Spring is a great time to talk about a new feature that can be utilized to provide broad support for document management and course delivery. I am referring to LearningServer's Document Event Handler (DEH). This is part of LearningServer's SharePoint integrated feature set which also includes integrated single sign-on user authentication and role-based web part access. LearningServer's DEH allows course developers to store and manage SCORM-conformant eLearning courses in the document library of their choosing within SharePoint while delivering and tracking course usage within LearningServer.

The strength of the DEH lies in its underlying web services API and its ability to support remote domain content hosting and overcome the limitations associated with hosting SCORM-conformant courses on a remote domain. The web service associated with the DEH handles all data tracking communication (e.g. status, elapsed time, bookmark, score) between LearningServer and the content. Because LearningServer's installation program will setup the necessary files within the desired SharePoint site's layouts folder, a course developer simply needs to follow a 3 step process in order to take advantage of the DEH.

When uploading content, the course developer should first create a /courses folder within the document library. This folder will serve to organize all eLearning courses and provide LearningServer's DEH with a known working space in which to operate. Within the /courses folder, the course developer should create course-specific folders for each course in which all the assets (e.g. HTML, CSS, images) will be stored. The name of the folder should correspond to the course code that will be associated with each course. At the point the course-specific folder is created within the courses folder, the DEH will be invoked and make LearningServer aware that a course has been published. Once all course assets have been uploaded to the /courses/courseCode folder, the final step for the course developer would be to import the course's imsmanifest.xml using LearningServer's Import SCORM-conformant course function.

It is at this point on the import page where the course developer would choose the Remote Domain option for the location attribute. This attribute signals LearningServer's course delivery module to pick up the desired SharePoint site's URL, which is stored in the Content URL attribute of the Settings page, so that the content can be found. This completes the process for publishing the course and making it available for your learners to access. LearningServer's DEH provides you with a powerful tool to combine the version and source control benefits of a document library with LearningServer's course delivery and tracking module to create a proven, industry-standard solution.