What a learning experience! Locked in a room with around 40 “geeks” talking in a language that would require considerable interpretation for most (including me), our task was to put a range of applications and processes to the test to see how well they performed in terms of meeting the Common Cartridge specifications developed by the IMS Global consortium.

The test was simple enough – to submit a content “cartridge” that had been created using each of the processes being examined to a “testing application” that analysed the code line by line and provided feedback in terms of how many errors were found. The second step then was to open the import the cartridge into an LMS system and open it to see how it operates in that environment. None of the participants had been able to do either of these things with the particular applications being used prior to the test, so it was a real test in that sense!

The outcomes were extremely positive for eXe – it came through with ZERO errors and opened without a glitch within the chosen LMS – Angel Learning.

Next was a cartridge from a US Publishing House, which returned about a dozen errors, most fairly minor and fixable.

Third was a cartridge from a large distance education university – which came back with a large number of errors, some more serious.

Finally was a cartridge from another commercial vendor – which had more errors than we could count and completely failed the test in every respect.

So – another feather in the cap for eXe, with many of those present taking a copy away with them to look at using in the context of what they are doing in the content development for eLearning space.

With that behind me I’m now looking forward to returning back to NZ and getting back to an environment I feel more at ease in 🙂