Upload/Import Course Materials into a Course Management System/Virtual Learning Environment

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Upload/Import Course Materials into a Course Management System/Virtual Learning Environment
OCWs in particular were envisioned as independent of courses and course materials held in Course Management Systems/Virtual Learning Environments (CMS/VLE); OCW materials were envisioned as a publication of the university that was to be an archive of a particular course. OCWs contain much of the materials to “teach” the course but not necessarily to manage the course. Because of their nature, one use of OCW course materials is as the basis for a “new” course taught by an instructor. To facilitate the teaching of this “new” course, the instructor may want to take the course materials and upload them into his/her local CMS/VLE.

Examples:
 * eLearning XHTML editor (eXe) - Open source authoring tool for Web content. Exports self contained websites, IMS content packages, and SCORM for import into LMSs
 * OCWinMotion retrieves the content from MIT's OCW or Educommons powered OCW sites using respectively IMS Scorm or RSS feeds. It allows the user to select from the different items that compose the whole course and convert the selected content onto wikipages. The set of wikipages created can be used as a learning environment. To reinforce the point about the clear effectiveness (for a wider audience) of OCW materials combined with management and interactivity, such a focus of OCWinMotion should be ease of use.

Challenges:
 * Proper formats to enable direct upload (no cutting and pasting or uploading individual files one by one).
 * Adapting content to user expectations from LMS (e.g. look-and-feel, pacing, etc.)

Enablers:
 * Standards/specifications such as IMS Content Packaging, IMS Common Cartridge, SCORM