[Xerte] Questions about Templates Error, WYSIWYG, Open Source license,

[Christopher King]

Hello,

I've came across Xerte fairly recently and have only just begun
to experiment with its  capabilities for authoring learning objects.

Coming from a background in instructional design, I've worked with quite a
variety of commercial e-learning authoring tools over the years, including
Flash, Lectora, Softchalk, Articulate and many others. However, I've always
felt these commercial offerings had  shortcomings that ultimately made them
very unlikely to be really see much use by the majority of instructors in
academia.  Typically, these elearning authoring tools either have too
steep a learning curve for teachers who have very little time to spare, or
that they are far too expensive to be feasible for a departmental budget, or
both.

So for many years, I've made it a point to search for this "holy grail" of
e-learning tools. As I searched, I added to my wish list that the idea tool
would be XML based, able to export to its content in swf format, and create
content that was 508 accessible. Thus, I was extremely excited to discover
Xerte and to learn that this platform is free and open source, based in XML
and creates highly accessible content.

However, as I've begun to delve into making my first learning objects with
the Xerte standalone tool, I'm running into some early
challenges getting comfortable with the authoring workflow and with getting
things to work right.

For example, I've tried to take advantage of some of the pre-built
templates, but when I try to install a template, I get an "Invalid File
Format" error prompt.  I've tried this in two different versions of Xerte,
including the latest, but no luck.  I would really like to try these out so
wondering if anyone might have a suggestion.

I'm also concerned that not having a WYSIWYG authoring environment will
likely be a show-stopper for many instructors.  Is there any plan to have
such an interface enhancement added to future versions?

Also, I'm curious to know to what extent this tool is Open
source. Obviously, it is free, but is the source code also available for
other developers to modify to create their own customized versions?  If
modification of the code is permissable, my institution has some fairly
robust programming talent which might be utilized to enhance aspects of the
authoring infrastructure, such as adding a WYSIWIG editing component.

I hope these questions aren't out of place in this forum, as I would greatly
any feedback offered.

Much thanks.

Chris King
University of South Florida Polytechnic
Lakeland, FL USA
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