TOPIC:

I'd like to get an indication of best practice amongst Xerte community Higher Education members on the use of setting Xerte LOs to public for course content. My understanding is, setting a Xerte LO to Public will allow anyone to view that LO if they were to use a search engine or wherever you place the URL or embed code e.g. website, blog etc.

If users only want their Xerte LOs to be accessed via a VLE by students, I currently recommend the "Other" setting as it allows you to add the VLE URL?

I have generally always used public for my LOs but I appreciate academics may not want their Xerte LOs searchable outwith the institution.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks in advance
Alison

Hi Alison
making a Xerte LO public will not necessarily or automatically mean that LO appears in public search results. Xerte LOs load dynamically e.g. the xml and content loads when the LO is visit so there aren't a whole load of static web pages for a search engine to index. If you put a summary and link to a public Xerte LO on a public facing web site then yes a search engine can index that and show in search results. e.g. if you search for xerte release notes you will find our public release notes LO because it is linked from numerous places including shared links on this site and forums. Whether or not public LOs linked from a LMS/VLE show up in public search results will depend on what search is enabled by that environment.
Making an LO public does mean that anyone with that link can view it without having to login and could also share it with others. Even if they originally accessed the link via login to an LMS/VLE if they share the public link outside of the LMS/VLE then wherever that is shared the LO would be viewable.

As you say using the other option via LO properties is one way of restricting access and in more recent versions of Xerte details of how the LO is shared shows in the middle panel of the workspace.
There are other ways to share LOs if you wish to restrict access and these may be better than using the 'other' option.

1. Share as password protected - this means that the viewer is prompted to login to the Xerte install before seeing the LO and needs access to do so.

2. Share via LTI - this is arguably the best option if you are sharing via an LMS/VLE because the user needs an account in that environment and the LO will not load outside of that environment. With the correct settings/environment grades should also be stored in the gradebook in that environment.

3. Share via LTI and xAPI - this is the same as LTI only except would then also include much richer analysis via the Xerte dashboard. However connection to an LRS is also required.

4. Export as SCORM - the LO would not be available outside of the LMS/VLE but is arguably out of date as soon as it is exported and in my experience is a barrier to iterative development/improvement.

All that said you asked for an indication of best practice and that's arguably a different question! As you know Xerte is available as a free and open source tool and most of the development and improvement of Xerte is done on a voluntary basis or because an organisation financially contributed to some new developments/enhancements. One of the things that keeps those of us developing Xerte motivated to keep on doing so is seeing how the community of users use it and what they create with it. Unfortunately there is too little sharing amongst the worldwide community even when people ask for examples on these forums. There are some notable exceptions of course that do proactively share Xerte LOs publically and regularly and taking that to it's full potential includes sharing not just for viewing but also for download and re-purposing. In recent versions of Xerte we extended the RSS functionality and added a Xerte RSS download page to make that even easier. As I think you're aware we share lots of LOs in this way via the Future Teacher project bit.ly/ft30ukpage and Deltion College in the Netherlands also share lots of LOs in a way that can be downloaded and repurposed too xerte.deltion.nl/play.php?template_id=1064 Cardiff University also share some of their tutorials created in Xerte for download too sites.cardiff.ac.uk/ilrb/resourcehub-2/search/

So technically there are numerous ways to restrict access to Xerte LOs but also numerous ways to share Xerte LOs with the wider community too. Some resources may contain content/data that necessitates restricted access but for those LOs but where that's not the case we would encourage much wider and more proactive public sharing because that's the way the community can grow and learn from each other. In the current 'lockdown' climate we're also aware 'only anecdotally in many cases' that development of Xerte resources has grown exponentially it's a real shame that the impact and benefits of all that isn't shared more widely and we'd encourage anyone reading this thread to not only respond to your original question but also to proactively share examples and case studies of how Xerte has helped in the current situation?

HTH
Ron

As always Ron, thank you very much for your comprehensive response. Completely agree with you about the community sharing their Xerte LOs. I use the community examples to showcase how flexible Xerte is as a tool.

BTW, At Edinburgh Uni, we are just about to upgrade to v3.8 on 3rd June, v3.8 looks great! I'll be able to share more examples after this date as we move to Shibboleth authentication.