Putting Educational Innovations into Practice.

LMS Integration in support of AL$

The Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) community includes those interested in bring digital content and tools into the learning management system. I am a consultant to AL$, specializing in LMS integrations and am a resource to help inform the community about what is happening in this area as well as to attempt to answer technical questions.

The intent of this forum is to discuss how digital content and tools can be or are being integrated with LMS platforms across the CSU. This is also a forum to raise question about the open and commercial options, the relevant standards, and the specific integrations options.

I'll be posting some best practices, industry news, etc. I invite all to ask questions.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Kahn on March 26, 2012 at 7:43am

At a recent AL$ workshop, I was asked how to add a tab to Blackboard. At the time, the purpose was to link to the campus library. The same approach can be used to link to the AL$ site, making AL$ more visible and easy to find. The attached PDF provides the specifics. As always, please use MERLOT Voices to ask questions or make comments.

Attachments:

How to add an Affordable Learning Solutions tab to Blackboard.pdf, 711 KB

Permalink Reply by Sandra Bozarth on March 15, 2013 at 2:15pm

I have approached our Blackboard admin on my campus about adding a tab and was told it would cost $20,000 to add this feature. Before I contact them, I am wondering if all Blackboard accounts can add this tab or do you have to have a certain "package" with them. We currently only have two tabs at the top "My Institution" and "Courses". We would love to add a library tab so if these instructions will work for us that would be awesome!

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Kahn on April 2, 2012 at 12:09pm

For those not having Blackboard on their campus and looking for a FREE instance (with limitations), may want to consider Blackboard's CourseSites service.

https://www.coursesites.com/webapps/Bb-sites-course-creation-BBLEAR...

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Kahn on April 2, 2012 at 12:09pm

Folks have asked how to discover and incorporate MERLOT content into Blackboard. There is a Blackboard extension (building block) your Blackboard administrator can install to make this easy. Attached is a document that shows how to use the integration to search MERLOT and paste links to results in a single click.

Feel free to use / modify this document. Also, I wrote this building block so contact me or the MERLOT team if you need a version of this with additional capabilities.

Attachments:

Blackboard users can search MERLOT from within Blackboard and easily paste links to MERLOT content into course areas.docx, 3.2 MB

Permalink Reply by Susan Wilson on June 8, 2012 at 1:50pm

Sounds like a great idea and I'd love to incorporate this but we are a Moodle campus. Is there something similar for Moodle now or planned? In your document attached to the April 9 post, you state that you can use a new OER Finder Widget/Tool for LMS products other than Blackboard to easily search for free materials related to an ISBN. Are there further instructions on how to do this for Moodle. We are on version 2.2.3.

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Kahn on June 11, 2012 at 2:40pm

Moodle 2.0 has integrated a mechanism to allow searching MERLOT. System administrators have the ability to enable “MERLOT search” for MERLOT learning object metadata. When this capability is enabled, Moodle 2.0 instructors can directly search the MERLOT collection, from within Moodle and insert learning materials.

You can also visit the following for the latest on LMS integrations with MERLOT. There is a guide to download. http://taste.merlot.org/merlottechnology.html#moodle

Permalink Reply by Susan Wilson on June 11, 2012 at 3:10pm

Thanks for the information. When you add this, is it seaching just the MERLOT collection, or the federated search, that searches all OERs? In the second part of my original reply, I asked about the OER finder tool that allows you to search by ISBN. I reviewed the linked document but do not see any instructions about downloding/incorporating the tool/widget into Moodle. Just the B&N information. There is no reference to this on the federated search page: http://fedsearch.merlot.org/fedsearch/fedsearch.jsp

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Kahn on June 13, 2012 at 8:06am

Moodle wrote the MERLOT search, not the MERLOT team. It searches MERLOT only.

The OER Finder widget searches MERLOT and OER Commons, not the federated set of repositories that MERLOT can.

Permalink Reply by Sandy Ehrhorn on April 2, 2012 at 12:13pm

'Looking forward to learning more and to offer any solutions that CSU bookstores can provide to support these efforts.

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Kahn on April 3, 2012 at 9:34am

Sandy,

There are a number of integrations between Blackboard (and other LMS products) and publishers or content providers. For example, Barnes & Noble has an integration with NOOK Study. This offers two main features. (1) The instructor can look up B&N titles and adding links to them in a course. The student clicks on a Buy Print or Buy Digital button to purchase. (2) Instructors can link to a specific eBook viewable in NOOK Study. Other integrations with other features are available from Follett, CourseSmart, VitalSource, and so on.

So, bookstores will want to know about these integrations. For the AL$ folks, in addition to specific pricing deals for digital content, some site will offer easy lookup of open (free) resources associated with an ISBN. B&N does this now, but others will be able to too. Look to an upcoming post on how to download a UI widget to provide this kind of lookup. Bookstores may want to offer it as a service on their sites.

Jeff

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Kahn on April 9, 2012 at 6:52am

( this post with screen shots is available as a Word document attached)

Make finding appropriate open materials easy

One way to reduce the total cost of educational materials is to find free resources that complement an adopted commercial text. The AL$ website offers an OER Finder tool (http://als.csuprojects.org/free-etextbooks) that accepts an ISBN, looks up the associated text, and finds open materials that match keywords in the text’s catalog description. AL$ makes the code behind the UI control available to commercial partners. One such partner, Barnes & Noble, now offers one-click lookup of free, open educational resources associated with adopted texts.

If you are not a B&N campus, you can use a new OER Finder widget or an OER Finder Building Block (Blackboard) or Tool (other LMS products) to do something similar to the following.

LMS administrators can installed the Barnes & Noble NOOK Study integration for Blackboard, Moodle, Desire2Learn, and other products. After this, faculty can search for and associated texts with courses. Students view the list of content the instructor selected. Here is what the B&N tool looks like after it is made available in Blackboard.

A new feature of the B&N integration offers a button alongside the book description. Click on the button takes the instructor (or student of so configured) to the Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) OER Finder results page for the book’s ISBN.

Clicking on the OER button sends users to the AL$ website with the results of the ISBN search ready to review.

Attachments:

Make finding appropriate open materials easy.docx, 1.2 MB

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Kahn on April 16, 2012 at 9:05am

CourseSItes (www.coursesites.com), Blackboard's free service for hosting courses, announced some new courses:

Announcing Free, Open Course in May with Dr. Curtis Bonk

Course Title: Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success
Description: Motivating students and creating community within blended and online learning environments is crucial to academic achievement and success. This open course will provide both theoretical concepts and practical tools for instructors to improve motivation, retention, and engagement within blended and online courses.

Course Objectives:

Identify and apply relevant motivational strategies and instructional techniques
Construct thinking skill options for different types of learners and subjects
Design and share innovative thinking skill activities as well as unique cooperative learning
Map and apply instructional models and ideas to online learning tools

Enrollment: Open Enrollment begins Monday April 23, 2012.

Course Duration: April 30th- June 4th ( A total of 5 weeks)

About Dr. Curtis Bonk:
Curt Bonk is Professor of Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University and President of CourseShare. Drawing on his background as a corporate controller, CPA, educational psychologist, and instructional technologist, Bonk offers unique insights into the intersection of business, education, psychology, and technology. A well-known authority on emerging technologies for learning, Bonk reflects on his speaking experiences around the world in his popular blog, TravelinEdMan. He has coauthored several widely used technology books, including The World is Open, Empowering Online Learning, The Handbook of Blended Learning, and Electronic Collaborators.