Digital Workshop

My client has some e-learning I made for him in Opus; it sits online behind a gateway that makes sure every user registers and pays. He is now thinking of distributing the material on CD. Obviously I can apply a password and even an expiry date, but can I actually limit the number of users of one disk?

Hi

The evaluation feature available in XE requires an unlock key generated uniquely for the specific computer on which the publication is loaded. While restricting to a specific computer, my guess is that anyone using that computer could have access, unless the person with administartive rights further restricted access to the program via a user account password on the computer.

There may be other features I'm unaware of, that Forum members with more experience or the DW team may be able to make you aware of.

Hope this helps.

Kind Regards,
Stephen

There is no effective way to stop a CD being reused without going through a registration system of some kind after the CD has been run.

Consider the problems Sony is having at the moment trying to stop copying of their music CD's.
They can't do it either.

Paul

Hi Adrian

Afraid I can't help with your problem, but you may be able to solve mine. I'm interested in the following:



I have a client who's looking for something similar, and I don't know how to set up the registration/paymenty gateway. Can I seek your advice?

Regards

Roger

Couldn't you have the cd access a data base on the internet to register it and unlock it? That way it's not the cd doing the unlocking.

Hi Roger

The tracking of eLearning online, I believe, is done by a Learning Management System (LMS). These have the features you are describing, though I'm not sure about assuring payment (though I don't see why not). LMS's sometimes are part of an eLearning software suite, sometimes standalone. Maybe expensive. They are standardized using AICC or (more currently) SCORM. I hope others with LMS experience can guide you further.

One innovative way to assure registration and payment is to offer the eLearning materials at no cost, but set up a payment if the viewer wants verification that they took the course and/or a continuing education certificate. This can be set up to issue if a certain score is reached on a quiz based on the materials, registration and payment. This will only apply to certain types of eLearning for which a viewer needs verification.

I hope this give you some leads.

Contact me directly at swartel@nycap.rr.com if you would like some more info about LMS or the continuing ed feature mentioned, as I've set up the latter.

Kind Regards,
Stephen

Thanks for all suggestions. Evidently there are some ways to encourage clients to pay for each and every user, but they are by no means foolproof.

Cheers, Adrian

Thanks for the response, Stephen and Evereddie. I'm currently thinking about the way forward on this - and may well get back to you Stephen.

Sorry it's taken me so long to acknowledge your posts.

Kind regards

Roger