KEWL.nextgen

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KEWL.NextGen

KEWL.NextGen screen capture
Platform Cross-platform
Genre Learning management system
License GPL

KEWL.NextGen is a free/open source e-learning platform (also known as a Course Management System (CMS), or Learning Management Systems (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)). KEWL was developed initially by Derek Keats at the University of the Western Cape as an ASP application in the 1990s, but was rewritten from scratch in PHP in 2004 as part of the African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources project so that it would run on Linux and other platforms.

KEWL.NextGen and its successors (KEWL 3.0 up) are designed to help educators create online courses with a variety of opportunities for rich interaction based upon a choice of pedagogies. Its Free Software (open source) license and object-oriented modular architecture means that developing additional functionality is fairly easy for programmers with any level of skill. The main development of KEWL.NextGen and above is a result of collaboration among 15 African universities, but development and localization also happens elsewhere.

There are currently two main versions of KEWL, KEWL.NextGen which is a PHP4 application based on the KINKY rapid application development framework, and KEWL 3.0 which is currently in Beta testing and is based on the Chisimba rapid application development framework.

Contents

[edit] KEWL features

KEWL has many features expected from a cutting-edge e-learning environment:

  • Content
    • Content management
    • Glossaries with parsing in content pages
    • Instructional Design
    • File uploads
    • Multimedia parsing, including audio, video, mindmaps, timelines (in v. 3.0), Google Maps (in v. 3.0), RSS feeds (in v. 3.0)
    • Wiki
  • Assessment (including formative assessment)
    • Quizzes with a variety of question types
    • Rubrics with links to assessment activities that can be assessed including forums, podcasts, blogs, essays, etc.
    • Essays and written assignments
    • Configurable assignment types
    • Problem based learning
  • Other features
    • A full online survey capability
    • Multi-language support
    • Easily skinnable interface
    • GUI management tools
    • Flexible configuration options at the level of site and course

KEWL.NextGen and KEWL 3.0 are modular in architecture and are easily extended by creating modules containing desired new functionality. because of a high level of abstraction in the framework, the same application environment can be used to create a variety of other systems which can be set up using a GUI interface. These include content management systems, portals, blogs, and a variety of specialized applications.

With KEWL 3.0, PHP version 5 can be used to author and contribute new modules, following a simple MVC design pattern.

[edit] Specification

KEWL runs without modification on Unix, Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, NetWare and any other systems that support PHP. KINKY based versions require PHP4, while Chisimba based versions require PHP5.

For KINKY based versions, data are stored in MySQL. For Chisimba-based versions MySQL and PostgreSQL are supported. Database abstraction in Chisimba should enable it to run on other databases such as (Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server but have not been fully tested against those applications.

[edit] Background

[edit] Origins

KEWL began life as a small set of scripts for use in teaching Marine Botany and related courses by Prof Derek Keats at the University of the Western Cape. in Cape Town, South Africa. It evolved into a full online learning environment as a result of being adopted in a number of e-learning projects, but by 2004 it had reached the limit of what could be achieved with the chosen technology. In addition, its developers had moved from a Microsoft Windows environment to Linux, and were ready to rebuild the application from scratch as a cross-platform application based on an object-oriented framework. Sean Legassick designed the KINKY (Kinky Is Not KEWL Yet) framework for the project, and KEWL.NextGen was built on top of that framework.

[edit] Pedagogical approach

The project recognizes that there are many different philosophies of education, varying from Instructivism through to Social constructivism and that while some approaches are better in principle than others, the landscape of education today is not homogeneous. Thus, versions of KEWL support the full range of educational options from simple delivery and summative assessment through approaches such as problem-based learning and almost any kind of approach that can be used online.

[edit] Origin of the name

The word KEWL is a play on chatroom slang, and stands for Knowledge Environment for Web Learning (originally it was Web-based which conveyed the wrong impression). It was meant to convey the idea that learning online should be fun, it should be kewl.

The application framework for KEWL.NextGen is KINKY, which is a recursive acronym for Kinky Is Not Kewl Yet, signifying that the application framework is not the application. Use of the name KINKY has some potential difficulty in some circles, so when the framework was rewritten to support PHP5 and a Web 2.0 environment, it was decided to give the new framework the name Chisimba. The name was coined by Esther Keats, which means "the pole framework used to construct an African traditional house" in her maternal language Chichewa (Malawi). The name seems fitting for a framework developed in Africa for building e-learning and other applications.

[edit] Variants

KEWL has been adopted in Afghanistan, where it is renamed to ANGEL (Afghan's Next-Generation E-Learning) by Kabul University.

[edit] Dependencies, Installation and Configuration

The Chisimba version of KEWL depends on the PEAR library, and a number of Apache extensions. Once these are in place, KEWL and other Chisimba-based applications can be installed using a simple wizard. A GUI interface is provided for configuration post the install process, including setting up abstractions.

[edit] Interoperability

Interoperability in e-learning platforms is not a simple matter, particularly as some of the standards are still evolving and not well documented. Further, KEWL development happens in response to identified needs of partners, so only those features required by partners are well developed.

  • Authentication, using LDAP is available, but adaptation to other standard methods is easily achieved.
  • Enrollment, can - with some tweaking - connect to almost any enterprise system either directly or via web services.
  • Resources, using IMS Content Packaging, SCORM are in various stages of development
  • Syndication using RSS or Atom newsfeeds - external newsfeeds can be displayed in a course, and forums, blogs, and other features can be made available to others as newsfeeds.

The KEWL team has extensive experience in importing content from other systems.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

  • avoir.uwc.ac.za - The AVOIR project site where most things related to KEWL, KINKY and Chisimba can be found