Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Using LAMS within Blackboard CE6

By: Ernie Ghiglione

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Hi Tim,

> In order to do this, my understanding is that within the
> Blackboard unit we create a unique "LAMS Link" for each of
> the Blackboard groups.

That will work if you want each of the groups that you have configured for Blackboard to use its own LAMS lesson.

But I think for what you are asking, what you need is to have only one LAMS lesson, but use the same exact Blackboard groups in the LAMS grouping activities. Is that right?

If so, then there's no an automatic way to do this.

You could, however, set up the Groups manually from the LAMS monitor interface. But to do so, you would need to specify in Authoring that the group is to be "Teacher Chosen" (see here for further info). In this case, the teacher can set up the groups exactly the same as he/she has set them up for Blackboard.

I hope this helps. We have plans to do this automatically at some stage, but it won't be coming anytime soon though.

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

By: Timothy Allen

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Hi Ernie,

Thanks a lot for your reply.

In this case, all we need is for each group to have its separate instance of the LAMS sequence, as they will only be interacting within their group and not across groups. So from what you said I think the "separate LAMS Link for each Blackboard group" method should work fine.

However, I am interested in the other option you mentioned, in case any other lecturers in the future want to set up their sequence to work this way. In order to have a mixture of intra-group and inter-groups activities in the sequence, from what you have said the groups need be set up manually from the LAMS monitor screen.

Interestingly, when we looked at this screen initially no students were in the list, so we were unable to set up any groups from there. Then I looked at the further info link you posted above and noted this at the bottom of the page: "However, when LAMS is integrated with another LMS, such as Moodle or Sakai, the Custom Grouping screen will only display the names of the Learners who have opened the LAMS sequence from the integrated LMS. In practice, this means that monitors are unable to create and assign groups to Learners using an integration before the Learners begin the sequence. The Learners using the Integration module must access the sequence from the link in the integration so their information is added to LAMS."

So that explains why we couldn't see any learners to set it up even for the other approach to grouping. This would suggest that the groups cannot be set up manually until the time the sequence is opened and all students have accessed the link at least once - this seems to require quite a difficult feat of timing!

If I have misunderstood anything, please tell me.

Thanks,
Tim.

Posted by Timothy Allen

By: Timothy Allen

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OK, after reading the thread at http://lamscommunity.org/dotlrn/clubs/technicalcommunity/forums/message-view?message_id=533631 this has made it clearer for me. It can be done because students cannot progress further and will "wait" until the groupings are done manually.

Tim.

Posted by Timothy Allen