Arcusys Ltd.

Valamis 2.3
User Guide

CONTENT

1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................................... 3
2. VALAMIS PORTLETS .................................................................................................................................................. 4
3. VALAMIS LESSON TOOLS ......................................................................................................................................... 5
3.1 CONTENT MANAGEMENT ................................................................................................................................................................. 5
3.1.1. Adding categories ................................................................................................................................................................ 5
3.1.2. Adding questions ................................................................................................................................................................... 6
3.1.3. Add content ........................................................................................................................................................................... 11
3.2. LESSON DESIGNER ......................................................................................................................................................................... 12
3.3. LESSON STUDIO ............................................................................................................................................................................... 15
3.4. LESSON MANAGEMENT ................................................................................................................................................................. 19
3.5 LESSON VIEWER .............................................................................................................................................................................. 21
3.6. GRADEBOOK VIEWER ..................................................................................................................................................................... 22
4. VALAMIS CURRICULUM TOOLS .......................................................................................................................... 24
4.1 CURRICULUM MANAGEMENT ......................................................................................................................................................... 24
4.2 CURRICULUM VIEWER .................................................................................................................................................................... 27
4.3 VALAMIS USER LEARNING PORTFOLIO ....................................................................................................................................... 27
5. VALAMIS ANALYTICS ............................................................................................................................................. 28
6. VALAMIS ADMINISTRATION ............................................................................................................................... 31
7. INSTALLING VALAMIS ............................................................................................................................................ 32
8. GENERAL GUIDES, HINTS AND TIPS: ................................................................................................................. 33

1. Introduction
Valamis is a powerful online learning experience solution for Liferay. It engages users in both formal
and informal learning, encouraging users to learn and share knowledge with each other. It is built on top
of Liferay platform as an add-on to fulfill the global needs of social learning, served as a set of portlets,
hooks and layouts, utilizing the features of underlying Liferay platform.
Valamis comes with the leading edge online learning features such as responsive design, mobile
learning, xAPI, learning analytics, gamification, social learning and much more.

2. Valamis portlets
Valamis contains several groups of Liferay portal applications - portlets. Portlets are logically grouped
by different aspects of Valamis solution. The screenshot below shows Liferays application menu with
all the Valamis portlets. Following sections describe each portlet in general level.

Picture 2-1: Valamis portlets in Liferay application menu

3. Valamis Lesson Tools

This section describes the functionalities for creating and managing learning content with Valamis
lesson tools.

3.1 Content management

Valamis Content management portlet allows you to create and manage the core of your online learning
site - the content base - that is used to build each of your lessons all way from simple quizzes to
complex interactive training materials.
Quizzes are one of the key elements in majority of online learning materials. When building online
learning content you should be paying attention to constructing the question base and filling it with
patterns of questions to be used and re-used in your learning materials.
Inside the question base, the questions are typically grouped into categories. You can start with an
empty question base and add new question categories and questions inside them. The categories should
be grouped for example by the topic covered for easier reusability.
Click New to open a dropdown menu and select a functionality to add new category, question or content
with Content Management portlet.

Picture 3-1: Dropdown menu

3.1.1.

Adding categories

Categories can be added by clicking the Category menu item from the dropdown menu and filling in the
category name in the dialog. The system will ask you for the category name and create it on saving.
Following image shows the Add category dialog. New category can be selected on the question creation
view.

Picture 3-2: Add Category dialog

3.1.2.

Adding questions

Questions can be added to the question bank by clicking the Question menu item from dropdown menu
and filling in the details in the question creation dialog shown in the following image below. The
question can be added either standalone or inside an existing category.

Picture 3-3: Question type selector

Create a question by selecting the question type and filling in the details for the questions. The table
below describes the question types.
Question Type

Description

Choice question

A question that has one or more correct answers

and the user has to pick one answer.

Short answer question

A question with a short textual answer. Answer

has to be in the same form as the given right
option.

Numeric question

A question with a numeric answer.

Positioning question

A question, where the user has to drag options in

correct order.

Matching question

A question, where the user has to match the pairs.

Essay question

Categorization question

A question with a long free form essay answer.

A question. where the user has to drag the options
to correct categories.

Choice question
Choice questions are questions, which have multiple choices for answers, and from which the learner
has to pick the correct one. There can be more than one correct answer and you can give points for each
answer.

Picture 3-4: Choice question creation

Create a choice question by first selecting the correct question type and giving the title for the question.
The title is the name of the question in the question bank. You can use it to identify questions later on.
Write the question contents into the content field with the wysiwyg-editor. You can use both rich text
and images as a question text. However, take note of the amount of content in the screen so that it fits in
one question page.
The explanation field contains the text that is shown to the user after answering to this question (either
correct or wrong answer). You can use this to explain the question and give some background
information for the question, or give the right answer to the user.
As choice questions can have more than one correct option and only one can be selected, you can notify
the user about the number of correct options by checking the checkbox.
To add answer options for the question, click Add option button and fill in the answer option as
illustrated in the image above. Once again you can use rich text and images for the answers. Remember
the reasonable size of an answer option for the usability of the question. After adding the answer
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contents, you should check the correct checkbox for the correct answers. You can also give points
awarded for that answer.
If you want to delete an answer option, you can do it by clicking the red trashcan symbol next to the
option.
Save the question with Save button or Cancel the creation.
Short answer question
Short answer questions are questions that can be answered with a short textual answer that is compared
to the correct answer and graded based on the match. The answer can be case insensitive or sensitive.
You can set the points awarded for a correct answer.

Picture 3-5: Short answer question creation

Create a short answer question by first selecting the correct question type and giving the title for the
question. The title is the name of the question in the question bank. You can use it to identify questions
later on.
Write the question contents into the content field with the wysiwyg-editor. You can use both rich text
and images as a question text. However, take note of the amount of content in the screen so that it fits in
one question page.
The explanation field contains the text that is shown to the user after answering to this question (either
correct or wrong answer). You can use this to explain the question and give some background
information for the question, or give the right answer to the user.
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To add answer option(s) for the question, click Add option button and fill in the answer option as
illustrated in the image above. Once again you can use rich text and images for the answers. Remember
the reasonable size of an answer option for the usability of the question. After adding the answer
contents, you must give the points awarded for that answer. Note that you can have more than one
correct answer and give the same or a different amount of points for each answer.
If you want to delete an answer option, you can do it by clicking the red trashcan symbol next to the
question. You can add any number of answer options you like.
Save the question with Save button or Cancel the creation.
Numeric question
Numeric questions can be answered with a numeric answer. The answer is checked against valid answer
range and graded if it falls into the range. You can give multiple answer ranges and award different
points for the answer being in that range.

Picture 3-6: Numeric question creation

Create a numeric question by first selecting the correct question type and giving the title for the
question. The title is the name of the question in the question bank. You can use it to identify questions
later on.
Write the question contents into the content field with the wysiwyg-editor. You can use both rich text
and images as a question text. However take note of the amount of content in the screen so that it fits in
one question page.
The explanation field contains the text that is shown to the user after answering to this question (either
correct or wrong answer). You can use this to explain the question and give some background
information for the question, or give the right answer to the user.
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To add answer option(s) for the question you must click Add option button and fill in the answer
accepted number range with from and to fields as illustrated in the image above and give the points
awarded for hitting that range.
You can add several options (answer ranges) and for example set one option as the exact answer (from x
to x) and award five points for that. Then you can create separate ranges from x-5 to x-4 and x+1 to x+5,
and award one point from hitting close to the correct answer. After adding the answer ranges, you must
give the points awarded for that answer.
If you want to delete an answer option, you can do it by clicking the red trashcan symbol next to the
question. You can add any number of answer options you like.
Save the question with Save button or Cancel the creation.
Positioning question
Positioning questions are questions that can be answered by dragging the options in the correct order.
The answer is graded on having the options in correct order. You can add as many options as you like
and also set the correct order for them.
To create a positioning question, choose it as a content type, give title, content, explanation and options
like in other questions. To add answer options for the question you must click Add option button and fill
in the answer option.

Picture 3-7: Positioning question

NOTE! The options will appear to the lesson in the same order as they are when creating the positioning
question. Change the order of options by dragging them to new order.
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Matching question
Matching questions are questions that can be answered by matching the right options together. Give
question a title, content and explanation (if needed). Add as many option and matching elements as you
want to. To add answer options for the question you must click Add option button and fill in the answer
option as illustrated in the image below.
For a student, the answers are shown in the dropdown list, from where the student can choose and match
the options.

Picture 3-8: Matching question

3.1.3.

Add content

You can add content, eg. text and pictures between question slides or as a intoduction to your lesson.
Add content by choosing Content from the New content editor. Give title and the actual content. You
can use both rich text and images.

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3.2. Lesson Designer

Valamis Lesson Designer portlet allows you to create new lessons for your course. A lesson itself can
have a title, a short description and a representative cover picture. Lesson content can be comprised of
various components including questions, text, slideshows or tests. Lessons in the Lesson Designer can
be sorted alphabetically or by creation date.
After creating a new lesson by clicking New lesson button, you can edit title and description of the
lesson, add a cover image either from your hard disk or another resource, and define time limit
(duration) for passing the lesson.

Picture 3-9: Edit lesson view

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Each lesson in the list has Actions menu, related to it. Selecting items from the menu allows you to
perform specific actions on lessons throughout your course manipulation.

Picture 3-10: Lesson designer, actions

By means of Actions menu, you can edit the content of a lesson (see Composing lesson content
below), make a copy of existing lesson, publish a lesson (make it ready for passing by the user) and save
it to your computer or another resource for further use in another Valamis/Liferay site or another eLearning system.
Composing lesson content
Edit content screen looks as follows:

Picture 3-11: Composing lesson content

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Here you can:

Add category (or folder) to your content;

Add content from the content base, created in Content management (see 3.1);

Add Liferay text article;

Add video clip from Document Library or YouTube resource;

Add external World Wide Web resource;

Import a PDF file;

Import a PPTX presentation.

You can add content from multiple sources to one lesson. In lesson designer, you can also view and
delete the slides, and change the order of the content slides by dragging them to the new order. When
composing a lesson, your choices of content and the order of the slides are automatically saved.
NOTE! When embedding video from YouTube, you should copy the link, which can be found from the
share settings of the video, under Embed.

Picture 3-12: Composing lesson content

Publishing the lesson

After you have created a new lesson, composed it by choosing the content you want to, you should
publish the lesson by choosing Publish tincan/Publish scorm from the Action menu. Before publishing,
you have to choose the visual theme for your lesson. Here you can also set question randomization and
success score.

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Picture 3-13: Lesson studio, actions

3.3. Lesson studio

Valamis Lesson Studio allows you to create interactive lessons based on different types of content.
Content elements can be images, inline frames (iframe), blocks of text or questions created in Content
Manager (see 3.1). All of this can be composed into multi-screen entity to represent a lesson.
Entering Lesson Studio portlet brings you to the list of lessons that have been created in it (if any exist):

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Picture 3-14: Lesson studio, actions

In lesson studio, you can perform the following actions:

Create a new lesson or edit the properties of an existing lesson. Here you can specify the title, the
logo (Cover Image), and the description for the lesson;

Compose the lesson filling it with real content and managing it (see Composing a lesson in
Lesson Studio below);

Delete the lesson;

Publish the lesson (make it ready for passing by the user).

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3.3.1 Composing a lesson in Lesson Studio

Lesson Studio working environment resembles workspace of a simple image editor:

Picture 3-15: Lesson studio

A light-weight set of components and intuitive user interface allows quick creating of structured, multiscreen and presentative lessons.
The functionalities of component panel allow you to add text or image boxes or iframe to your
presentation. The question option allows you to choose from the questions that you have added to your
content base in Content Management portlet (see 3.1.2). For every component, theres a function for
copying or deleting the element.
-

Text: Add new text elements to your presentation. The text editing tool appears when you start
writing in the field.
Image: Download pictures from the hard drive or from Media Gallery.
iframe: Add videos from eg. YouTube. To the iframe source field, you need specific embedding
code, see picture 3-15
Question: You can add question to slide from your question bank (see 3.1.2). Note that you can
only add one question per slide

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Picture 3-16: Add video via iframe

In the page properties panel you can edit slide title, which is shown in the content panel in the published
lesson. You can also edit the background color, add background image and delete the slide you are at
from the presentation.
From Add Page buttons you can choose, in which direction you want to navigate in the lesson.
In the final lesson, which you can view in Lesson Viewer, the lesson content will be shown from the
Contents button. The green mark notifies you that you have viewed the slide. You can see all the slides
with one view from the Slide Map.

Picture 3-17: Add video via iframe

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3.4. Lesson Management

Valamis Lesson Management gives you an instrument for administrating the lessons, which are
published on your course site. For more convenient viewing, the list of lessons can be filtered by lesson
category, by lesson package type (TinCan or SCORM) or by scope (site or instance scope). You can
also specify the visibility of a lesson, meaning if the lesson, for example, will be available for
completing in the Lesson Viewer. Additionally, lessons can be sorted alphabetically or by creation date.
Exporting a lesson (saving it to your PC or another resource for further use in another Valamis/Liferay
site or another e-Learning system). Export/import function is also available at configuration (circled
red), behind preferences.
You can upload Uploading a lesson package from your PCs hard disk or another resource for further
use on your site.

Picture 3-18: Lesson management

You can edit, delete and export lessons by clicking Actions.

By clicking Edit (see picture 3-19), you can:

Give lesson a title;

Upload cover image or choose it from Media Gallery;

Add description to package: this will be visible also in the Lesson viewer;

Set passing limit by checking the box and using + and buttons;

Set the dates when lesson will be available for passing;

Specify time interval between retakes of the lesson in the case when it had been passed
unsuccessfully;

Add and edit categories for a lesson.

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Picture 3-19: Edit package info

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3.5 Lesson Viewer

Valamis Lesson Viewer displays the list of all lessons, published on your site. It allows you to browse
among lessons and choose a lesson to try out.

Picture 3-20: Lesson viewer

To facilitate lesson search, there are controls for identifying a lesson by name, filtering the list of lessons
by category and sorting the list of lessons alphabetically or by creation date. Open the lesson by clicking
its name or picture.
For each lesson in the list, lesson status is displayed (NOT STARTED, ATTEMPTED or
FINISHED), providing additional information for site users.
Not started: there has been no attempts to pass the lesson;
Attempted : at least one attempt to pass the lesson has been made;
Finished: lesson has been passed successfully at least once
You can search for packages by typing the name of the package in the search field.

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NOTE! Lesson viewer will show you all the lessons from your instance as default. You can change the
scope by clicking the options symbol on the upper right corner (red circled 3-17), then click preferences
and choose site, page or player as a new scope.

Picture 3-21: Lesson viewer, preferences

3.6. Gradebook viewer

Valamis Gradebook Viewer displays information concerning all students on your site from the angle of
their activity, attendance of your courses and passing lessons.

Picture 3-22: Gradebook viewer simple view

Auto-grading system is present, meaning that lesson passage in Valamis is estimated automatically.
An adjustment mechanism for auto-grading is provided within Lesson Designer when publishing a
lesson as TinCan package.
Also, in Gradebook viewer, you can thoroughly comment statements concerning lesson passage.

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Picture 3-23: Gradebook, Student view

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4. Valamis Curriculum Tools

4.1 Curriculum management

Here you can create certificates, which include different goals passing a lesson, receiving a course
grade, performing some social activity and receiving a TinCan statement.
Start with clicking New certificate.

Picture 4-1: Create new certificate

Edit details of the certificate. Give certificate a title, upload an image, give description and choose scope
from the list by clicking Change. You can also edit the valid period of the certificate. In addition, you
can choose to integrate the certificate to open badges to share your achievement.
Save the changes (the window will close) or click continue to edit certificate goals and members.

Picture 4-2: Edit certificate details

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Edit goals
With goals you can determine, how the certificate can be achieved. Goals can be courses (Liferay site
with several lessons), TinCan statements, activities or lessons. You can add several different goals to
one certificate. You can choose a new goal by clicking Add goal and choosing the goal type. After that
you see a list of possible goals of the chosen type, or a window for adding TinCan statements (see
picture 4-4).

Picture 4-3: Edit certificate goals

Add TinCan statements by choosing Add TinCan and Select statements. Add statement by clicking New
statement. Save statements by clicking Add statements and they appear to the learning goals listing. All
the members of the certificate can see the set learning goals.

Picture 4-4: Add TinCan goals

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Eg. In this example in the picture 4-3, the certificate includes three learning goals: one statement to
answer a question, one activity of writing three separate blog posts and for completing one lesson in one
months time. You can delete the goals by clicking the trash can symbol.
Edit members
Members of the certificate can achieve the certificate. Add users to the certificate by clicking the Add
users button. You can see how the members proceed with the learning goals by clicking the eye symbol.
Success means that the member has gained the certificate, InProgress tells that there one or more goals
that member has not achieved yet. Note that users can join the certificate themselves, see Valamis User
Learning Portfolio portlet (4.3)

Picture 4-5: Curriculum management

From Action menu you can:

-

Edit certificate itself

Edit goals and members
from Actions menu
Clone the cerficate
Publish/unpublish the
certificate: after publishing
the certificate, members can
start achieving the goals.
Delete and export certificate.

Picture 4-5: Actions menu

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4.2 Curriculum viewer

Here you can find the list of your own and all available certificates. At available certificates you can see
the details and specified goals of each certificate, and join them. At my certificates, you can leave the
certificate if you wish not to pass it.

Picture 4-6: Curriculum viewer

4.3 Valamis User Learning Portfolio

Shows all received certificates on users private page.
The page is read-only.
NOTE! This portlet will only work at users own
private page

Picture 4-7: User learning portfolio

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5. Valamis Analytics
Allows you to receive different reports on learning activity analytics, for example:
Valamis Learning Transcript
Learning Transcript allows you to see your own transcript of courses and certificates (or as admin,
transcipts of all users of the instance). At My Courses, you can see the list of all the courses you have
access to. My Certificates show the information of the certificates that you have joined.
By clicking +-symbols you can see more details about courses and certificates.
With admin role, you can select users from the listing by clicking Select users. You can also print the
transcript.

Picture 5-1: Valamis Learning Transcript

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Valamis TinCan Course Report

Displays detailed information about the courses including course number, student number,
completeness and many more. You can choose the scope as instance or course.

Picture 5-2: Tincan course report

Course Event report

Displays members of the course and completions count. Change the grouping and filters to get the data
you want.
Participant Report
Shows the amount of participants. Groups the analytics by course, teacher, organization or group.
Valamis TinCan Latest Statements
Shows the latest statements which have been made in the instance. Shows eg. who has answered and
what, which lessons have been attempted, completed etc.
Valamis TinCan Reporting Viewer
Shows the amount of statements, eg. started, completed, passed.

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Valamis TinCan Statement Viewer

This portlet shows the statements that have been created in the instance level. You can search for
statements from specified user with email address, or statements with specific verb, eg. completed,
answered, experienced. Clicking Refresh gives the new results.

Picture 5-3: TinCan Statement Viewer

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6. Valamis Administration
Valamis Administration
With Valamis you can use the Mozilla Open Badge system to give badges to the students. These badges
act as certificates and contain information. This is done via Valamis Administration portlet. Here you
also can connect your Valamis with a TinCan Learning Record Store that will keep track of the user's
learning activity.
Social Activities TinCan Mapper
This portlet allows you to add Tincan verbs for different activities. You can choose, what statement is
send to Liferay social activity when certain activity is performed.
LRS to Activity Mapper

This portlet allows you to configure, what Liferay activity should be created when some TinCan
activity happens in the system.

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7. Installing Valamis
First you will need a working Liferay environment if you do not have access to one already. Valamis 2.3
officially supports Liferay version 6.2.
Then configure the memory usage of your Java Virtual Machine. For Valamis, the recommended Java
heap size is 2048m and the perm size is 512m. You should set these values for Liferay before first
starting it, but definitely before you try to install Valamis.
Eg. with Tomcat bundle:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Go to your /liferay-xx/tomcat-xx/bin folder.

Open your setenv.sh (or setenv.bat if you are using Windows) with a text editor.
Find the part Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m
Modify it to Xmx2048m -XX:MaxPermSize=512m
Save the file and start or restart your Liferay. Use the shutdown.sh/.bat to shut down liferay, and
the startup.sh/.bat to start it again.

These scripts can also be found in the /liferay-xx/tomcat-xx/bin folder.

Lastly, all you need to do is to purchase Valamis from Liferay Marketplace and install it.

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8. General guides, hints and tips:

-

Add only one portlet per page.

Start with creating the content in Content Management Portlet. Then use either Lesson Designer
or Lesson Studio to compose your actual lesson. Manage the visibility and details in Lesson
Management and view it in Lesson Viewer.

There can be a lot of data in your environment. Thus, it might take few minutes for Valamis
analytics portlets to gather the information.

Exporting and importing TinCan and Scorm packages can be done by choosing preferences
behind portlets configuration (see eg. 3.4 Lesson Designer)

When composing the lesson with Lesson Studio, remember to save your changes often and
check once in a while how your lesson will look like.

You can manage the user rights, eg. who can view, configurate etc. the portles, by using the
Liferay roles.

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