Advanced Features

The Lightbox effect is a well known presentation tool for images, videos, and document presentation. OnlearnLMS provides this easily and effectively using special links that reference a file or activity by it’s IDNumber.

The user experience is what is called “modal”, ie the user is captured in that mode, and any attempt to leave the view takes them completely out of the view. This helps ensure total focus on the topic at hand, and also provide a disincentive to do other things at the same time.

It is also a very powerful visual effect.

The Lightbox invocation is very fast, as it does not require a full page refresh, and when exiting leaves the user exactly where they were prior to that.

While audio players have always been supported, this feature opens the player in the same screen, alongside or underneath the location of the link that invokes it.

As with the Lightbox effect, this feature is quick, and very slick.

Viewing PDF files online can be very boring, and the Page Flip effect makes this process far more engaging.

the OnlearnLMS Page Flip takes an uploaded PDF file and coverts it into images that are then displayed with the animation that mimics the process of turning the pages of a book as in real life.

This Block provides a visual representation of a bookshelf, with a set of shelves with two “books” per shelf. The “books” appear as a standard image but can be linked to any internal or external resource.

Typically the resources appear in the Lightbox.

Sometimes it is important to protect your intellectual property. Any process that distributes PDF files is open to abuse, however watermarking of  a document with the current user’s details dynamically, provides an effective disincentive to illegally distribute a document.

OnlearnLMS provides a mechanism to insert the current user’s name, email, and a date at the bottom of every page of the PDF before downloading it to that user.

Most of the Flash card applications available are not that “flash”. This feature provides an Activity with the ability to insert a number of cards, and display then as designed, or in random order. The user interface is simple, and requires a minimum of user clicks to work their way through the card set.

Scheduled Emails provide a structured learning experience over a period of time. This is particularly useful where the learning is “unattended”. Each user is sent a series of emails, configured in the system, with a start date from when they enrolled in the Course, and thereby provides ongoing encouragement and assistance as they work through the topics on the Course.

The periods for each email can be set individually for any number of days, weeks or months from the start date.

One of the criticisms of the original LMS is the very textual design of the Course layout. OnlearnLMS provides an opportunity to get away from this using a technique whereby the last topic of every course is hidden from Student view, and coloured with a light red background.

Resources and activities can then be loaded therein, and the main Topic Sections can use standard HTML design, or the HTML Labels mentioned below, to provide a far more engaging experience.

The OnlearnLMS Label templates provide a set of pre-designed buttons and formats for inserting in any Topic, making the design of a very appealing user interface easy and quick.

The buttons are pre-configured with the OnlearnLMS links requiring only the insertion of a linking ID for the intended resource or activity.

Where a very standardised format is required for a set of Courses, or in fact the whole site, OnlearnLMS provides a feature to extend the LMS Course details, and then load that automatically into the Outline Section at the top of the page within any Course.