Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: roadmap for LAMS and Blackboard 7.x inter-op?


 
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1: roadmap for LAMS and Blackboard 7.x inter-op?
02/19/07 01:11 AM
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some background:

we're in the final stages moving from our own proprietary LMS to Blackboard 7.2. I'm trying to best-guess how LAMS will be able to integrate with Blackboard.

Putting to one side the LAMS/Blackboard6 building block for one moment, can I ask what might lie ahead with the integration between LAMS and BB7.2?

especially: assignment of students to LAMS groups and sequences.

to explain further: the way we're looking at using LAMS is to provide learning sequences within a unit (course). Since Blackboard is the LMS for these units, LAMS effectively becomes a content-type/tool/widget within Blackboard (not technically, I'm referring to workflows and student perception).

At the moment we're getting by with uploading students in bulk via the Excel spreadsheet import, and once inside LAMS they can be assigned to groups/subgroups and then on to their allotted sequence(s).

What I'm worried about is how that will scale and be managed - when we're dealing with (potentially) thousands of students.

Additionally, we're working on Blackboard tools that will allow students to be bulk added to units, bulk assignment to teams/workgroups (to clarify a "group"), self-join to teams, self-selection of roles within the team, etc.

as you can see, that's work that can be done within Monitor in LAMS and could possibly lead to duplication of work (with probably a cohort size in the hundreds)

Additionally I can just see (been burnt before) where teams (whether set by teacher or self-joined) will need to carry over more than one task (read LAMS sequence) within the unit and be able to be tracked for assessment reasons (eg: results going to Gradebook).

it's a real can of worms.

so that's why I'm asking what might be on the horizon for 2007 regarding interfacing with student management within LMS's such as Blackboard. Perhaps API's available to assign students to LAMS groups externally? Calls to webservices to authenticate the user? calls from LAMS to Blackboard to check if the student has perms for this unit/LAMS sequence (remembering a LAMS sequence in this context is seen as just another item within Blackboard)?

or is there other ways of skinning this (rather large) cat?


many thanks
barry.b

Posted by barry beattie

2: Re: roadmap for LAMS and Blackboard 7.x inter-op?
In response to 1 02/19/07 05:42 PM
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http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/LAMS+and+3rd+Party+App+Integration+Mechanism

I have found this which, when gathering up the background info, looks promising as far as single sign on, etc.

I'm not sure how Blackboards Gradebook can be dragged into this (but that's just me trying to double-guess what might be needed)

but getting back to my previous post, the next area we're interested in for integration is grouping (assigning in Blackboard - exporting to LAMS).

Are there API's available to externally do what Monitor can - assign which student in what sequence goes in which group?
Perhaps a rough idea of what might be involved, as a starter?

I fully realise that BB7 is only one of many LMS to consider and that's why I'm interested in just some idea (roadmap) of where the LAMS team would like to go.

We're working on improving what BB7 gives (or rather, doesn't give) with grouping (inc self-join, etc) to try and reclaim features we had in our previous LMS. Bringing LAMS into the equation is something we can plan for.

many thanx
b

Posted by barry beattie

3: Re: roadmap for LAMS and Blackboard 7.x inter-op?
In response to 1 02/20/07 10:55 PM
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G'day Barry,

Again, thanks for the good questions :-)

In terms of Blackboard integration and without having seen the Blackboard 7.x API and assuming that we can build a building block similarly to what we have done with Blackboard 6 in the past, I think the grouping and gradebook bits should be possible.

Grouping

Regarding groupings, Blackboard6 alows you to create groups within a course. However having a look at our BB6 server here I can't see how you can use groups for assignments, forums, etc.

I imagine in BB7 now you can create groups within a course and assign assigments, forums to each groups?

If so, then when LAMS2.0 has a building block, we could make use of that grouping functionality as well. So effectively you can assign sequences to specific BB groups that you have created before hand... and if BB behaves as it should ;), then when people from that group login they would only see sequences assign to them.


Assessment/Gradebook

We didn't add gradebook for the LAMS1.0-BB6 integration before as we probably weren't sure what exactly LAMS would "return back" to Gradebook.

We could have returned just a flag to the gradebook telling it whether a student had finished a sequence or not. But that doesn't necessarily tell you whether he has done a good job on it or just clicked all the activities thru.

Therefore the discussion on what we should be reporting back to gradebook is still a pending one.


It's important to note that the BB6 integration was done with funding and contribution from Nanyang Tech University in Singapore and they've been using this for at least a year now.

In terms of when the integration with BB7 will be rolled out. Well, you and another University in Queensland Australia are interested on this as well. So it's probably just a matter of see what each of us can contribute to it so we can get this started.

As of today, we have finished the LAMS 2.0 integration with Moodle and Sakai is currently underway. Hopefully we can have Blackboard next.

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

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