I am trying to find any information on applying some form of security if you want to distribute your end results as a commercial product. Is there any process for locking them down?
Thanks Adrian for your speedy response. I had seen that thread and not really learned much from it.
My knowledge at this point is pretty basic. I am trying to get a good enough picture to work out whether it is commercially viable to use Articulate for a particular project.
I am exploring Mirage now to see what it can and cannot do, but, for example, the documentation on the Mirage site says nothing about what kind of security, if any, it can apply to files saved to LMS or anything about whether the security interferes with the interfacing between student results and an LMS. I am not technically trained. I need high level user documentation at a conceptual level, supplied by Articulate, so that I can do a first look over the product to determine if it, in principle, can do what I want it to do.
From a user point of view I love Articulate. It is absurdly quick and easy to learn and use, and surprisingly powerful, BUT - these other questions must be answered as well.
It is looking like I personally not only have to download and test Articulate, but I also have to download a Moodle Playpen and an instance of Mirage, and test the whole lot out for myself. Now that is just plain stupid. Surely someone else has already done it? If no-one has already done it since the '09 release, why not? Am I trying to do something that the product is just not designed to do?
There are other ways of distributing courseware, but the critical one is saving to LMS.
If it is sold to an educational institution for use in their LMS with multiple students, there has to be a way of tracking how many students are using it. We can ask them to be nice and tell us, and most of them will. But not all.
Then we have to know that once distributed via an LMS to student PCs and iPads, that the students cannot download them and "share" them. Given "sharing" resources has become big student business, it would be nice to know that they have to be decent hackers and put in a bit of effort and skill to do it. I don't mind decent hackers pirating anything for their own use I would be flattered if they want to, but I don't want someone to be able to steal the copyright and on-sell it.
I am aware that my questions are at the totally ignorant end of the scale, but we all have to start somewhere. At this stage I don't understand enough about Moodle to know if Moodle can stop students copying distributed material. I would add that I am currently on contract to one of the world's largest educational publishers, and they don't know the answers to these questions either, so it is not just me feeling stupidly out of my depth with all of this.
It is a great question Christine - welcome aboard.
There have been a few thread on this, however, they always seem to peter out before getting to a conclusion - perhaps because there is no conclusion!
At the "Bruce, you are just being ridiculous there..." end of the scale, a buyer from a corporation buys 1 x copy of a course, then puts all of their salespeople in a big room with a big projector and some heavy-duty speakers, and put the whole company through it.
Opensesame.com are active on this forum - perhaps they could chime in and help us out with this, they must have come across it; in fact they may be able to help you here?
5 Replies
Hi Christine,
Welcome to Heroes. Check out this thread here. It's from the old forums, but it's still relevant.
Always Happy to Help,
Adrian
Thanks Adrian for your speedy response. I had seen that thread and not really learned much from it.
My knowledge at this point is pretty basic. I am trying to get a good enough picture to work out whether it is commercially viable to use Articulate for a particular project.
I am exploring Mirage now to see what it can and cannot do, but, for example, the documentation on the Mirage site says nothing about what kind of security, if any, it can apply to files saved to LMS or anything about whether the security interferes with the interfacing between student results and an LMS. I am not technically trained. I need high level user documentation at a conceptual level, supplied by Articulate, so that I can do a first look over the product to determine if it, in principle, can do what I want it to do.
From a user point of view I love Articulate. It is absurdly quick and easy to learn and use, and surprisingly powerful, BUT - these other questions must be answered as well.
It is looking like I personally not only have to download and test Articulate, but I also have to download a Moodle Playpen and an instance of Mirage, and test the whole lot out for myself. Now that is just plain stupid. Surely someone else has already done it? If no-one has already done it since the '09 release, why not? Am I trying to do something that the product is just not designed to do?
Please tell me someone has already done it.
Christine
Hi Christine,
Are you trying to protect against who can see the project?
Adrian
Again thanks for replying.
Well, that depends on how it is distributed.
There are other ways of distributing courseware, but the critical one is saving to LMS.
If it is sold to an educational institution for use in their LMS with multiple students, there has to be a way of tracking how many students are using it. We can ask them to be nice and tell us, and most of them will. But not all.
Then we have to know that once distributed via an LMS to student PCs and iPads, that the students cannot download them and "share" them. Given "sharing" resources has become big student business, it would be nice to know that they have to be decent hackers and put in a bit of effort and skill to do it. I don't mind decent hackers pirating anything for their own use I would be flattered if they want to, but I don't want someone to be able to steal the copyright and on-sell it.
I am aware that my questions are at the totally ignorant end of the scale, but we all have to start somewhere. At this stage I don't understand enough about Moodle to know if Moodle can stop students copying distributed material. I would add that I am currently on contract to one of the world's largest educational publishers, and they don't know the answers to these questions either, so it is not just me feeling stupidly out of my depth with all of this.
It is a great question Christine - welcome aboard.
There have been a few thread on this, however, they always seem to peter out before getting to a conclusion - perhaps because there is no conclusion!
At the "Bruce, you are just being ridiculous there..." end of the scale, a buyer from a corporation buys 1 x copy of a course, then puts all of their salespeople in a big room with a big projector and some heavy-duty speakers, and put the whole company through it.
Opensesame.com are active on this forum - perhaps they could chime in and help us out with this, they must have come across it; in fact they may be able to help you here?
Good luck.
Bruce
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