A quick overview of major functionality on eFront v3.6

1. eFront Quick overview © EPIGNOSIS 2010

6. eFront editions Tailored for particular segments of distant learning market, eFront is available in 4 editions. Each edition builds on the previous in an incremental manner creating solutions with additional functionality.

7. eFront Core functionality Functionality presentation

8. eFront / Community edition eFront Community is the open-source edition of eFront. It is a fully flexible eLearning 2.0 system capable of fulfilling a wide range of learning needs. eFront Community provides the basis of all eFront editions.

9. Learning Delivery / SCORM Support eFront community and community++ are SCORM 1.2 compliant and certified platforms. You can import SCORM packages or export the content you created in SCORM format and use it in any other SCORM compliant platform. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

10. Learning Delivery / Lessons, courses, & categories Course management is done through the administration's interface. It involves the management of lessons, the logical organisation of lessons to categories, the bundling of several lessons as a course and the enrolment of users to lessons and courses. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

11. Learning Delivery / Content Editor eFront includes an easy to use WYSISWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) content editor, to add images, videos, sounds, java applets and mathematical types in a visual way. Experienced users can further format content using html. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

12. Learning Delivery / File manager & Digital Library eFront includes an advanced file manager that allows you to upload, preview, share, zip, rename and delete files. Multiple files can be uploaded in zip format and eFront will unzip them automatically. All files uploaded to the special Digital Library folder are shared and can be downloaded by every lesson user. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

13. Learning Delivery / Test Builders eFront has an advanced internal test builder that supports several types of tests and a wide range of question types (shown above). All questions are stored to a central pull and can be used in different tests. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

14. Learning Delivery / Projects You can create projects with deadlines and assign them to users. Users must upload their answer to the project, and the tutor can access it and provide a grade. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

15. Learning Delivery / Access Rules You can control which lessons each user has access to and the order of lesson completion. This way you can channel users through specific learning paths. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

16. Learning Delivery / Progress Tracking eFront informs and guides users regarding their progress inside a lesson and what remains in order to complete it. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

18. Communication tools / Basic Tools eFront includes several communication tools. The list includes calendar, personal messages, forum, chat and collaborative content building. The last two are shown above. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

19. Reporting / Basic Reports eFront produces extensive reports on system access, generic system characteristics, users progress and lesson information (shown above). Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

21. Administration / Technology eFront uses current web technologies and standards to ensure an excellent user-experience. Amongst others we follow AJAX, LDAP, UNICODE, SCORM, n-tier-architecture, MODULAR extensions, CSS and strict DTD. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

22. Administration / Multilingual eFront has full administrative support for adding or modifying languages. Internally all content and function is unicode (UTF-8) enabled. The only thing needed to add a new language is to translate a language file. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

23. Administration / the Administrator The administrator can control any aspect of the system through an easy to use interface. New modules support allow him to extend the functionality of the system. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

24. Administration / Modular Modules allows you to extend the basic system functionality as needed. Modules are installed and activated through the administrator interface. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

26. Interface / Customization and Usability eFront can be adapted according to your needs. E.g. you can re-arrange the main page components via simple drag-and-drop (shown above), you can select the active components for your lesson, or you can change the visual theme of your installation. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

27. Interface / Search Search functionality is always available. You can effectively search inside lesson content, personal messages or forum messages, to obtain exactly what you are looking for. Community Yes Commercial Editions Yes

28. eFront Commercial Editions Exploring the commercial editions

30. eFront commercial editions / Community ++ eFront Community++ combines the functionalities offered in the open-sourced community edition to the ones explored below, to meet the needs of smaller companies and individual entrepreneurs wishing to set up their own online eLearning business venture.

35. Ecommerce / Shopping Cart Shows users which courses they have chosen to enroll into, indicating individual as well as total prices and any discounts available, as shown above. The voucher feature allows users to enter a discount voucher code, which accordingly will adjust the balance automatically. Community++ Yes Educational Yes Enterprise Yes

44. Administration / Groups Consolidation of users into groups allows administrators to auto-assign a variety of common content and settings, to all group users. A necessary feature for larger organizations, allowing administrators to efficiently, accurately and effortlessly register new users and manage existing ones. Community++ Yes Educational Yes Enterprise Yes

45. Administration / Extended User Profiles Administrators can customize the details required when users register, to contain more fields of information, which can be set as mandatory or optional. Above are some examples of fields that can be added, although the standard details required from any registering user are set as default. Community++ Yes Educational Yes Enterprise Yes

47. eFront commercial editions / eFront Educational eFront Educational is a flexible solution, combining the functionalities explored below to those offered in the Community++ edition. Tailored for educational organizations and colleges, it brings support for the latest eLearning standards together with advanced reporting capabilities.

48. Learning Delivery / SCORM 2004 4 th edition SCORM 2004 4 th edition is the latest and most technologically advanced collection of standards and specifications for web-based eLearning. Based on new standards for API and content object-to-runtime environment communication with many ambiguities of previous versions resolved, has helped create a more robust test suite which helps ensure good interoperability. Combines the ability to specify adaptive sequencing of activities that use the content objects while allowing the sharing and use of information for multiple learning objectives or competencies across content and courses for the same learner within the same LMS. All this gives users a faster and more complete experience and allows providers to set more stringent learning paths that users must comply to. eFront is one of the first systems to offer this level of support for SCORM. Community++ No Educational Yes Enterprise Yes

60. Administration / Archive support Depending on the edition, when you delete a user, lesson or course, it is automatically moved to an archive folder in order to avoid loss of valuable data. The administrator then has the option to fully restore or permanently delete the data and free up storage space, as shown above. Community++ No Educational Yes Enterprise Yes

62. eFront commercial editions / eFront Enterprise eFront Enterprise combines the functionalities explored below to those offered in the Educational edition. Tailored with larger organizations and companies in mind, it offers solutions for the management of their most valued asset – their employees. Based on a coherent approach to human capital management which keeps the workforce actively engaged, the eFront Enterprise platform offers the means of aligning learning programs with business goals to cultivate employee skills and knowledge associated with business performance.

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