Pearson Announces Upcoming Release of EQUELLA® 6.2 Digital Repository
Sydney, Australia (PRWEB) December 01, 2013 -- Pearson today announced the upcoming release of EQUELLA® 6.2, the latest version of its award-winning digital repository. The latest EQUELLA® release will feature QTI (Question and Test Interoperability) assessment functionality for managing and sharing assessments, search enhancements, the ability to configure LTI tools, and support for global distribution of localised content with CDN (Content Delivery Network) support.
EQUELLA enables educators and students within a wide range of schools, universities, colleges, TAFES (Training and Further Education), departments of education and corporations around the world to effectively discover, manage and deliver engaging course content to improve learning outcomes.
EQUELLA 6.2 extends the learning experience with the addition of QTI assessment support that enables users to manage and share assessments in EQUELLA, deliver them through a variety of learning management systems (LMS) and record the student’s progress in the LMS Gradebook. Users will now have the opportunity to discover, play and interact with QTI assessment objects. Once the different questions that conform to the QTI assessment standard are developed in EQUELLA, the QTI test is then published inside the LMS.
Continuing EQUELLA’s support for eLearning standards, EQUELLA 6.2 is certified as both LTI consumer and provider compliant. The new developments to EQUELLA’s LTI compliancy provide users with the ability to configure LTI tools, execute an LTI launch from inside EQUELLA and an associated LMS. Additionally, external LTI tools can now also be contributed to EQUELLA resources as links, and launched from within EQUELLA or an associated LMS.
“The new features of EQUELLA 6.2 will enable our global clients to strengthen their approach to digital content and make progress in their teaching and learning, library, research and media strategies,” said Matthew Mermagen, General Manager, EQUELLA. “EQUELLA’s commitment to seamlessly integrate into client educational infrastructure is further strengthened in 6.2 through the support of the LTI standard.”
“Within a corporate context, EQUELLA will assist with the dissemination and retrieval of safety critical learning material which is imperative to a fast-paced, operational environment,” said Joe Butler, Learning Technology Team Leader, Queensland Rail. “During the implementation activity for our EQUELLA institution, we identified several potential enhancements to the platform that would increase the efficiency of the system. It provided our team with a significant level of confidence, when we learnt that some of these enhancements had already been identified and included in this upcoming release.”
Key feature enhancements include:
• QTI assessment packages, which can be uploaded into EQUELLA, played in preview mode or from an LMS, while the user can send results to the LMS Gradebook via LTI. EQUELLA will now support QTI assessment items as objects that the user can tag, search, and deliver to the LMS as with all other visual assets.
• Improving external integrations support for additional external tools, including LMSes, ePortfolio systems, attachment and content authoring tools, through the standards based LTI integration, EQUELLA’s LTI consumer and provider compliancy provides users with the ability to configure LTI tools and complete an LTI launch from inside EQUELLA and an associated LMS. This also enables EQUELLA to interface with other external systems as an enhanced product that is LTI compliant.
• Searching enhancements that enable users to view relevance score and attachment inclusion messages, configure boosting factors and toggle the attachment search option. The new developments to EQUELLA’s searching capabilities provide greater flexibility of the search algorithm.
• EQUELLA now delivers support for CDN (Content Delivery Network) for the global distribution of localised content to improve network access speeds. Improving the reliability and efficiency of content delivery, this functionality enhances internet downloads and streams to ensure users receive content from the localised content server as quickly as possible. This feature will assist client’s global distribution strategy and reduce access time for EQUELLA platforms.
• Improved clustering to assist large installations will ensure stability of clustering, with a greater increase in the ability to scale the application for enterprise use.
Representatives from the EQUELLA team will be present at ASCILITE 2013, Sydney, Australia, from Sunday 1st December – Wednesday 4th December, and also at Online Educa Berlin, Germany, from Wednesday 4th December – Friday 6th December. Visit our Pearson booths to speak with our team regarding the upcoming release and to see a demo of EQUELLA.
For more information about EQUELLA®, visit http://www.equella.com.
About Pearson
Pearson is the world’s leading learning company. Our education business combines 150 years of experience in publishing with the latest learning technology and online support. We are also part of the wider Pearson family which includes the Financial Times and Penguin Random House.
We provide education and assessment services in more than 70 countries. Our courses and resources are available in print, online and through multi-lingual packages, helping people learn whatever, wherever and however they choose.
At Pearson, we take learning personally. Every day our work helps learning flourish, and wherever learning flourishes, so do people.
Media Contact: Rebecca Sinclair, rebecca.sinclair(at)pearson(dot)com, +65 9233 7611
Rebecca Sinclair, Pearson, http://www.equella.com, +65 9233 7611, [email protected]
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