Blackboard
From Syscore
Contents |
What is Blackboard?
Blackboard is UMBC's online course content application. The administration, configuration, and creation of Blackboard content is handled by OIT's New Media group. Syscore is responsible for the administration of the machine itself as well as the technical details of keeping the application running. Syscore also handles the automatic synchronization of courses, students, and instructors between Blackboard and the systems of record.
General Configuration
Extended Documentation
Technical Support Contact Information
- Via the Web: [http://support.blackboard.com]
- Phone: 1 888 788-4264 (Fastest response for system down issues)
In both cases you will need our customer ID. For the web you will also need a username/password. You can get all of this from Bob Armstrong or John Fritz.
Data Synchronization
Process
Data flows into the blackboard system from many different sources, though all of the information is first centralized in the OIT LDAP directory. There are three main outlets within the application for this synchronized data. Blackboard accounts are automatically created from data merged from SIS, HR, and OIT. Blackboard courses are created from course information data in SIS. Enrollment in the courses also comes from SIS data, but is a distinctly different process from the course syncronization.
Accounts
Accounts are created in near-realtime. Whenever a UMBC account is owned by someone who is a current student, staff, faculty member, or course instructor, a blackboard account is immediately created with the same username. UMBC username changes are currently ignored by this process as well as user account deletions. Other information (full name, etc) is kept syncronized at all times between the systems.
Courses
Courses are created nightly before the beginning of the semester. Courses are created by a nightly job that runs before the semester starts. For the target semester, all the courses (not sections) are retrieved from SIS, and made into a single list with all cross-listings only included by their lowest alphabetical course prefix. After the list is generated, every course is processed to determine which sections should be combined. This is determined by finding all the instructors that are teaching the course, then for each combining all sections taught by the same instructor and only creating a single blackboard course entry using the lowest section number.
Enrollment
Students and instructors are autoenrolled into classes nightly before and during the semester. Enrollment follows the same logic as course creation for determining which crosslisted course and sections should be enrolled into which blackboard course id. Anyone listed in SIS as being an instructor is enrolled as an instructor into the blackboard course. This includes all individuals teaching labs or other "grouped courses" (who may be different from the single lecturer that the blackboard course creation/enrollment logic uses.
Technical Details
The synchronization process is divided into two seperate parts. The first part is the Logic, which is written in perl and does everything described above. Each of the different processes described above is a different Logical piece (although they share some libraries). The second part is the Engine, which is written in java and provides an interface into blackboard using the blackboard API. It makes this interface available to the Logic parts via XML-RPC.
To Do
- Add support for courses taught at Shady Grove. They are unpublished, so aren't being created automatically (they are enrolled if created). Should be possible to add an exception based on the section number. Need to find a definitive definition of Shady Grove sections, looks to be just '8020'.
- Auto-deenrollment and management of exceptions
- Map IDMS affiliations to blackboard roles
Changelog
- 02/13/2006 - Started changelog
- 02/22/2006 - Stopped autoenrollment for SP2006 semester
- 05/18/2006 - Created course shells for SU2006 semester
- 05/23/2006 - Started autoenrollment for SU2006
- 08/02/2006 - Created course shells and started autoenrollment for FA2006
- 10/05/2006 - Stopped autoenrollment for FA2006
- 05/17/2007 - Created course shells for SU2007
- 05/22/2007 - Started autoenrollment for SU2007
