LON-CAPA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| LON-CAPA | |
 |
|
 Logo and Screenshot of the LON-CAPA System |
|
| Developer: | LON-CAPA Academic Consortium |
|---|---|
| Latest release: | 2.3.3 / March 28, 2007 |
| OS: | Perl-compatible -- Linux required |
| Use: | Content management system and Virtual learning environment |
| License: | GNU General Public License |
| Website: | www.loncapa.org |
LON-CAPA is a free software online educational course management system (CMS) originally developed at Michigan State University in the late 1990s, and currently developed by the LON-CAPA Academic Consortium, headed by Michigan State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Simon Fraser University. It is covered by the GNU General Public License. Short for The LearningOnline Network with Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach, the system is known for its flexibility and vast network of educational resources, and is currently being used at over 40 colleges and universities and 40 K-12 schools across the world. It has a shared content resource pool of over 250,000 online resources, including more than 80,000 randomizing online problems.
Contents |
[edit] History
In the fall of 1992, CAPA (a Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach) was piloted in a small physics class of 92 students. CAPA provides students with personalized problem sets, quizzes, and exams. Students are given instant feedback and hints via the Internet and may correct errors without penalty until the assignment due date. The system records the students' participation and performance and the records are available online to both the instructor and the individual student. CAPA is a teaching tool, not a curriculum, and as such does not dictate course design, content or goals. Instead, it enables faculty to augment their courses with individualized relevant exercises.
The LectureOnline project was started to serve physics course material over the web in the fall of 1997 with 770 students. With only the web-browser as interface, LectureOnline enables instructors to seamlessly put together a presentation of material gleaned from all over the Internet, and to create different types of individualized online homework. Grading, communication, groupwork and enrollment are also handled by the system.
In 1999, the CAPA and LectureOnline groups joined efforts in the creation of the LearningOnline Network with CAPA (LON-CAPA), which provides a superset of the CAPA and LectureOnline functionalities. LON-CAPA was first beta-tested with two courses at MSU in spring 2001.
In 2000, the LON-CAPA group at MSU received funding by the National Science Foundation to expand the user community, research educational effectiveness of the resources, and to develop mechanism for resource sharing across institutional boundaries and with the collaboration of commercial partners.
In 2003, the project won the Computerworld 21st Century Achievement Award in the Education and Academia category, and in 2004 it won a Sloan-C "Most Effective Practice" Award.
In 2006, the LON-CAPA Academic Consortium was founded with Michigan State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as founding members. The consortium will oversee the continuing development of the software, the content cluster, and the project.
In Spring 2006, LON-CAPA was serving over 16,000 course enrollments per semester at MSU alone, and approximately 40,000 course enrollments system-wide, ranging from middle school to graduate level courses. Disciplines include astronomy, biology, business, chemistry, civil engineering, computer science, family and child ecology, geology, human food and nutrition, human medicine, mathematics, medical technology, physics, and psychology.
[edit] Randomized Homework
With LON-CAPA, an instructor can create and/or assemble randomized assignments, quizzes, and examinations with a large variety of conceptual questions and quantitative problems. "Randomized" means that each student sees a slightly different computer-generated problem. This encourages collaboration between students on a conceptual level, but prevents blind copying of answers. Problems can include pictures, animations, graphics, tables, links, etc., all of which can be randomized. The writing and development is done through a web-based editor, and facilitated by templates.
In formative assessment situations, such as homework, students are given instant feedback and relevant hints and may correct errors without penalty prior to an assignment's due date. In summative assessment situations, for example, exams or quizzes, these features can be disabled.
[edit] Architecture
LON-CAPA is a distributed networked system. The three layers of the LON-CAPA architecture are:
- At the bottom is a shared learning content repository, which provides content replication, versioning, catalog information, etc
- At the middle layer are tools to assemble content from this pool. Any assembly again becomes part of the repository
- At the top layer is a full-featured course management and assessment layer to readily deploy this content in your courses.
[edit] Shared Content Repository
The shared content repository of learning objects connects all institutions participating in the network. While distributed, the content repository of LON-CAPA appears as one large virtual file system. The network provides transparent resource replication (computer science) to provide faster access to the resources, as well as metadata, versioning, and digital rights management.
As of Fall 2006, the LON-CAPA shared resource pool as approximately 250,000 online resources, of which approximately one third are in active use [1] and shared across the participating institutions [2].
[edit] Content Assembly
Faculty can assemble resources from the shared resource pool using the so-called Resource Assembly Tool. Resources can be assembled at different levels of granularity: fragments into pages, pages into pages, pages into modules, etc. Each time a faculty member assembles resources, the assembly itself becomes reusable.
Assemblies of resources are not limited to linear sequences, but can include branches and conditionals in order to define different learning paths.
[edit] Course Management
At the top level, LON-CAPA provides a complete course management system in order to readily deploy the assembled resources in courses. This layer provides navigation, templates for syllabi and announcements, calendaring (exporting iCal) and scheduling, grading, threaded discussion, RSS (file format), group collaboration, and electronic portfolio tools. The system supports integration with the registrar's office for automated enrollment management, as well as coupling with the Kerberos protocol, LDAP, etc, for centralized authentication, and support for single sign-on. Resource import and export through IMS Global.
