eLearning Frenzy

Thomas J. Tobin
University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Star Wards universe is an accessible universe…a good metaphor for Universal Design for Learning.

Making an accommodation for one person is not universal design. Let us not talk first or only about people with disabilities when we want to address barriers.

Reframe the conversation. Unlearn what you have learned. Talk in a value neutral way about the benefits of an inclusive design.

What one strategy could he adopt to supplement-or even replace-her face-to-face message?

Texting, Short Video, Reminders, Online conferencing -> has to do with expanding learners options.

learner engagement representing info action choices.

Give time estimates it would take to read something.

Universal Design for Learning is “plus one” thinking. If there is one way for students to interact with an assignment, make 1 more way.

ULD = access (no matter why)

“We want a situation that is goof for everybody…part of it is thinking about what has to happen at the level of design that makes accommodation less necessary.” –Sam Johnson, CAST

5 Strategies for UDL

Start with text…start with a script have some notes, you can provide it later when you create other media out of it.

Make alternatives. (HTML version, pdf version etc..)

Let ’em do it their way where you’d can – design assignments where students can choose how they respond (written, video, audio etc). Do it in a directed fashion

Go step by step

Set content free (accessible 24 hours a day) and from formatting. Put examples in video format rather than resident software…

Ask about the question they get all the time, problem on tests and quizzes and where did they want you to say it a different way. Train faculty, IT, everyone that supports faculty members.

Recent Ultra Enhancements and Some that are coming soon.

Mobile Experience – Login page shows branding.

Institution Pages show up via mobile (they are the new tabs and Modules)

Customizing labels for aka substituting “subjects” to “courses”.

Personalization: The Blackboard Stream:

• Notifications, push, email, sms (set via mobile app)
• Courses page: Courses are organized by timeline, but they can be searched and filtered and then you can favorite the filter so that it shows up first the next time.
• Modules display newness indicators that refer to new activity
• Nudges via messaging that even show individual student visualizations (analytics)

Blackboard App

Blackboard Instructor App

Responsive Web

Responsive web

• Accessed via web browsing
• No app needed
• Grater breadth of functionality

Preferred by end users

Faster performance

Works with most smartphone tools

More interactive user interface

Available to use offline

Responsive Design

• Improvements for wikis (coming soon)
• Content Add and Edit Workflows
• Improvements for Rubric Viewing

Review assignment submissions and attachments

Provide comments and inline annotations

Grade with rubrics

Publish grades to students

MH Q2 2018 CU Update – September Target

Grading and feedback

• Review student submissions and file attachments
• Provide comments on the overall submission or highlight & annotate inline, adding voice to text dictation for inline commentary.
• Grade using various grading types including rubrics
• Publish grades back to students in just a few taps

Offline grading capabilities

Audio and video feedback

Integrating with apple files

Improving partner integrations (due dates from other assessment providers for example)

Blackboard Learn Original

Platform Feature – Inline grading 9.1 Q4 2018 + CUs. In Early August CU Update will allow students to download assignments with annotations.

Attendance Tracking – automatically flow through from collaborate (coming in 2018) students will be marked as present if they join the session

Course roles enhancements – Facilitator Role and Quality Reviewer Course Roles 9.1 Q4 2018 or SaaS Q3 2018

Delegated Grading – improvements TAs that live outside of the course

Blackboard Data – learning tool adoption and use all the data across tools in a single framework. Completely free for core functionality

Tool Integration: LTI Advantage

Activity Events: Caliper 1.1

SCORM: xAPI events to Learning Record Store

performance: Completed Course: Learn won’t show notifications for course when it is finished.

Feature Roadmap Ultra experience

Learn ultra has three components:

• Ultra Base Nan
• Original Course View
• Ultra Course View

All original courses

Dual course mode

All ultra courses

Ultra Roadmap

Ultra Experience Question Bank Support now available and more in Q3 2018

coming soon importing whole banks and random blocks

Anonymous grading for single and double-blind marking scenarios

Self and Peer Assessment Q4 2018 – groups and group activity

Assessment Un-submitted work counts as a zero Q3 2018

SafeAssign for Discussions Q1 2019 Ultimately for all written student work (essay question)

Video Recording for flipped classrooms – using collaborate recordings as course materials. Q1 2019+

Ally in Ultra Courses Q4 2018

Institution Page Available now, More in 2018

Custom Locale Support Available 3400.9 More in 2019 – customizable

SCORM Support Q3 2018

Group Discussion Insights and Discussion Analysis – Understand contribution or lack of same in students in a discussion to understand how to help student or give a grade. (Also applies to group). Shows top down view of what’s happening in a discussion

Additional Embedded analytics in discussions Q3 2018+

Summary

Moving Integrations to SaaS and Ultra

Scott Hurley, Mark O’Neil and Lynn Zingraf – Blackboard

What is your Migration Strategy

• Define long term goals
• Prioritize integrations
• Know your platform options
• Know your API options
• Seize the Opportunity

Transition to SaaS

Move to Ultra

Adopt REST for ease of development/delivery?

Prioritize Your Integrations

• One reason you may be sitting here is that you already have an investment in using integrations to customize your faculty’s and student’s teaching & learning experience.
• A key consideration for your migration path is the importance of each of your integrations and the feasibility of delivering them on the currently available architecture.
• Knowing the importance of each integration, your options for delivery of that integration, and available APIs each help you to prioritize and schedule migration of your integrations as a project

Redesign the user experience
– no longer bound by Blackboard JSP constraints
– Meet change in goals

Use your untapped resources
– REST and API language agnostic!
– You no longer need Java Expertise

Expand availability to non-Blackboard resources
– REST and API integrations run external to your LEARN server
– Make them available to additional portals and services

Seize the opportunity to NOT migrate and integration.

REST APIs

B.B. adopted REST as our forward architecture for providing APIs to integrate with Blackboard products

Rest API Progress

IMS Standards Support

LMS LTI

LTI provides a secure connection between a learning tool and a platform like Blackboard learn. It is http-based and provides a context on launch.

LTI Differences

How does Blackboard Support this in Original?

LTI 1.3 (not supported yet)

• Based on 1.1
• Improved Security model
• Separates the security model from the rest of the spec, allowing IMS to more easily keep the security model up to date
• Designed specifically to align with the services of LTI Advantage
• Includes improved documentation and around implementing and migration

Package of extensions that work with LTI

All bout the usability of the standard

Creates a dream work for new features

Enables deeper integration with any tool

Deep linking – Names and Roles – Assignments and Grades

Q4 2017 Deep linking Q2 2018 Names and roles – assignments and grades are in development

IMS Caliper

Global standard that provides for learning data collection

• Gather data from across systems
• Define a common language for labeling learning data
• Standard way of measure data
• Leverage data
• Make it useful

Community.blackboard.com – look for Bb development community

Developer.blackboard.com – documentation on REST APIs etc..

Open innovation initiative

Training.blackboard.com

Hands on and onsite training

Developers@blackboard.com

Dr. Charles Severance
University of Michigan
School of Information

Tsugi Building Learning Applications

Tsugi (Japanese for “next”) provides a way to develop and host “learning tools” in an Application Store. Tsugi tools can be seamlessly integrated into existing Learning Management Systems and Google Classroom. As part of its core architecture, Tsugi implements standards like IMS learning Interoperability, IMS Content ITem and Google Classroom.

TsugiCloud – A Free App Store for Open Source Tools from the Apereo Foundation. Teachers and LMS Administrators can quickly and easily install the tools from TsugiCloud into their LMS or Google Classroom. Software Developers can participate in the development of new these tools through the Apereo project.

…provides a free, scalable

The learning ecosystem of future

• We need a way to build learning tools quickly w/out waiting for LMS upgrade
• IMS learning tools Interoperability (LTI) provides a way to integrate learning tools
• The LTI family of standards is getting more robust (and complex) all the time
• We need to move from building LMS tools to building better teaching tools
• We need to enable LTI tool development at a campus or even a course level

100% open source project part of the Apereo foundation

Increases learning tool developer productivity

Supports IMS LTI Standards

Provides a scalable privacy-aware tool hosting environment

A community of tool builders and shares

Benefits

• Campus IT
  – Respond to local faculty needs
  – support both on campus and MOOC applications
  – Consistent development/training for learning apps
  – Scalable hosting environment
• Campus Developers
  – Write once integrate everywhere
  – Standards support made easy
  – Common UI/UX features
  – Simple development in ornament
• Instructional Designers
  – Quickly design &Y create unique tools based on faculty needs
  – Tools can be quite simple: Project checklist, weekly reflection, YouTube analytics

LTI 1.0 1.1 2.0, caliper, common cartridge LTI advantage

You did not use email as logical key in the user table. Correct length!

Session Mgmt/extension/expiry

Support offline grading – peer grading applications

Coping with unreliable tools consumers – grade resent

Build Thin Cartridges from LTI Links

Handling settings on URL, custom parameters, etc.

Support cross-LMS setting dialogs

Make use of windows.post messages to resize frames

Getting Started with Tsugi

Developer Training – https://www.tsugi.org/lessons

Developer Environment is also the AppStore environment

As a test harness that allows you write code quickly and build application quickly.

Https;//github.com/tsugitools/iframe – Iframe Tool

Summer Project: TBlocks

• Tsugi PHP Tools in post-GDPR world
• TBlock model
  – each tool is a container
  – no direct access to the db
  – Interacts with core Tsugi using a. Local API backed by a REST web services
  – Launch data – course/ user / link / result
  – Uses link /result scoped JSOn
  – accesses a link scoped scoped key /value store
  – Can support more than php easily (I.e. python / django / node)

Big Idea – Building a Simple Tool – Look at Tsugi – Try it and give feedback. Mature enough to run a local App Store or use the cloud App Store.