I have a few questions about the Common Cartridge Builder.

1. In the "Edit Cartridge Values" section there is a property called "learningResourceType". I'd like to know what my options are as the

various options I have tried have been rejected by the IMS Common Cartridge Test System Validator.

2. What exactly does the "protect" property mean? (I sell licences for my software products, either a Single User Licence or a Site

Licence, so should the "protect" property have a value of "true"?

3. What are the options for text into the "rightsDescription" property? As schools buy Site Licences for my products, should I enter "Site

Licence"?

4. What does "rightsRestricted" mean? In my case, should this be "true" as I am selling a Site Licence for a product?

Finally, for some reason when (my copy of) Common Cartridge Builder packages a Common Cartridge, it produces a file without the zip extention, so it does not work in the validator or in Moodle etc. The problem is solved by adding a .zip extension to the file.

The Common Cartridge Builder was a prototype and could not be considered "feature complete". We are working on an updated version and hope to have that done in the next few months. With that said, let me try to answer your questions.

1. The learningResourceType is at the top of the manifest for describing the cartridge, not the individual resource types. So, for now that value needs to be blank or "IMS Common Cartridge". We don't currently support all of the possible metadata that could be associated with a cartridge and its resources, but we are working on supporting it in the future.

2. The "protect" property is optional and is used for CC Cartridge Authorization upon import or use of your cartridge within an LMS. You may protect individual resources or the entire cartridge. This requires the cartridge author to provide a compliant CC Authorization Web Service. In your case, you would probably want to implement a service if you are selling licenses.

3. rightsDescription (optional) - Copyright and license description if any. I suppose this could be a URL to a complete license document.

4. rightsRestricted (optional) - true if there is a copyright or licensing restriction otherwise false (the default).

5. Regarding the problem with the zip extension, I would need to know specifics of your platform (OS, version, etc...) to figure out why it doesn't automatically add the .zip extension.

Hope this helps.

Thor Anderson

Dear Thor,

Thank you for taking the time to give me this information. It is very useful and should clear up the errors listed by the IMS Validator. I will investigate "a compliant CC Authorization Web Service".

Thank you again for your help.

Best regards,

Laszlo Lipot

i have a question, how can you access builder tool now? the links i keep finding online point me to a non-existing location

Have you tried downloading the application from here:

http://www.imsglobal.org/devel...ce/CCBuilder/index.cfm

Thanks for the link to builder tool, I was having trouble being directed to non existent pages myself. I had the same problem with the zip extension so I added .zip to the file name and it seemed to work, it seems often simple additions to file names can point things in the right direction but it took a while to find the solution.

We're using Blackboard currently and seem to have a problem loading CC packages, is there a list of common load issues somewhere?

There is no list of issues, specifically. Some may be CC-related, others Blackboard-related. As background:

Which version of Blackboard are you using (the service pack or better yet the full version number) or is this CourseSites?

Has the CC passed the validator (validator.imsglobal.org) without errors or warnings?

What version of CC is the package?

What problems are you on import, behavior or actual logged errors and warnings?

Jeff