International ILIAS Blog

Wikis that are intensively used quickly become unstructured and chaotic. While you can, of course, have ILIAS inform you about new or changed/edited pages, how do these pages relate to each other? Unlike Learning Modules, which have content that is structured like the chapters in a book, the pages of a wiki are merely connected somehow or other with each other via links. Up until now, to order the pages in a wiki thematically and make it easier to find your way around, it has been necessary to laboriously create lists by hand and to continuously update them. Thanks to Custom Metadata and automatic page lists, this is now much easier in ILIAS 5.0

The basic principle behind Custom Metadata can be easily explained. As an administrator you can create metadata sets as you see fit and assign these to a wiki. These metadata sets can then be found on each individual wiki page as separate blocks in the right hand column. All users with write/edit permission in a wiki can then add metadata to any page or hide a metadata block if it isn't needed on a page.

In order to find content in an installation, ILIAS offer you three different search possibilities: a direct search, an index search and a Lucene search.[1] Although the Lucene search has to be configured additionally, it is nevertheless the first choice as a search tool for large installations as it delivers accurate search results even with large repositories. The Lucene search is also popular as it allows files to be searched for content irrespective of their format (PDF, Word, Excel...).  Less well known, however, is Lucene's extensive syntax that supports searching with placeholders and various operators. Here are some useful tricks for using a Lucene search!

Version 5.1 sees ILIAS expanded with a new tool: This new tool, called Study Programme, allows multiple courses to be combined into a single superordinate Programme, thereby allowing a complete curriculum to be allocated to a large number of learners. This also works if the learners are not synchronised in their learning or need to fulfil different requirements: The structure of the Study Programme can be branched, weighted and adjusted to the needs of individual users as required.