The new features in Claroline 1.6 include:

eLearning Course Assignment tool provides assignment sessions and:

- planned work sessions

- automatically close or open assignments uploads

- time planning including start date and end date

- give a personalized (or automatic) feedback to any work session submission

- work content can be text, file or text and file

eLearning Document Tool:

- assignment session

- new image gallery

- internal search functionality

eLearning Exercise Tool:

- exercise form

- time planning capability (start date, end date and duration)

- optional attempts limit for each user

- support for multimedia files. (pictures, documents, flash animations, videos, sounds, ... )

- support for the Flash MP3 player

eLearning Campus Administration Tool:

- import csv files

- organise your users by groups (classes) and subgroups on your elearning campus

- create a whole class tree that fits to your organisation scheme

- subscribe a whole class to an elearning course at once time

- Massive import with .csv file format is now supported in the user list of the administration tool

- create a new class right from your CSV file

- import users in a specific course within the user tool

Configuration files editor:

New configuration files editor allowing easy customization of the campus and of the tool parameters.

- define which values are required for the creation of new elearning courses

- set the disk space limit of the documents and links tool

- select which values are required in user profiles

- choose the number of posts displayed per forum page

Using a new architecture to deal with the configuration files, Claroline is now able to integrate new configuration parameters (or hide any) in this interface. According to the elearning community test, parameters could be added or deleted in this place for the forthcoming Claroline 1.6 stable version.

Improved tracking and statistics:

- elearning exercises

- forum (records messages)

- option to erase all statistics of a course

Translation

New translation files simplify the process to add or update language interface of the claroline system. Specifically, in the development version, use of a single file with all the translations is supported. In the stable version, the development file is splitted in many files to increase performance.

Claroline has been adapted to accomodate a bettter layout for elearning user personalisation with a more intensive use of CSS stylesheets. This makes it easier, and without any code change, for anyone to modify the appearance (color, style, logo) of new Claroline campus installed.

A view mode switcher has been added allowing teachers to see their elearning courses as simple students do. The new external authentication system provides methods to authenticate a user from a significant number of systems including LDAP servers, 14 databases from Oracle to Microsoft SQL Server 2005, ODBC, POP3 servers, IMAP servers, vpopmail accounts, RADIUS, SAMBA password files and SOAP. This capability will improve the integration of Claroline into your existing business computer systems and network environment.

Lastly, the Claroline v1.6 elearning system offers the Single Sign On (SSO) system enabling users, once logged into Claroline, to connect to all other elearning sessions without the need of physically enter repetitive usernames and passwords. This feature allows your organization to smoothly integrate Claroline into your institution elearning Portals. To learn more, or download the elearning software suite visit http://www.claroline.net/