Co-creation Using Open Source Methods and Tools
CoCOS - On-line training platform
CoCOS On-line training platform, March 2019
Ghent | Sofia | Velenje| Madrid |Burgh-Haamstede
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The CoCOS project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
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CoCOS Project provides an eLearning platform as support of some Project activities. The platform implements a LMS (Learning Management System) allowing among other functionality, open Access to contents.
This document summarizes the platform architecture and infrastructure and specific content tools included in the setup.
In CoCOS, this eLearning platform supports:
- CoCOS Project Participants Training
- CoCOS Open On-Line Course (MOOC) for general audience
- Any extra activity required by partners (Courses, Pilots, …)
The platform and existing contents will be available after the end of CoCOS project activities.
Since CoCOS project start, Moodle was the proposal for the eLearning platform.
Main Moodle characteristics, appropriated for CoCOS needs are:
- It Is a full Learning Management System with lots of functionality.
- Lots of extension plugins exist, of several types, allowing to customize the platform by adding more functionality.
- It Is Open Software, well supported and with a very active community.
- CoCOS Partners have extensive experience in implementing and supporting Moodle.
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- It has lots of language packages available. Each user can work in its own language on the same platform. This apply to Moodle User Interface, not in general to contents. In Moodle web page header there is a permanent languages menu. Users can at any time use it to change the user interface language.
- It supports a well-controlled “Guest Access” to offer general resources in an open way. Part of the content of the platform can be made available to public; in this case users can just freely browse into and read open materials.
Some useful links about Moodle follow:
- Moodle Community website: https://moodle.org/
- Moodle YouTube channel
- YouTube playlist for tutorials about our Moodle version
Moodle Architecture:
Moodle is an Open Software Web application based on standards.
- It is a PHP application with extensive use of a Database.
- It supports several options for Web and Database servers.
- Its core provides a full set of functionalities for eLearning as several types of resources and student activities with a powerful grading system.
- It is a modular system allowing an easy installation of extension plugins for extra functionality.
Moodle CoCOS implementation is based on the following hardware and software:
- A single Virtual Linux server
- Apache/NGINX Web server with PHP 7
- MariaDB (the “open” MySQL) Database server
- At the Operating System level, the application is secured by Docker; it provides application isolation and makes easy later rearrangements for increasing process capability.
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The server is also shared with the project Web Site and its characteristics are:
- 1xCPU Xeon E5-2640 @ 2.40GHz
- 1GB RAM
- 100GB disk
The Platform is hosted in Arteveldehogeschool Gent (AHS) IT facilities and with the support of AHS IT staff. Moodle support is provided by JAITEK.
CoCOS On-Line Training Platform is available at:
It is also linked from Project Website Main menu, option “E-LEARNING MODULE”:
In our installation we use Moodle 3 with two additional Moodle plugins installed:
- Essential 3.4.1.0 (Moodle Theme Plugin)
Essential is a clean and customizable aspect theme. Essential is tested and tried by thousands of users and ranks number one by site usage for all available third-party themes, up to Moodle version 3.5.
Link to Essential Theme website
During the platform deployment, essential theme was customized with CoCOS colors and logo.
- H5P 1.20.1 (Moodle Activity plugin)
H5P is a free environment that allows to create, reuse and share interactive resources and activities based on HTML5. The following link brings you to the H5P main website:
Users can create its own H5P resources directly on H5P site but Moodle plugin allows also to create resources directly on Moodle, while being also possible to import/export H5P resources from/to other sources.
In addition, extra specific configurations made on our Moodle platform for CoCOS project:
- Guest Access is enabled, mainly in order to make the contents of CoCOS Open On-line Course (The CoCOS MOOC), open to general public.
- Integration with CoCOS suite Viewer:
The CoCOS Suite has been developed for the project. It is an authoring tool intended to the creation of web resources or “Courses”. It allows an easy sharing between editors, having in this way a good support for co-creation.
Besides, the full courses or part of courses can be published for viewing.
CoCOS Viewer is the part of CoCOS Suite allowing the presentation of material in a red-only mode. It can integrate with other LMS systems via LTI standard (Learning Tools Interoperability), which support the interworking of different platforms in an eLearning environment.
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In Moodle we perform the connection with another platform via LTI by using an “External Tool” Activity type. CoCOS Moodle includes the pre-configured “External Tool” for connections with the CoCOS Viewer, in this way it is easier for content creators in Moodle to include CoCOS Suite objects in Moodle courses.
This section lists different open contents hosted in CoCOS On-line Training Platform.
An open course including some basic Video Tutorials for Moodle. It includes also links to moodle.org and the Moodle YouTube channel, as a help for Moodle beginners.
This course is open to guests and it is linked from the banner in the site Front-Page.
Again, a simple open course containing an example of the use of CoCOS Viewer preconfigured “External Tool”. In this case, CoCOS Suite resource linked is a simple manual about the CoCOS Editor. There is also an small explanation about this setup and a link to the CoCOS Editor itself.
The CoCOS MOOC is implemented in Moodle as a Course Category under which each MOOC Module is implemented as a Moodle Course. Whole MOOC is then a set of Moodle courses listed in sequence into the MOOC Moodle Category.
This way free browsing by users is easier.
CoCOS offers MOOC Contents in 5 language versions, being each language a different Moodle Category.
Following capture shows this structure.
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Content Tools: H5P
CoCOS MOOC Content has been developed with simple tools, HTML pages, Moodle text Labels, some external embeddings, ….
Most significant tool is H5P. H5P Allows a big number of different interaction types, but only two types were used for the MOOC:
- Questionnaire: A number of questions proposed to the user as a reflection or a summary about the subject being presented.
- Interactive Video: based on YouTube Videos, it allows to add bookmarks and different interactions as questions and other user feedback activities, at specific times during the video playback.