Online manual/Working with eXe

=Working with eXe=

eXe has been designed to provide users with the flexibility to develop learning content or learning resources in a way that best suits their personal development processes. Some users for example, may prefer to outline the structure of their content before settling the detail of their content. Others might prefer to put in the detail and structure the content once they know the detail they have to cover.

For eXe users that prefer to design the structure of their content first, the Outline pane will enable you to construct an outline or course design that reflects your own preferred hierarchy and even taxonomy, e.g. topics-sections-units, or books - chapters - notes, etc. The outline structure can be easily adapted as content detail is added.

The iDevice (instructional Device) pane is a collection of structural elements that describe learning content and activities. Examples of these include, objectives, pre-knowledge, case studies, or even free text. Learning content is created by selecting iDevices from the iDevice menu and entering your learning content. A learning resource may consist of as few or as many iDevices as needed to deliver the learning content. New iDevices are in development and recommendations for additional iDevices are constantly sought from the wider learning community. Users can include images, math equations, and multi-media (including the majority of current video formats and mp3) - or attach any other resource - into any iDevice's rich-text fields.

If the iDevice you need is not amongst those generic iDevices listed in the iDevice pane you may be able to create your own new iDevice using the iDevice Editor. This is covered later in the manual.

Once authoring is complete content can be exported using eXe’s Export facility. Content can be saved as a self contained web site for publishing to a web server, or as a SCORM Content Package or IMS Content Package, which should enable the resource to be imported into most SCORM compliant Learning Management Systems (LMS). eXe also includes exports for flat text files as well as an experimental iPod notes format export. eXe pages also format well for the printing of resources.

=eXe Menu Options=

The Menu contains the following options: File, Tools, Styles, and Help. These are described briefly below:

=About the Authoring Workspace=

eXe's authoring workspace is made up of two work areas. The left sidebar contains the tools that content authors can use to enter and organise content. While the authoring space behaves as a drafting board where content authors using the iDevice tools can edit and view content. Currently, a properties tab is also accessible in this work space. The properties tab is designed to enable content authors to define basic metadata and taxonomy for the project as well as add header graphics and a title.

eXe Sidebar
Located at the far left of the screen is the eXe sidebar containing the Outline and iDevice panes.

The basic tree type structure allows users to add content pages (branches, children or nodes) to the trunk (Home page). Multiple levels can be added under this structure however guidelines for good content design suggest a fairly flat structure to be ideal for most learning content.

The Outline Pane


The Outline tool set allows you to define the structure your project will take. This is particularly useful for large or complex projects that contain many parts or topics. The Outline pane uses a tree structure to organise related pages. This first page or node is the Home page. This is the top level page and will always display as your project's home page when published.

The iDevice Pane


The iDevice (instructional device) pane is a collection of structural elements that describe learning content. Examples of these include, objectives, pre-knowledge, case studies, free text. Learning content is created by selecting iDevices from the iDevice menu and entering your learning content.

iDevice Descriptions

Authoring Window


The authoring window (to the right of the screen) displays the editable areas in the iDevice templates selected. Various editing tools are available to assist in the development of text.

Formatting content using Rich Text Editor
Using the iDevice rich text editor you enter your content as you would if you were using standard word processing type applications. Formatting of your content at this stage is relatively simple and the editing toolbar located above each editable frame provides some basic formatting, searching and linking functionality.



iDevice Control Buttons


Each iDevice comes with a standard set of iDevice control buttons. These controls are described below.

Green check mark

Each time you enter content into a field you must click on the check mark. This records the content in the iDevice and switches the view to preview mode. Note This does not save your work!!!

Blue undo arrow

By clicking on the blue undo arrow, you will undo any changes that might have made to the iDevice since opening it for edit. Please note that some iDevice editing functions (for example, Add or Remove a Question or Option in any of the quizzing iDevices) do not support an undo, and will result in the arrow appearing as:

Red X

By clicking on the red X you will delete the iDevice and any content entered.

Up and down arrows

The up and down arrows allow you to change the order of the iDevices displayed on your screen.

Move To menu

You can move iDevices containing content between and within nodes. This is done by opening the drop down menu and selecting the node you wish to move it to.

Edit iDevice

The page and pencil icon that appears in preview mode beneath each iDevice enables you to edit that particular iDevice. This is done by clicking on the icon which opens the iDevice in edit mode.

Properties Tab


The properties tab allows capturing relevant project related data. Within this tab you will find three sub-tabs created to collect the data.

The Package tab allows you to record basic project information like project title, author details and taxonomy. Authors can now also add a header graphic to a package which will display in the title area of the screen page.

The Metadata tab allows you to enter details which may prove useful for searching at a later stage. eXe currently supports Unqualified Dublin Core for IMS Content Packages. That same metadata is wrapped in a subset of the IMSLRM (which itself is a subset of the IEEE-LOM) for SCORM 1.2 exports.

If the metadata entries are not filled in, eXe uses the package title, author, and description as fallback values. If you don't set the package title either, eXe will default to using the package filename.

The Export tab allows you to select additional SCORM export features. SCORM features will be listed in this tab as they are developed and can be selected by activating the relevant checkboxes.

In eXe 1.0, the only feature available is for the addition of next and previous links to be made for SCORM exports. This feature adds next and previous page navigation buttons to each page when viewed through an LMS browser. At present this feature has been tested with the Moodle and Interact LMS. It relies on special functionality in the LMS and so should not be expected to work in all cases.

=Menus and Toolbars=

Loading files
Native eXe files are held as .elp files. When authoring existing files in eXe a file must be loaded to the eXe before they can be edited. eXe files are saved as .elp extensions (see Chapter 5 File Management for more detail).

Loading .elp files to eXe Select  in the toolbar. The window opens allowing authors to browse to the folder or file sought. Select the file by double clicking on the file or selecting the file with a single click and clicking. The file will open in the eXe authoring window.

Save Content
IMPORTANT NOTE

You must use the procedure described below to save your .elp file. The green checkmark closes edit mode for each idevice but does not save your package. Any edits made to idevices will be lost if not manually saved using the procedure outlined below.

To save authored content

Select from the menu in the toolbar. The window opens allowing authors to enter a file name for the project. A dialogue message is displayed confirming the location of the saved file.

Exporting Content
Content created in eXe can be exported as a web package ready for publishing to a web server, as a SCORM 1.2 package for delivery to a SCORM compliant LMS, an IMS Content Package, a Single Web Page suitable for printing, a plain text file for display on mobile devices, or iPod Notes files.

To export a package

For the Web

Select from the menu in the toolbar. Select  and then choose either  or . If you select  select the folder you want to export to by selecting a folder from the window, or create a new folder and click.

A new folder can be created to store files by clicking on the button in the window. Label the newly made folder and click .

You can also export your web site as a zip file. This will help if you need to email your site to a webmaster, or if you have an LMS that can unzip files itself (like Moodle).

For SCORM / IMS Content Package Select from the menu in the toolbar. Select SCORM 1.2 or IMS Content Package. The  window will be displayed and you will be prompted for the package title. Enter the package title and click. A similar process occurs for the IMS Content Package export. Packages exported this way are saves as .zip files. You do not need to unzip these files in order to import into an LMS.

Preferences
The Preferences dialog currently enables you to change the language in which the eXe interface is rendered. Select a language from the pulldown list and hit OK to change to another language. Your selection will be remembered when you restart eXe.

Styles
eXe currently offers seven page styles. Each style combines a different colour theme and icons appropriate to a theme. Styles are selected from the  menu on the toolbar.

iDevice Editor and iDevice tools


The iDevice Editor allows you to design your own iDevices.

Creating an iDevice
To create an iDevice


 * 1) Select Tools from the toolbar menu and select iDevice Editor. The iDevice editor window will open.
 * 2) Enter the device name, author name, and the purpose for  the iDevice.
 * 3) Enter any pedagological help you might give to other users on how you see the device being used.
 * 4) Select the type of emphasis you want to place on the content entered with this idevice. No emphasis means that the content will display as plain text, Some emphasis differentiates the text slight and Strong emphasis highlights the text. By selecting emphasis you will be presented with an icon menu. Click on an icon to attach it to your iDevice. This icon will appear alongside the iDevice title.
 * 5) The next step is to build your iDevice by selecting the elements you want to appear in your iDevice. The Add Text Field button provides you with a single line input field. The Add Text Area button gives you a multiple line input field. You can also add a Feedback field (similar to the Case Study iDevice).
 * 6) Give each element a label and provide instructions on using each one.
 * 7) Click Save. The new iDevice will appear in the iDevices Pane. This iDevice now behaves in the same manner as the other iDevices.

=Known Bugs and Issues= We acknowledge that there will be issues that maybe difficult for us to resolve from time to time. Sometimes this will be because building something that doesn't exist means the tools to create it may not have quite caught up with our design ambitions. On the other hand it might just be something we haven't worked out how to fix quite yet. Where this happens we will keep you updated with the bugs and issues we do know about.

Current bugs and issues ''
 * Currently you cannot have more than one SCORM Quiz per node or page. You can however make a SCORM Quiz in each node, there is no limit to how many quizzes you have throughout your resource. We will continue to try to fix this problem but it has been set as a low priority. ''Ticket No.265
 * The eXe file format has changed between versions. Now that version 1.0 has been released, we expect fewer changes.  While newer versions of eXe can open old packages, old versions of eXe will not be able to open packages created with newer versions.  This means if you are collaborating in authoring a document and sharing .elp files, you all should use the same version of eXe.  The package format is compatible across platforms, so there is no problem sharing .elp files between Windows, OS X, and Linux.
 * eXe does not do any file locking or transaction control that would allow multiple authors to safely edit the same package at the same time on a shared volume. Instead, each of the authors could work on components of a resource, and then use eXe's Merging... Insert Package feature to build the components into a single package.