[LON-CAPA-admin] Importing IMS course

[Stuart Peter Raeburn]

Jason, 

IMS import in LON-CAPA is intended for import of courses created in other 
course management systems - Blackboard 5 and 6, ANGEL, WebCT 4 (CE and 
Vista) - into LON-CAPA. 

If you wish to copy a LON-CAPA course it is recommended that you use the 
"clone course" function in LON-CAPA instead of IMS export followed by IMS 
import.  When a LON-CAPA course is cloned, not only are course structure and 
content copied from the old course to the new course, but also course 
parameters, and a number of the parameter settings which apply to course 
content are copied. 

Currently cloning a course must occur when a course is first created.  When 
a Domain Coordinator creates a course using CCRS, a "select course" link is 
available to allow selection of an existing course which is to be cloned to 
create the new course. 

The IMS export feature in LON-CAPA can be used to generate a content package 
which conforms to the IMS 1.1 standard.   Packages created via IMS export in 
LON-CAPA capture the course structure and course content and are intended 
for import into other course management systems.  Generic types of content 
(e.g., web pages, movies, flash, powerpoint etc.) will operate successfully 
in different systems.  By contrast, specialized LON-CAPA content created by 
an author in Construction Space and published in the shared resource pool 
(e.g., .problem and .library files) require the LON-CAPA environment to 
render properly.  There is also an issue that the author of LON-CAPA 
resources in a course may not be the same person who is carrying out the IMS 
export, and in this case only a rendering of the LON-CAPA course rather than 
the source itself should be included in the exported package. For these 
reasons, packages created by the current implementation of IMS export are 
not well suited for re-import into LON-CAPA via IMS import, and indeed 
LON-CAPA is not one of the source CMSs which can be selected in the IMS 
import interface during import. 

Another mechanism for facilitating re-use of LON-CAPA course content is for 
a Course Coordinator to view the course on a library server on which he/she 
has an account with an author role.  In this case the Course Documents 
(DOCS) screen will contain a "Dump to Construction Space" button which 
allows course content to be copied to Construction Space, from where it can 
be published and made available to others via the shared resource pool. 

Stuart Raeburn
MSU LON-CAPA group 

Jason Hitsman writes: 

> I'm having difficulty importing a course I backed up using the IMS feature.
> When I reinitialize after the import, I get the following. 
> 
>   
> 
> The following problems occurred:
> Map not loaded: The file
> /home/httpd/lonUsers/brs/8/O/2/8O2190178344a45b7brsl1/userfiles/1162500573/s
> equences/Top.sequence does not exist. 
> 
>   
> 
> Jason Hitsman 
>