After getting a number of follow-up requests from the WebCT European Conference in Edinburgh, I decided to create a short Flash-movie which demonstrates the WebCT-Elgg integration.

The file can be found at:

http://www.aperto-elearning.com/files/elgg_demo.htm

The demo is best viewed on a 1024x768 or larger display, to minimize any scrolling.

For those interested, a PDF version of my presentation slides are also available for download from the conference site at:

http://gromit.webct.com/webct_europe_2006/Tu/Salari.pdf

As institutions look to enhance the online academic experience, student-centered learning is rapidly gaining momentum as an effective pedagogy. However, many of the appropriate tools are not yet incorporated into current academic environments.

Aperto's integration of the Elgg platform with WebCT's proven eLearning framework provides institutions with a flexible delivery environment for these emerging technologies.

Elgg enables users to transcend course boundaries and to harness the knowledge and experience of the institutional community and beyond. With access to diverse set of tools, users are able to choose which resources to pull into their personal learning environment.

Students are no longer consumers of educational material, but also creators and editors, assimilating varied resources in individual ways.

To support student-centered learning, Elgg enables:

This page provides more details on the WebCT-Elgg Integration. For information on Elgg, please see here.

View the 2-Page Elgg/WebCT Factsheet in PDF format.

View a Flash-demonstration of the Elgg/WebCT Integration.

System Requirements

Elgg: Version 0.4 and above

WebCT: Vista 3.x, Vista 4.x, or CE 6.x

Functionality

The Elgg PowerLink for WebCT consists of the following functionality:

1. Single Sign-on from WebCT to Elgg. When a user clicks on
   the PowerLink's icon from within WebCT, they are signed on
   automatically into Elgg without needing to provide a
   username/password.

2. Automatic user creation. When a user moves from WebCT to
   Elgg, the system checks whether that user already exists in Elgg. If
   no user exists, the account is automatically created, using the WebCT
   user ID, so there is no extra administrative burden for account
   creation.

3. Automatic community creation. When the link to Elgg is
   added to a section, the designer can choose to have a community
   created in Elgg. The designer has 4 options, depending on which
   learning context level the community should match:

   
   

   • community for the section: all users in the section are
     enrolled in the same Elgg community. The commmunity in Elgg will be
     named 'CourseName - Section Name' (i.e.: English 100 - Section 1)

   • community for the course: multiple sections under the
     same course share a single community in Elgg. The community in Elgg
     will be named after the course (i.e.: English 100)

   • community for the group: multiple courses can share the
     same community in Elgg. The community in Elgg will be named after the
     group, which is usually the faculty or the department (i.e.: Faculty
     of Science). For CE6 users without the additional learning context
     levels, this community will default to the whole institution.

   • custom: allows communities to be shared across
     non-hierarchical divisions across campus. The designer must specify
     the name of the community to be added in Elgg (i.e.: Debating
     Association)

   As soon as a user clicks through to Elgg, they are automatically added
   to the community. The designer is also given the option to designate
   a community owner, who can then administer the community
   information in Elgg.

Technical Details

WebCT Component:

The WebCT component of the integration consists of Java code which
extends the Deployable Component class of the PowerLinks Kit API. The
resulting jar file is installed on the WebCT server, where the
Deployable Component appears on the Server Administrator's
settings.

Once the Deployable Component has been enabled, and a proxy tool has
been created by the Server Administrator, the Elgg tool will appear to
designers within a section, and can be made available to students. As
part of the configuration, the Administrator specifies the URL to the
WebCT authentication script on the Elgg server, along with a shared
secret used for validation of the data which is exchanged by the two
systems.

When a user clicks on the PowerLink's icon, the following information
is packaged and sent via http to the Elgg server: current timestamp,
userID, first name, last name, e-mail address, community ID, community
name, and community owner. In addition, all parameters are encoded
using an MD5 algorithm and based on the shared secret keyword which
was specified at configuration time. The encoding ensures that any
attempted modification of the parameters is detected by the Elgg
server, and that the request is rejected if any tampering has occurred.

Elgg Component:

The Elgg component of the integration consists of a set of PHP
files which are installed on the Elgg server. One of the php files is
specified in the WebCT configuration as the target of the
integration. The php file handles the incoming request from WebCT as
follows:

• ensure that the request is authentic by validating the parameters
  using the shared secret.
• add the user to the Elgg database if they do not exist yet.
• if a community has been specified, create the community if it does
  not already exist.
• add the user to the community if they have not previously been
  added.
• if no errors have occurred, set the appropriate Elgg session
  cookies and redirect the user to the main page, already logged in.

Screen Captures: (Click on images to view larger version)

1. Sample WebCT Course Hompage with link to Elgg through the Community Space link.

   

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2. Upon clicking on the icon, the student is automatically logged into their Elgg space, without leaving the context of their WebCT environment. This screenshot shows a sample student's profile information.

   

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3. Each user in Elgg has their own blog, into which they can post text, files, and podcasts, as in the screenshot below.

   

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4. Elgg allows users to subscribe to feeds from external websites, which can then be displayed individually or in aggregate view.

   

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How does an institution successfully increase and scale usage of social software across campus?

Any institution that has deployed a VLE for a number of years likely has a significant amount of usage by faculty and students (I can't recall the exact Gartner figures, but for North America, I believe around 50-60% of courses have some type of online presence.)

The good news about that number is that online learning is now mainstream. The bad news is that much of the online presence is very limited - maybe a syllabus, a couple of web pages, possibly some e-mail support. In other words, not very engaging.

Having all of these courses online now provides an opportunity to build on that user base, and to introduce them to new technologies, such as social and student-centered tools. As I wrote in a previous post, the first step is to make it as easy as possible to get started. If users are already in the VLE environment, that means automated sign-on and navigation between systems.

Once users are in the new system, what are they to do next?

Most social software is very flexible and unstructured, exactly the characteristics that make it so attractive in the first place. What then is the best way to expose students and faculty to these services?

I am reminded of two bits of information here - one from a few weeks ago, the other a few years old:

In Edinburgh, at the ePortfolio roundtable, one attendee described their University's experience with two systems. The first system was an 'empty shell model' which allowed students much flexibility in how they decided to use the features. The second was less flexible and provided more structure through the use of web forms. Students preferred the second system, which received significantly higher usage, because they simply did not know how to use the more flexible toolset.

My second example is from the early days of WebCT. Back then, when a new course was set up, the instructor simply saw a blank page when they logged on, along with some action buttons at the bottom of the screen. Again - the instructors had a lot of flexibility on how they decided to structure their courses, but most where overwhelmed with the choices and had no idea on how to begin.

As these tools are rolled out across a campus, some initial structure is inevitable, and there are a number of possibilities:

• 'soft structure', in the form of documentation, training and best practices. The issue here will be the ability to reach a significant number of users with existing resources.
  
• simplification or elimination of features - it may be possible to hide or disable some of the software features, to make users comfortable with a subset of functionality, and gradually re-introduce functionality in stages.
  
• templates and context - providing users with pre-populated content based on existing data, auto-populating communities that mirror academic structures, guiding users through the initial set-up steps online.

In all cases, the institution has a role in defining how these tools are to be used, and has the choice of suggesting vs enforcing. However, care must be taken that any enforcement of structure does not diminish the utility of the tools over current technologies.

Probably the most important point: users must be able to use these tools successfully in their initial attempts. It is much easier to introduce more complexity over time than to reverse a negative first impression created by an overly difficult system.

Have you been considering how blogging, podcasting, RSS syndication, social networking and other innovative new pedagogical tools fit into your learning environments?

What are the advantages to each technology, and how are they best used in parallel with existing eLearning frameworks?

Aperto eLearning can help define your strategy and assist with implementing these technologies.

Our services include:

• Needs analysis
  
• Technology selection
  
• Customization
  
• Pedagogical training
  
• Hosting and Support
  
• Integration with Learning Management Systems

Please contact us for more information.

I am finally getting around to posting a summary of my experience at the WebCT European User Conference in Edinburgh last week. Blogging is obviously not yet second-nature to me - according to some feedback at the Northern Voice conference in February, it seems to take new bloggers a few months to get into a rhythm, so there is still hope for me.

Overall, the conference was a great experience (as all WebCT user events tend to be). The program is very user-driven, with many great presentations and insights from the participants. I particularly like the European event every year, as it brings together so many different cultures and voices, while still maintaining a cosy and manageable size (roughly 350 participants). The scheduling was also good, with decent breaks between sessions and at lunch to allow for unrushed interaction and discussion.

This was also my first event as a non-WebCT employee, so I spent a fair bit of time explaining what I was up to. Before the conference, I was actually not sure how my work would be received. I am certainly excited to be working on the Elgg integration, but would those in the WebCT world share that enthusiasm? Are people thinking about incorporating student-centered learning into their teaching practices? Is there an interest in using blogs, social linking, podcasting, or are these just buzzwords being bandied about by the early adopters?

The answer I received was a resounding 'yes'. I had a great turnout to my presentation, and approximately one third of the audience had experimented with blogging, podcasting or wikis in their teaching, which was very encouraging. I was also happy to see a diverse set of European countries represented in the audience (UK, Netherlands, Spain, France, Austria, Germany, Eastern Europe, Finland, and possibly others I am now forgetting).

Many of the WebCT customers were interested in the integration with Elgg. Although Elgg itself was new to most of them, the idea of a seamless workflow from WebCT to a student-centered system was appealing.

In my presentation, I had contrasted the 'formal' learning of WebCT, and the 'informal' learning environment of Elgg. One member of the audience raised an interesting point: if these types of technologies are adopted by the institution, will they become more formal, or can they retain the loose structure which makes them such a good complement to the VLE?

I also attended an ePortfolio roundtable, which was quite enlightening, but I will post on that tomorrow.

There is an interesting discussion on Bill Fitzgerald's blog regarding the integration of three systems to form a cohesive learning environment: Moodle, Drupal, and Elgg.

The sample scenarios that Bill outlines in his post could also be applied to the WebCT-Elgg integration that I have been working on.

From a WebCT-customer perspective, I would make the following comments:

• many of the institutions running WebCT already have some type of portal system in place, so that infrastructure may overlap with the proposed Drupal use-case.
• one big issue at institutions is faculty-support. Many institutions are driving towards one main learning management system (be that Moodle, WebCT, Blackboard, Sakai, etc), so that the technology can be scaled across campus with existing resources. A few years ago, it would not have been uncommon to see installations of WebCT, Blackboard, Course In a Box, TopClass, all on the same campus, and all being supported to some degree. As usage on campus has been increasing, I have been seeing consolidation, and a move towards fewer systems.

I am not sure that institutions would roll out both Elgg and Drupal on a large scale (especially if a campus portal is already present) - not for technical reasons, but from a faculty support perspective. While I'm certainly an advocate for choice, the key is to successful scaling is to build upon successes over time. Spreading IT or Learning Technology staff over too many products means less personal help for faculty staff getting started using these new technologies, which in turn limits the ability to deploy widely on campus.

As I am sitting at YVR waiting for my flight to the UK for the WebCT European Conference, I am thinking about what differences there are globally in adopting the social technologies that I will be speaking about.

In my roles at WebCT, I was always fortunate to get feedback from a wide range of constituents, and there were certainly differences when comparing Australia, Far East, North America and Europe (unfortunately I did not have much interaction with Africa, Middle East and Latin- and South-American clients).

In particular, the Commonwealth countries (Canada, UK, Australia) were aligned with respect to their online programs, and the way they adapted to and used new technologies. Continental Europe tended to be more inwardly focused as countries, with local (and EU) products and technologies favoured over ones developed overseas.

Europe is certainly a hotbed of open source activity, with numerous products available in the LMS space (add to this the recent Open Source announcement from JISC). Someone mentioned to me that in some countries, budgets for capital purchases are handled separately from staffing, and it is often easier for universities to obtain funding for people than it is to buy products. I do not know whether this is an accurate representation (and I know that there are many, many factors to be considered), but it could influence the build vs. buy decision.

It will be interesting to follow the broader uptake in education of social networking, blogging, podcasting, etc, and whether the Open Source nature of many of the tools means a more rapid deployment in certain areas or types of environments.

The early adopters of these technologies certainly are present in all geographic areas, so in part their successes will play a key role in broadening usage.

It is good to see that open source solutions are generating some interest at the Blackboard user conference which kicks off next week in San Diego.

Matt Pittinsky's overview of the conference highlights a panel session on Open Source. A follow-up post mentions birds-of-a-feather sessions on Blogs, Podcasting, RSS and Wikis.

From my read of the information, Bb seems to recognize that open source e-learning can (and will) co-exist with commercial solutions on campus. The timing of the conference is unfortunate, as it overlaps completely with the WebCT European User conference which I will be attending. After all those years of wondering what goes on at a Bb event, this would have been my opportunity, but it's just not meant to be.

If anyone attends any of the open source sessions at Bb World 06, or sees any summaries posted, please do point them out to me.

I am very happy to announce that Curverider and Aperto are collaborating on an integration between the Open Source system Elgg and WebCT's product lines.

As is mentioned in the announcement, the collaboration brings together the robust eLearning framework of WebCT with the social networking and blogging tools provided by Elgg.

I am especially pleased that the integration demonstrates how innovation created in the Open Source world can be used in conjunction with products in the commercial space, to create a total solution which benefits the end user.

The integration provides a seamless transition for faculty and students as they navigate between Elgg and WebCT.

To me, the integration opens up a whole world of pedagogical possibilities - instructors can now easily take advantage of some really exciting emerging technologies:

• blogging
  
• podcasting
  
• social networking

Most importantly, Elgg allows instructors and institutions to operate outside the bounds of the individual course or section - learning groups can be created across multiple sections, multiple courses, and even across departments.

Over the coming weeks, I will be discussing how Elgg can be used effectively in conjunction with WebCT, and I would really like to hear from existing WebCT customers on what they are looking for.

I will also be demonstrating this integration at the WebCT European Users Conference in Edinburgh from Feb 27th to March 1st, so please track me down at the conference if you will be attending.

For the Elgg perspective, also have a look at annoucements on their site, and comments from Elgg's Dave Tosh.