Course Language Selection

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Stephan Hodgson

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May 29, 2020, 5:41:58 PM5/29/20
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Hello,

I'm new to OpenOlat. I am setting it up as a company training system for an industrial site. I have users with different home languages, french and english. 
Is it possible to create the same course in 2 languages? What I would like is for the French user to only see and complete the french course, and the english user the english course, yet only have one bilingual course in the system. 

Please help.


Florian Gnaegi

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May 30, 2020, 5:02:03 AM5/30/20
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Hi 

The short answer is no, you can’t.  

The long answer: you can have two courses in different languages and assign them to the same taxonomy so that conceptually the refer to the same subject area in the taxonomy tree. But this is not visible to the students and does not make the course appear as one course with different languages. 

The common solution is to have a catalog entry that describes the course and in the catalog entry the course with the different languages. 

There is also a didactical remark: just because your system language is set to something does not necessarily mean that you prefer doing a course with tests in that language. E.g. many people prefer English in the tool because they are used that the tools and the business language is english. But as native French speakers they would like to do the test in French. Or the are native English speakers, thus have the tool in EN, but the must do the test in FR because they work in France and need the french business terms. 

Why not letting users decide which language they want the course to do? But I am sure there are plenty of use cases where you don’t want this, OpenOlat ist not optimized for this. 

Cheers
Florian

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Stephan Hodgson

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Jun 1, 2020, 5:33:53 PM6/1/20
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Hello Florian,

Your answer is very helpful. I like the idea of using the taxonomy, especially for managing competencies. 

I have looked through the taxonomy module, the courses module and the wiki, but cannot find any way of linking a course to a taxonomy. I am using version 15.0. Is there something I am not seeing or understanding, or something that has to be switched on?

Finally, the documentation says that OpenOlat does not yet manage competencies, although one can allocate a competency through the user menu. Is it the automatic allocation of a competency once all courses have been completed that is not managed? This sounds like a powerful tool and I would like to know more.

Thanks for your time,

Stephan


On Saturday, 30 May 2020 11:02:03 UTC+2, Florian Gnaegi wrote:
Hi 

The short answer is no, you can’t.  

The long answer: you can have two courses in different languages and assign them to the same taxonomy so that conceptually the refer to the same subject area in the taxonomy tree. But this is not visible to the students and does not make the course appear as one course with different languages. 

The common solution is to have a catalog entry that describes the course and in the catalog entry the course with the different languages. 

There is also a didactical remark: just because your system language is set to something does not necessarily mean that you prefer doing a course with tests in that language. E.g. many people prefer English in the tool because they are used that the tools and the business language is english. But as native French speakers they would like to do the test in French. Or the are native English speakers, thus have the tool in EN, but the must do the test in FR because they work in France and need the french business terms. 

Why not letting users decide which language they want the course to do? But I am sure there are plenty of use cases where you don’t want this, OpenOlat ist not optimized for this. 

Cheers
Florian
Am 29.05.2020 um 23:41 schrieb Stephan Hodgson <sqho...@gmail.com>:

Hello,

I'm new to OpenOlat. I am setting it up as a company training system for an industrial site. I have users with different home languages, french and english. 
Is it possible to create the same course in 2 languages? What I would like is for the French user to only see and complete the french course, and the english user the english course, yet only have one bilingual course in the system. 

Please help.



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Florian Gnaegi

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Jun 2, 2020, 1:06:09 AM6/2/20
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Hi Stephan

At the moment you can assign taxonomies (in the sense of hierarchically stacked subject areas) to learning resources (the things you create int he authoring environement such as courses, wiki etc), questions in the question bank and hierarchies in the document pool. 

In the document pool you can manage access rights using teaching and admin competencies. In the question pool teaching competencies can be used for the question review process if enabled. It is actually quite powerful if used correctly. 

At the moment we do not yet assign users competencies after doing a test or a course, this is part of future development. Also, (you saw it in the competency dropdown) we will eventually implement target competencies which in the end will allow competency based learning as an alternative to curricular learning. 

To assign taxonomies to learning resource, make sure you have the taxonomy activated for learning resources (in the module admin), then open a learning resource (e.g. a course), go to the course menu  Administration -> Settings -> Metadata -> Subjects. 

Cheers
Florian



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Stephan Hodgson

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Jun 2, 2020, 3:37:02 AM6/2/20
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Hello Florian,

This is now perfectly clear. I missed this as I didn't make the link between the "subject" field and the taxonomy. I now have a taxonomy built linked to courses. Competency based management is the way to go in an industrial setting. Do you know when competency based learning will be introduced, or is there a way to contribute to accelerate the development?
If there are any other "ideas" or "needs" I may have, how would could I propose this for someone in the community to develop?

Thank-you for your help.

Regards,
Stephan Hodgson

Florian Gnaegi

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Jun 2, 2020, 4:50:19 AM6/2/20
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Hi Stephan

I know, it is a bit confusing that it is labeled that way. We did not use the term *taxonomy“ because this is really more a technical description of a very generic hierarchical structure that can represent anything. In the end you can have multiple taxonomies with different focus, eg. subjects areas, competencies, keywords etc. We found that most don’t have fully developed competencies taxonomies, most have relatively simple structures of maybe three levels that represent more the subject areas of their study offerings. Thus we labeled it in the way that it probably fits most users. 

Regarding contribution: the main thing that keeps us from moving faster is funding. Funding is an important element in setting the priorities for our planning. Right now the full fledged competency based learning is a bit on hold until we have progressed in other areas. But funding can change this ;-)

If you see any possibilities in this regard, please contact me privately. 

Regards
Florian 



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Stephan Hodgson

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Jun 2, 2020, 5:35:40 AM6/2/20
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Thank-you Florian,

Once I have a clearer picture of what changes/additions I need made I will contact you privately to discuss.

Last question - Courses have the option of recertification after a period in the "Certificate" section. Does this result in the user having to redo the course or the assessment or is this just the re-issuance of a certificate with a new date. Is it reissued at indefinitely (ie after every defined period?). I'm asking this as some competencies/courses need to be redone on an annual basis to confirm currency. I see that an expiration date is already planned for in the competency framework, however I'm looking at how this could be done in OpenOlat for the moment. 

Again, thank-you for your time.

Regards
Stephan

Florian Gnaegi

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Jun 2, 2020, 6:00:12 AM6/2/20
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The implementation there is only very rudimentary. If you enable re-certification the only thing it triggers is that 
- you can print a validation date on the certificate
- when the certificate validation date is reached it will print a warn symbol to indicate that the certificate is not valid anmore
- when the certificate validation date is reached it will create a new certificate when the user does pass the course again

But it does not trigger any mail to the user or reset anything. At this time this does not fully implement a whole workflow.  We would like to make the course assessment data versionized so that you can redo a course. When we have this we can work towards fully automated re-certification process. Provide funding is also a way to speed up this development…

Regards
Florian


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