OSCampus - the New Joomla LMS

28 Nov 2016

OSCampus is the new Learning Management System (LMS) for Joomla. It is very robust and widely used at OSTraining, where it’s already used by 1,000's of people every week.

OSCampus is organized in a very simple way: Classes contain Lessons. Everything is a secondary feature which can be configured or can also be omitted.

Secondary features of the Classes are: Teacher, Class image, Pathways (similar to the Joomla categories), Tags (similar to the core Joomla tags), Length (overall length of the whole class) and Difficulty (currently Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced)

This article will guide you through the OSCampus installation and features.

Installation

As mentioned earlier, OSCampus has been in use on the OSTraining website for couple of years now. It was developed specifically for the purpose of providing training to the OSTraining members.

Since it worked so well, OSTraining’s team decided to release it as a standalone extension which everyone can use.

You can purchase and download OSCampus from here.

When you download an installation package, use Joomla Extension manager -> Install feature to install it as any other Joomla extension.

If you want to test the videos or media embeds in lessons, download and install one of these extensions:

When you install all the related extensions (if needed of course), you can proceed with the initial configuration and setup.

Step #1: Create a new Class

As mentioned before, in OSCampus, the main thing is a Class and a Class contains Lessons. Because of that, the very first step is to create a new Class.

Go to Components > OSCampus and you'll find the main screen.

Let's start by creating our first class:

Make sure "Classes" is selected in the left menu.
Click "New".

os1

You can now set up your class. The main settings will be on the first page:

Title: title of the Class
Teacher: you can add these via the main OSCampus page in the image above
Image: you can upload a main class image here
Pathways: these work in a very similar way to core Joomla categories
Tags: these work in a very similar way to core Joomla tags
Length: you can tell people how long the class will take to complete
Difficulty: Currently set to Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
Release: The publication date of the class
Description: Click the tab and enter a class description

os2

Step #2: Create Lessons

Once we have Class created we can start creating and adding new Lessons to that Class.

Click "Lessons" in the left menu.
Click "New".

os3

On the new Lesson page, you have to enter the following minimum details:

Title: The name of this lesson
Class: Choose the class you created earlier
Module: Use this to divide up the lessons into shorter modules.
Lesson Type: This will depend on the video extensions you have installed. If you have OSEmbed, choose "URL Embed".

os4

There are four different Lesson types.

os5

If you choose "URL Embed", and click "Save", you'll then be asked to enter a Video URL under the "Content" tab.

os6

If you create several lessons, you'll see them organized on the "Lessons" page, as in the image below:

os7

Step #3: Create Pathway, Tags and Teachers

Classes and Lessons are the minimum that needs to be defined for OSCampus to work properly. When you define those two item types, you will be able to provide LMS features to your visitors.

You can, however, spice up the frontend presentation of the Classes and Lessons by providing and connecting Pathways, Tags and Teachers with the Classes and Lessons.

Pathways

Pathways are similar to the core Joomla categories feature. There are few things that needs to be defined like:

Title: title of the pathway
Image: you can upload a main pathway image here
Owner: pathway can be owned by the user and in that case, it is considered as a private pathway
Description: pathway description

os8

Teacher

You can define a teacher that will be connected to the Class. There are few things that need to be defined

User: select user define in Joomla
Image: here you can upload or choose an image that will represent the teacher on the frontend of the website, in the Class
Website: teacher’s website URL
Email: teacher’s email address
Blog: teacher’s blog URL
Facebook: teacher’s Facebook URL
Twitter: teacher’s Twitter URL
Google+: teacher’s Google+ URL

os10

Step #4: Create menu link

If you want to see the class in the action on the frontend of the website, you have to create a menu item to the New Classes view

Go to Menus > Main Menu > New.
Choose OSCampus > New Classes.

os11

When you visit New Classes menu item on the frontend, you will see the list of Classes created in the OSCampus backend

os12

This image below shows the full class overview

os13

Finishing words

This quick review is really just scratching the surface of what OSCampus can do. With the integration of OSEmbed, possibilities are endless. You can use YouTube or Vimeo videos, Slideshare presentations, Google Docs, and much, much more.

Give OSCampus a test and let us know what you think!