Elgg 0.8 introduced some small changes which required modification of the WebCT-authentication plugin.

We have just released version 1.0.2 of the plug-in, which is available from the download site.

The plug-in allows Elgg to authenticate users against the WebCT Vista (or CE6) database, thereby eliminating the need for administrators to set up duplicate accounts.

More information can be found on this page.

The integration between Elgg 0.6 and WebCT is now available on our download site. The WebCT Powerlink is identical, so anyone migrating from Elgg 0.4 does not need to update anything on the WebCT side.

The integration itself remains the same functionally - the Elgg-portion of the code has just been updated to take advantage of the database abstraction layer that was added for Elgg 0.6.

A few users of the Elgg PowerLink have suggested that it would be nice for their students to be able to log into Elgg directly, without first having to pass through WebCT.

We have just completed an Elgg authentication plug-in which addresses this request. When users access Elgg's login page and enter their username and password, Elgg's internal authentication is bypassed, and a web-services connection is made to the WebCT server instead.

If the username and password match those stored in the WebCT database, the user is logged into Elgg and is presented with their Elgg homepage.

For more information and download instructions, please see this page.

As with the Elgg PowerLink, this authentication plug-in is provided free of charge. If you have suggestions on how it could be improved, please let us know.

With the basic Elgg PowerLink for WebCT, users must pass through WebCT to access Elgg. This means that users cannot log directly into Elgg, which may be a desired feature for your institution.

To address this requirement, we have created a WebCT authentication plug-in for Elgg. The plug-in bypasses Elgg's internal authentication mechanism, and instead connects to WebCT through its web-services interface. If the authentication is successful, the user is presented with their homepage on Elgg, as if they had accessed Elgg through the WebCT PowerLink.

For the technical details and installation information, please see the Readme file distributed with the plug-in.

To download the plug-in, please visit the Aperto Download Site.

I am back in Vancouver after an eventful week at the Annual WebCT Users Conference, held in Chicago this year. It was a bittersweet event for me, since it was the last official WebCT-only conference -- all future ones will be joint Blackboard/WebCT events. I was able to reminisce with a few old-timers about the past 8 annual conferences, and the great energy and enthusiasm the attendees and the staff have brought to these events.

Ok - enough of that. Let's get to some the major take-aways for me:

Blackboard's Beyond Initiative

This initiative was announced in March at BbWorld, and originally focused on 4 areas: Global Learning Objects Respository, Social Networking, ePortfolios for Life, and Outcomes Management.

In the opening keynote by Matt Pittinsky and Michael Chasen, a fifth element was added, which was Student Centered Learning. This was of particular interest to me, since it happens to be the exact title of the handout that I created for the WebCT-Elgg integration, and which was an insert for the conference bags. It is good to see that everyone is thinking along the same lines.

Blackboard is just starting on these initiatives, and clearly stated that they would be multi-year projects. While real details were not yet available, I hope that these central sites will have a trickle-down effect to the product lines, so that web 2.0-type functionality can be taken advantage of directly within the course environment right across the institution.

Blogs, Wikis, RSS and Podcasts are everywhere

There was a huge buzz on these topics at the conference, with many sessions and pre-conference workshops touching on one or more of these. Most of the users take advantage of centrally-hosted commercial sites, such as blogger, blogspot, del.icio.us, so I took the opportunity to mention Elgg as a locally-hosted option in many of my conversations.

Dr. Helen Barrett's Closing Keynote on ePortfolios

Very good presentation touching on a number of key points (Download slides here).

The take-aways for me were:

• Concept of Working Portfolios vs. Presentation Portfolios
  
• Is Portfolio to be used as an Assessment of learning (summative), or as an Assessment for learning?

The Closing Video

It would not have been a WebCT conference without some comic relief from Utah State's Kevin Reeve and Marc Hugentobler. This time, they wandered around the conference with a camera crew and captured some great moments. The sailor suits for the conference party at the Navy Pier were a nice touch.

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.