E-learning course creation [video]

This video shows off how an e-learning course can be created right in the web browser with Notion Learning.

Introducing course structure and editing [Video]

This video shows a walkthrough of course structure and explains how content is added to Notion Learning e-learning courses.

The key benefits of e-learning

We make no secret of going on about the many benefits of e-learning but it’s always interesting to keep up on the latest research into the area. Towards Maturity has a piece up on their site pointing to a new piece of research from Becta titled Delivering results with learning technology in the workplace. The investigation centred across a number of themes which learning technologies deliver benefits on:

1. Time Saving
2. Productivity Gains
3. Staff Benefit
4. Business Impact
5. Tangible quality improvement for learning
6. Impact of Social Learning
7. Green Issues
8. Cost Savings

The report itself is well worth diving into (all 76 pages) and the links to a large number of case studies at the end of the document are also worth looking at.

We firmly believe in the business benefits of e-learning, and if we can deliver on our goal of delivering a low cost platform, then we can only add to the benefits seen above.

Infrastructure part 2

This is a follow up to out previous post about our infrastructure which is can be found here:
Infrastructure Part 1

There is the intention to go a bit deeper with this post, as well as mention what was forgotten in the first post, as mentioned when customers and users were asking questions such as “Well, nice post but how do you debug?“.

• Debugging: Firebug and FirePHP
• Unit Testing: phpUnit
• Document Collaboration: Google Documents
• Diagram Editing: dia
• File Sharing: dropbox

More detailed:

Debugging

Debugging a web application is always tricky because of the specific nature of the medium. There are a lot of options available and there is the well known xDebug. XDebug projects the traditional debugger approach, like the use of breakpoints and object inspection to the web environment. For our application, the combination of FireBug with FirePhp works (almost) perfectly. One reason for this is that FirePhp integrates well with Zend framework which we are already using.

Unit Testing

There are many popular modern development methodologies such as TDD or about more modern ones such as AOP or Continuous Integration. Our project is in favour of using tests, like phpUnit, because of familiarity with other *Unit (mainly jUnit) frameworks. Test Driven Development has been extremely helpful and beneficial, although currently we do not use it as much as we should.

Document Collaboration

Google is a household name, so no introduction is needed, but definitely worth to be mentioned. Google Documents help us a lot in editing documents with partners from all over the world or all over our office, available 24×7 by just using any available browser. The same idea as with notion learning, your web based e-learning platform.

Diagram Editing

Gnome’s dia is an unsung hero that I happen to use extensively from my university years, many of diagrams you stumble across in blog post academical or other papers have been produced with this pretty elegant multi-platform tool. It is not part of an IDE or any other application development platform and it’s UML capabilities have not yet been utilized, but it is great for small
clean and tidy diagrams.

File Sharing

Dropbox belongs to the family of tools that belong to the cloud/storage family. Drop-box had the approach to files that google documents had to document editing, a very nice description is here: https://www.dropbox.com/tour#6.

The student experience [Video]

This video shows what a typical student sees when they login to Notion Learning and take an online course.

Notion Learning on YouTube

It’s our first video. We will be posting more videos over the next while showing different parts of the application in use.

Infrastructure

It is very common for us when we talk to customers and attend events for people to ask us questions about our infrastructure and the rationale behind our choices. It is a very common question in the startup ecosystem for different reasons such as getting the feel for the company’s profile or as a source of inspiration for people’s projects.

This post goes into detail on our entire development stack from top to bottom.

At a glance:

• Source Control: Subversion
• Programming Language and OS: PHP on Ubuntu
• Framework: Zend
• Javascript Library: jQuery
• Programming IDE: Eclipse
• Build System: Phing
• Data Base Management System: PostgreSQL
• Backup and Restore: Backup Ninja and GPG

More detailed:

Source Control

There are many choices here and all are supported with very good arguments. based on our organizational structure and the decision to support linear development (which means minimal branching), the choice was for traditional source control tools (instead of distributed ones such as GIT/perforce). Because of extensive exposure to subversion and it’s general acceptance, we chose this.
Because we are a SaaS company and we generally prefer using services, we also have an on-line hosting package for it.

Programming Language and OS

This is a very open discussion and there is a nice chapter titled “So Many Platforms, So Many Options”,  from The Web Startup Sucess Guide, by Bob Walsh. We had decided before to use PHP on top of linux. Our distribution of choice is ubuntu, with which we are very familiar.

Framework

In PHP, the choices are really endless. We chose Zend Framework for the following reasons:

1. Familiarity: already used it in (smaller) projects in the past
2. Leverage as much or as little of it as we want
3. Supplementary tools available as we upscale, such as the rest of the Zend platform

The best element inside the Zend framework is that a software house can use as many features of it as they want, without getting into trouble. You can use the MVC, or you can just do it on your own with mod-rewrites. This goes all along the framework, which is good both in terms of being able to do custom development on what we needed different, as well as a smaller learning curve: when the project had to do some things urgently, the fastest approach was taken, and then when familiarity and exposure to the framework was better,  we re-implemented those features in the framework’s ontology.

Java Script Library

jQuery Simple, easy choice . Better supported, large user base, ease of use, number of plugins, nice and diverse community (eg. designers, coders, etc). We could not have thought of anything else, although we considered MooTools because of the Zend Framework integration.

Build System

Given the rest of the choices, the options available are limited, so we used Phing for build automation.

Programming IDE

There are many custom builds for Eclipse, our main one is the following: Eclipse for PHP Developers, which is tailored to our needs and has nice features such as code completion, subversion integration and many others.
We also use Komodo edit from Active state, which may be a good candidate for a future IDE. Both of those are cross platform. In each developer’s platform the following mini-IDEs/editors are utilized:

• Linux: geany and gEdit
• OS-X: TextMate
• Windows: Textpad

Data Base Management System

There is a very old post about that here. Many things have changed since then, but the choice remains the same: PostgreSQL. Now I have more arguments in favour of it:

• Cohesive and easy to find documentation
• Clear licensing – see what’s going on with MySQL/Sun/Oracle
• Feature Set

But most of all it is very dependable and stable. I know that it is not the most popular choice and that we have issues with software that runs on top of MySQL only, but we are very happy and confident for our choice and no company can take it away from us.

Backup and Restore

We chose Backup Ninja because it had a very small learning curve.
We might evaluate more options in the future, when we re-evaluate our backup strategy. Also
Gnu Privacy Guard is being use to encrypt the backups so that they can be transmitted and stored remotely.

Learning technologies 2010

On Wednesday and Thursday we went to Learning Technologies 2010 to promote Notion Learning and check out the competition. And the simple take-away is this: Even in 2010, corporate LMSs still look awful. Every single stand displayed the same tab interface across the top, with the same table structures showing competency frameworks and training interfaces. Watching sales professionals demo the systems was hilarious: Page after page of complicated forms, just to assemble simple courses and handle training assignment. Bamboozled visitors watched, realising that they’d have to have 3 weeks of training just to get started with these ugly systems.

Things have moved on. There were some interesting speakers, particularly around mobile. Mobile has moved from ‘beta’ style implementations in 2009 to a must have part of e-learning strategies for organisations. The gold-rush was on with many companies keen to show off their mobile implementations.

Also on Wednesday night, we had a stand at Innovate London Showcase 2010 at the Thames Innovation Centre.

We got some posters and flyers printed:

Nothing like repeating your pitch every couple of minutes at a stand to help improve it!

Can I just have one screen where I get my data?

In a previous life, travelling around the US and Europe I came in contact with a large number of companies using learning management systems. I met all kinds – people who had never deployed one before to HR departments who were cyclically deploying a new LMS every 3 to 4 years – still in search of one that adequately met their needs.

A common thread emerged through all of this contact – a need for a simple to use LMS that really was simple to manage, and fulfilled the core role of an LMS properly – ie. deployment and management of training. The epiphany came when an exasperated HR professional threw up their hands and pointed at the screen. They said:

Can I just have one screen where I get my data?

This was after three days of patiently trying to learn how to navigate screens and screens of forms, lists, and general madness in an established LMS. The technical among us may be inclined to scoff at the over-simplification implied in the statement, but it’s point is clear. And it’s one of the main reasons Notion Learning is being built.

Currently, commentators are making all sorts of bad noises about the traditional LMS – as though it’s some sort of awful beast. VLEs, empowering learners and everything else is taking centre stage, and with some (but debatable) justification. But the need for an LMS that does tracking well doesn’t go away. And HR departments screaming at systems that just don’t quite do what they want, or take three weeks of technical training to get them started isn’t the only way it has to be.

The aim with Notion Learning is that one day I’ll be able to go back to that HR executive and give him a system he’ll enjoy using. A system he  can learn in a couple of hours by themselves, rather than a couple of weeks. One that just shows him his data.

Notion Learning alpha version released

Notion Learning; our easy to use, web based, powerful learning and training management system for businesses has just gone live in alpha.

As we had said back in October, it’s been very quiet on the blog because of the huge amount of development we’ve been doing in preperation for our first release. On Monday evening we deployed the alpha version (0.85) of Notion Learning. This is a huge milestone for us as it’s the first time the software is available on the Internet. Since Monday we’ve been doing a lot of testing to ensure that the application works in terms of performance – it’s vital that the application runs at a capable speed so it’s just as usable as a local, desktop application.

As well as that, we’re also revising the first version of the notion learning homepage. There is still a bit to go on that to really emphasise the benefits that Notion Learning brings to an organisation, but there’s a big difference between a big empty black screen (what was there before Monday) and what’s there now.

Currently we are in private alpha, which means that we are rolling it out ever so slowly to stakeholders and friends, for example, early adopters have already been into our system as student users, taking a course we’ve developed. Soon, those early adopters will be given invites so they can create full Notion Learning portal sites and create and manage e-learning themselves.

If you are interested in seeing more of Notion Learning, do get in touch – while it is a private alpha, we’re more than happy to show demos of the software.