Under this agreement, Stoas Learning has become the exclusive supplier of Giunti Labs' learn eXact suite of products in the Netherlands. These products comprise an advanced authoring environment for eLearning materials as well as a learning-content management system (LCMS) that is compatible with most virtual learning environments (VLEs) and learning-management systems (LMSs) including open source VLEs such as Moodle and Sakai.

According to Stoas Learning, the key benefits of using learn eXact are:

• a strong authoring environment
• its extensive use of industry standards
• de-coupling of content and lay-out
• single-source input to support multiple outputs
• its unique template approach
• single-source maintenance

"learn eXact enables users to distribute content from one source - accessible via a web interface - to a wide variety of platforms including Moodle, Sakai, and Blackboard", explained Stoas Learning's CEO, Ed Botterweg.

"Moreover, this can be delivered to a wide range of equipment including PCs, websites, interactive television, CD-ROMs, smartphones, and other wireless devices such as PDAs, as well as via a wide range of media, including pdf, html, textbook, virtual worlds, and QTI for assessment and testing."

"Its modular way of storing information enables authors to update specific content without influencing other data. A learning object only needs to be altered once because of the -˜single source' principle, which means that alteration is automatically carried through into all eLearning modules that use this object."

Giunti Labs' learn eXact complies with national and international agreements and such standards as SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, AICC, IMS, IMS ePortfolio, and IMS QTI. Complying with the SCORM 2004 standard makes it possible for eLearning modules that have been developed with learn eXact to be played via every VLE that supports this standard.

"learn eXact is also backwards compatible when new versions arrive", Fabrizio Cardinali, Giunti Labs' CEO points out. "learn eXact enables the easy use and re-use of course components, otherwise known as learning objects. With this, it is possible to develop 'didactic design', to give shape to learning materials by using templates. A didactical design can be shared with colleagues, so that this can be filled with new learning materials quickly - bearing in mind that learn eXact specifically separates content and design."