Download

Mneme - Download

Mneme 2.1.2

Welcome to the Mneme 2.1.2 release!

For a list of resolved Jira issues, see "What's new or fixed in Mneme 2.1.2 (and earlier versions)."

Mneme is a comprehensive assessment engine for Sakai that consists of an authoring module for creating questions and managing pools; a module for publishing assignments, tasks, tests and surveys; a grading module for evaluating assessments, optionally integrated with the Gradebook; and a delivery module for administering assessments to students. Additionally, a test-drive component allows instructors to take assessments as students.

This is the first public release of Mneme 2, although Etudes has been running various Mneme 1.2 and 2.x versions for some time. If you picked up a Mneme 1.2m milestone release, be aware that we changed the version from 1.2 to 2.0 when we finally finished our 1.2 work, so you are really running a version of Mneme 2.

Important note about the Sakai Kernel

Sakai 2.7.1 ships with a separate kernel, version 1.1.9. Mneme cannot be used with this version of the kernel!. See the Sakai bug report: KNL-492. This bug has been fixed in the 1.1.10 kernel. You may be able to use the 1.1.10 kernel with Sakai 2.7.1, but do so at your own risk (and testing).

Download Mneme 2.1.2

Mneme is distributed as source only, and is configured for Sakai 2.7.1. You must be setup to check out (SVN) and build (Maven 2, Java 1.6) and deploy (Tomcat 5.5.x) Sakai 2.7.1 to add Mneme to your build. We have done minimal testing with Java 1.6.

Install the Mneme Database

Download Mneme Source And Modify Your Sakai Distribution

Sakai Portal Icons

Download and install the TinyMCE editor webapp

Configure Mneme

Use the Mneme Admin Tools to Install Permissions

User Tutorials & Documentation

What's New in Mneme 2.1.2 (and earlier versions)?

Questions?

For technical or user support or to report issues, contact dev<at>etudes.org or sakai-dev.

1. Install the Mneme Database

Before you start up your Sakai instance with Mneme, you must install Mneme's tables in your database. Mneme supports Oracle and MySQL - HSQL is not supported.

The easiest way to install Mneme's tables is to let Sakai's auto.ddl feature do it for you as your first app server starts up. Make sure that auto.ddl is enabled for the app server, and make sure you start up just a single app server. auto.ddl will run Mneme's ddl.

Most production environments will prefer to manually run the Mneme ddl, possibly modified for tablespace and other local concerns. There are 4 ddl files to run - the order does not matter. These are found in the source code under mneme/mneme-impl/impl/src/sql/<vendor>, where "<vendor>" is either "mysql" or "oracle". The 4 files that contain Mneme's ddl are:

mneme_assessment.sql
mneme_pool.sql
mneme_question.sql
mneme_submission.sql

Updates

To update from a previous version of Mneme, notice the other sql files distributed with Mneme. These take you from a 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 database up to the 2.0 version. You need to run all the updates that you have not yet run, to take your particular version of the database up to the latest. You may need to examine your current Mnene database definition, compare it to the latest Mneme DDL files, and note these update sql files to craft the particular update that works for you.

2. Download Mneme Source And Modify Your Sakai Distribution

To add Mneme to your Sakai 2.7.1, you will need to:

Download the Mneme software from SVN, into your Sakai 2.7.1 source folder:

sakai> svn co https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/etudes/etudes-util/tags/1.0.8/ etudes-util

sakai> svn co https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/etudes/ambrosia/tags/2.1.2/ ambrosia

sakai> svn co https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/etudes/mneme/tags/2.1.2/ mneme
Update the Sakai base pom.xml

Add lines to the Sakai root pom.xml build profile section that you are using (the default is the "full" profile). These instruct Maven to include the Mneme sources in the build.

<module>etudes-util</module>
<module>ambrosia</module>
<module>mneme</module>
Update the Sakai master pom.xml

Add lines to the Sakai master/pom.xml properties and dependency management section for the Etudes artifacts.
Properties: add to the <properties> section:

<etudes.util.version>1.0.8</etudes.util.version>
<ambrosia.version>2.1.2</ambrosia.version>
<mneme.version>2.1.2</mneme.version>

Dependencies: add to the <dependencyManagement><depedency> section:

<dependency>
<groupId>org.etudes</groupId>
<artifactId>etudes-util-api</artifactId>
<version>${etudes.util.version}</version>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

<dependency>
<groupId>org.etudes</groupId>
<artifactId>etudes-util-util</artifactId>
<version>${etudes.util.version}</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
<groupId>org.etudes</groupId>
<artifactId>etudes-ambrosia-api</artifactId>
<version>${ambrosia.version}</version>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

<dependency>
<groupId>org.etudes</groupId>
<artifactId>etudes-ambrosia-util</artifactId>
<version>${ambrosia.version}</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
<groupId>org.etudes</groupId>
<artifactId>etudes-mneme-api</artifactId>
<version>${mneme.version}</version>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
Build your Sakai, including etudes-util, ambrosia, and mneme

When you use maven to build sakai, it will include the sources needed for mneme.

This version is configured to build with Sakai 2.7.1. If you are using another 2.7.x version, or a 2.8.x version, you need to make a few changes.

The "2.7.1" version number is in a few files, used as the version number for the Sakai base pom. You need to edit these files to change this to match the version of Sakai you are using:

etudes-util/pom.xml
ambrosia/pom.xml
mneme/pom.xml

3. Sakai Portal Icons

Sakai 2.5 and later supports icons in the portal for each tool. Sakai comes with icons for the tools that are bundled, and you can make a few simple edits to add icons for other tools such as Mneme.

The icons are part of the Sakai skin. The skin files are in the "library" webapp, which is located in your deployed tomcat in the folder

webapps/library/skin

The skin has to be enhanced in two ways:

make the new icons available
change the skin .css file to reference them

There is a "default" skin, and perhaps, depending on your customizations of Sakai, other skins. You need to make these changes for the skins that you are using. The following instructions show how to change the "default" skin, in the "library/skin/default" folder. To change the others, apply these same changes to the other skins, located in folders under "library/skin/".

You can add some icons for Mneme and the Mneme Admin tools here:

webapps/library/skin/default/icons/
Create this folder, and download these icons into it:
mneme.png

mneme-admin.png

The file "portal.css" is where the icons are referenced. For the default skin, this file is here:

webapps/library/skin/default/portal.css

There is a section in there that lists lots of tools. We want to add two more:

.icon-sakai-mneme
{
background-image: url(icons/mneme.png);
}
.icon-sakai-mneme-admin
{
background-image: url(icons/mneme-admin.png);
}

4. Download and install the TinyMCE editor webapp

Mneme requires the TinyMCE editor. You must (for now) separately download and install this into your Tomcat. We have a packaging of the 3.3.9.3 TinyMCE editor as a webapp ready to download in the Sakai Maven repository:

http://source.sakaiproject.org/maven2/tiny_mce/tiny_mce-war/3.4.1/tiny_mce-war-3.4.1.war

Download that file into your Tomcat webapps folder, renaming it to:

tiny_mce.war

removing the version number from the file name.

5. Configure Mneme

Note: If you have a prior configuration for Mneme, note that the configuration names in sakai.properties have changed. What was "org.muse.mneme" has been changed to "org.etudes.mneme". Make sure to update your sakai.properties file.

To finalize the integration of Mneme into your Sakai installation, you need to make some changes to the Authz Groups that are used as templates when new Sites are created, to enable the proper Mneme permissions. You can do this manually, by using the Admin Realm (Authz Group) editor in Sakai to edit the template authz groups, or use the Mneme Admin tool to do this.

There are three permissions in Mneme:

mneme.manage

mneme.grade

mneme.submit

mneme.guest

mneme.course.eval

You must give the first two permissions (mneme.manage and mneme.grade) to your instructors, teaching assistants, and other "maintain" sorts of roles. NOTE: Do NOT give 'maintain' types of roles the mneme.submit permission; they will be able to try out assessments in Mneme using Test Drive without submit permission.

Your students need only the third, mneme.submit permission.

To allow users (typically 'guest' roles) to view the assessments defined in a site but not make changes or submissions, use the mneme.guest permission.

In a stock Sakai distribution, there are two Authz Group templates used as new site templates:

!site.template

!site.template.course

You may have additional ones, especially if you have other than "project" and "course" site types. Make sure you modify all the appropriate templates.

The templates in a stock Sakai distribution have the following 5 roles:

"maintain" roles:

maintain
Instructor
Teaching Assistant

"access" roles:

access
Student

You may have added guests, support, and others. Make sure to modify all the appropriate roles.

Mneme entries in sakai.properties

mneme.maintenance.server

To enable the background thread in Mneme's submission service, add this line to your sakai.properties. We want to run this thread on only a single app server in your cluster, so if you have more than a single app server, select one for this task. Use this app server's "serverId" setting name in the following line:

mneme.maintenance.server=<name>

Without this line, the maintenance thread will not run on any of your app severs; submissions that are timed-out or overdue will not auto-close, and automatic email of results will not happen.

6. Use the Mneme Admin to Install Permissions

You can use the Mneme admin tool to install the Mneme permissions. The tool also allows you to add Mneme (permissions and tool) to a single site or a batch of sites.

To use the Mneme Admin tool, you must access the tool in your production Sakai instance. If you have the Mercury portal enabled, you can use that to access "sakai.mneme.admin". Otherwise you can add the tool to your !admin site and use it from there. You must be an admin user to use the tool.

The tool will work with the standard templates and roles. You can configure the tool to use additional or different templates and roles.

To list the unique set of templates used in your Sakai installation for site Authz Group templates, add this to your sakai.properties:

templates@org.etudes.mneme.tool.InstallTemplatesView=!site.template,!site.template.course

To list the unique set of roles you are using for "maintain" and "access", add these lines to your sakai.properties:

maintainRoless@org.etudes.mneme.tool.InstallView=maintain,instructor,teaching assistant

accessRoles@org.etudes.mneme.tool.InstallView=access,student

To add the Mneme Admin tool to your Administration Workspace, do the following:

Log in as Sakai Admin
Click on Sites
Click on !admin
Scroll down and click on Pages
Click on "New Page" at the top
Enter "Mneme Admin Tool" in the Title field
Click on Tools (not on Done!)
Click on "New Tool" at the top of the page
Scroll down - find and select "Test Center Admin (sakai.mneme.admin)"
Click on Done at the bottom.
Click on Save on the new page that appears.

That's it.

When you click on "Administration Workspace," you will now see Mneme Admin Tool where you can perform a variety of functions, such as adding Mneme permissions or Mneme to sites, etc.