Postscript We hope that this brief introduction has been of some help getting you started with Chamilo LMS. E-learning in all its manifestations is a growing industry, and Chamilo offers an excellent inroad into the sometimes daunting world of online education. The software (like a Chameleon) is designed to be as flexible as possible to accommodate the needs of a wide range of educational providers, from small online businesses to full scale educational or governmental institutions to every and any type of corporate concern which values effective education and training. If you are just taking a first look at Chamilo LMS and do not have your own Chamilo portal, but would like to investigate how to go about installing and configuring the software, you can check the Appendix to this guide, and download the necessary software and guidelines from the official Chamilo Website http://www.chamilo.org/. The Chamilo project is proudly Free Software (and as such qualifies as Open Source) and as such, your views, comments and queries are much valued. So don’t hesitate to visit the forum on the Chamilo Association’s official website at http://www.chamilo.org/forum to offer opinions, ask advice and make suggestions. You’ll find an active and supportive community forum which is happy to consider and respond to your contributions.

Appendix: How to install Chamilo There are several ways you can install the necessary applications required to run Chamilo LMS on your computer. Remember, you don’t need to install Chamilo on your computer to use it. You can use a Chamilo installation hosted by your institution or the free Chamilo campus¹⁸ as long as you agree to the conditions established for its use. If, however, you think you need your own Chamilo LMS platform, then you have to proceed with the following general steps • • • •

install the necessary applications to run Chamilo LMS download and unzip the Chamilo package proceed with the web installation procedure you’re done

To get the detailed procedure, please check http://campus.chamilo.org/documentation/installation_ guide.html or, if you don’t have an internet connexion at the time, you can open the chamilo/documentation/installation_guide.html file in your browser (File menu > Open file).

¹⁸http://campus.chamilo.org/