*ATutor 1.6.4 Beta Released*

A beta release of ATutor 1.6.4 is now available for testing and feedback, leading up to the final release in mid December. Post your feedback and bug reports early to the ATutor Bug Reports Forum

*ATutor Bug Reports* http://www.atutor.ca/forum/3/1.html

*ATutor 1.6.4 Demo* http://www.atutor.ca/atutor/demo.php

*ATutor 1.6.4 Download* http://www.atutor.ca/atutor/download.php

*What's New in this Release*

*Common Cartridge*: The primary addition to this release is support for the IMS Common Cartridge 1.0 content interoperability standard. This standard combines IMS Content Packaging and IMS Question Test Interoperability (QTI), as well introducing tool interoperability with the ability to now associate activities with content, and the addition of Web links for including external Web sites as content pages. Activities are limited to discussion topics in this release, looking forward to a future release where any of the available tools in ATutor can be added to content as learning activities, based on the emerging IMS Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) standard.

*Common Cartridge Importing*: Import any of the hundreds of existing common cartridges to quickly add learning materials to courses. Visit the Open University's OpenLearn site (openlearn.open.ac.uk) for a large collection of cartridges released under a Creative Commons license, that can be freely imported into ATutor.

*Common Cartridge Authoring*: Using the built in content authoring tools in ATutor, create your own common cartridges, or take an imported cartridge and modify it.

*Common Cartridge Exporting*: After creating a new cartridge or modifying an existing one, export the cartridge so it can be reused in other ATutor courses, or imported into another LMS that supports the common cartridge standard.

*Common Cartridge + AccessForAll*: If you are creating adaptive content based on the IMS AccessForAll standard, or the ISO FDIS 24751 standard, export your adapted content as part of a common cartridge, and import your adapted content when adding cartridges to a course.

*Other New Features*

*Prerequisite Tests*: Instructors can setup prerequisite tests with content folders to automatically give students access to content in those folders when they pass (or take) a test.

*User Interface Enhancements*: More Fluid features have been added. The Fluid inline editor allows authors to edit the content navigation menu directly. And, new folders and content pages can be added using the editor tools embedded in the menu. Menu boxes can now be collapsed or expanded to customize which tools are displayed. The old sub menu, which people had difficulty seeing, has been replaced with a new tool bar to provide easier access to various tool components. The Browse Course screen has been updated with a cleaner look, and a more fluid layout.

*Package and Backup Conversion*: With the new content structure added to support common cartridge, old content packages, and old course backups are automatically converted to the new structure when imported or restored. All content in an ATutor installation is converted to the new structure during a system upgrade, so in many cases no extra effort is required to convert to the new content structure.