Lotus LearningSpace R5.01 Deployment Guide

44 Lotus LearningSpace R5.01 Deployment Guide

consideration and leading the discussion. All students in the class may respond

to posted documents and may read the responses of others. LearningSpace

provides a template for discussion databases, which may be customized after

installation.

To participate in discussions, the students log on to the student interface in

LearningSpace core from their Web browser. From there, they can click the

Discussion Board link for the appropriate course. Alternatively, if a student is

currently participating in an activity, he or she can click “Join Discussion” to

launch a discussion thread for that activity. Instructors have the choice of

accessing a discussion from the administrator interface or the student interface.

SMTP server

A SMTP server (running on any platform) is used to route e-mail and notifications

in LearningSpace. If you do not use e-mail or automatic notices, you do not need

the SMTP server. E-mail is a minor feature in LearningSpace and does not

require a dedicated SMTP server. If your installation already has a SMTP server

in use (for example, in a Lotus Domino installation), then LearningSpace can use

that server as its messaging host.

LearningSpace provides a limited e-mail client that students can use to send

messages to one another and to their instructors. Although LearningSpace users

can send messages to people using other mail systems (through the SMTP

server), they can only receive e-mail from other LearningSpace users. Messages

can contain up to 50 Kb of text plus one file attachment.

4.5 Domino server

This is an optional component. If you have Domino, then rather than recreating

and maintaining a separate set of users in LearningSpace, you can import user

information from the Domino Directory into the relational database and have the

information updated automatically. This transfer of information is one-way. Your

Domino user records are protected because LearningSpace cannot update your

Domino Directory.

LearningSpace core uses the Domino Java toolkit to communicate with the

Domino server and works with any Domino server. While LearningSpace Core

runs only on Windows servers, the Domino server can run on any of the

platforms listed below as long as it supports the Domino Java toolkit:

򐂰 Windows NT 4

򐂰 Windows 2000 Advanced Server

򐂰 Windows 2000 Server

򐂰 HP-UX