by David Graham.
Well, more progress!
General Note:
Its been a difficult few weeks, hardware issues having slowed work
down tremendously. I had to replace my hard drive, and reinstall
the operating system. Fortunately, my data was stored on a separate
drive and I’ve lost very little other than time.
Tutorial Preparation:
Zen Cart installation remains a problem, and work there is stalled
at the moment, though recent server changes at
hosting-4-creloaded.com may resolve this situation and allow
resumption of development. Tutorials on the remaining distribution
have been put into Flash form and posted for review by gracious
members of the CRE Loaded Beta team, and the users of the osC Max
forums. Feedback so far has been good, particularly from the osC
Max community – Thanks!
Course Development.
Development of Moodle courses has resumed. The CRE Loaded rough
draft is now sufficiently advanced to be used, and has been posted
as our first complete course module. It is complete in that at
least each topic tells a complete story. I will be adding more
resources to them and fleshing this out. But it works as a course
as it stands, including lessons, quizzes and a final exam. The work
on this course provides an excellent springboard for osCommerce
standard and osC Max development which I expect to have complete
within a week. Once the Zen Cart installation issues are resolved,
that course also can be finished expeditiously. Next up on course
offerings will be store configuration.
I’ve conducted a review of our offerings and noticed the following.
In evaluating the eCommerce fundamentals course, it is apparent I’m
going to need to break it down into smaller chunks to make it
easier to manage. It is just TOO unwieldy.
The installation courses will need more resources. In particular
I’ve choses to cover FTP related issues usually uncovered by a
community which focuses on how to use a client program, and left
client program usage uncovered. I’ll put more resources there, and
add test questions to make sure the student can use one. This can
be better addressed as I break out parts of the eCommerce
fundamentals course into modules.
The University Book Store
Development of content on the “http://www.oscommerceuniversity.com” title=”University Book Store”
target=”_blank”>University Book Store continues, and we are now
able to dispense with the categories box, and use the page box as a
Site Directory. This should improve traffic flow downward in the
site. Next up is work on better connections from the school to the
store. As we start building commercial courses this will be
important.
Also coming up in content development will be more material related
to supporting programs and books. Pithy Productions, Inc. offerings
will be documented, including sales links as several of their books
will be used in upcoming courses. Magnetic One products will be
included, as well. I plan to feature them in several courses, as
use of desktop tools to manage a store is becoming a highly valued
option in some parts of the community. The third focus of content
development will be extending the FAQ system to provide more
coverage of CRE Loaded, and initial coverage of osCommerce, osC Max
and Zen Cart.
We also have some potential for multilingual development coming up.
Arrangements are in progress for generating French language
translations of course materials and multimedia publications.
So, while I’ve not written much in the past month, its certainly
been a busy one, and osCommerce University continues to grow. I’m
pretty excited about getting course material live and starting
educational activities. Hope to hear some feedback from students
and see more posting in our forums soon!
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