Analysis of LMS Categories of Function

Office of eLearning & Innovation
Access, Learning, and Success - Cuyahoga Community College

Page 1 of 109 |

Analysis of LMS Categories of Function

LMS Review: Additional
insight needed.
LMS:
Remote
Learner
LMS:
Blackboard
LMS:
Canvas
LMS:
Desire2
Learn
LMS:
Moodle
rooms
Instructions: URL: URL: URL:
We are interested in your response in
defining the following capabilities of
your hosted LMS product and service.

Customized Administrative Role
Capabilities

Banner Integration

Single Sign On Authentication &
Publisher Content:
Read
more
Course Cartridges

LTI Compatible Learning
Apps

Social Learning Tools:
Groups

Opt In

Link to Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, etc.
Discussion Feed

Avatars, Bio, or
Customizable Profiles
Internal/External Access
or Sharing
Video & Audio Messaging

Badges, Student Incentives &
Retention

Mozilla Open Badges


Page 2 of 109 |

Remote
Learner
Blackboard
Canvas Desire2
Learn
Moodle
Rooms
Credly

Other

Mobile Abilities Read
more
LMS App

N/A
Faculty Grading App

N/A
Student App

N/A

ADA Compliance & Accessibility
Video Captioning

Read
more
Audio Transcription

Yes, via
third party
Same as
above
Compatibility

Innovations, Ratings &
Awards

Upgrades & Implementation of New
Features

Process

Timeline

Testing Before Release
Procedure

Training
Documentation

Tutorials

Feature Release Info.


Page 3 of 109 |

Face to Face Option

Product Improvement
Process

Web Meeting/Conferencing Read
More
Webinar Online

Yes, via
third party

File sharing

Video Uploading

Diverse Meeting Roles

FERPA Safeguards Read
more
Verification Options

Internal

External Building Block

Not
required

Metrics & Data
Course reporting

Student Activity Reporting
Options

Blackboar
d
Canvas Desire2
Learn
Moodle
Rooms
System reporting Options

Intervention Reporting

Implementation

Implementation Plan
Document
Any Other Advantages


Page 4 of 109 |

Content Repositories
Provide information
regarding those that are
native or work within your
system

Competency Based Education
Systems to create and
track competency based
learning including any
capabilities relating to
customized creation of
learning tracks from
existing modules or assets


Page 5 of 109 |


LMS Review:
Additional
insight
needed.
LMS:
REMOTE LEARNER
Instructions: URL:
We are interested
in your response in
defining the
following
capabilities of your
hosted LMS
product and
service.

Customized
Administrative
Role Capabilities

It is possible to customize any role within Moodle. However, the Administrative user
is a Super User with the ability to do anything on the site (Go Back)
Banner Integration

Yes, Moodle with integrate with Banner, Active Directory, LDAP and others. (Go
Back)
Single Sign On
Authentication &
Publisher Content

Both the Moodle LMS and Enterprise Learning Intelligence System (ELIS) work
with LDAP single sign-on authentication.

Publisher content works within the Moodle LMS. (Go Back)
Course
Cartridges
Moodle handles publisher course cartridges provided in an .mbz file format.
(Pearson, Cengage and McGraw Hill can all provide these file types). (Go Back)
LTI Compatible
Learning Apps
Moodle is LTI Compatible. (Go Back)

Social Learning
Groups

Moodle allows for the creation of separate or visible groups that can be used in
social activities, as well as for instructor management. (Go Back)
Opt In
Link to
Facebook,
Twitter,
LinkedIn, etc.

You can create links to anywhere within Moodle. Some themes have special
social media portions built in that make your site look professionally designed.
(Go Back)
Discussion Feed

Moodle is founded on social constructivist pedagogy, which means there are
multiple discussion forums, as well as other activities that will allow for open
discussion among students. These options can be turned off and on at will. (Go
Back)
Avatars, Bio, or
Customizable
Profiles

Moodle profiles allow users to upload any image they would like. The description
area allows for any additional information they would like to add, and custom
profile fields can be added quickly and easily. (Go Back)

Page 6 of 109 |

Internal/External
Access or Sharing

Video & Audio
Messaging
Moodle has the ability to capture video and/or audio utilizing plugins (e.g,
Kaltura or PoodLL). (Go Back)

Badges, Student
Incentives &
Retention

Mozilla Open
Badges
Moodle supports the Mozilla Open Badges effort, and provides for awarding of
badges. (Go Back)
Credly

Moodle provides badges for award/certification. (Go Back)
Other

Mobile Abilities

Depending upon the theme chosen (some themes are inherently offer less
responsive web design than others), Moodle adapts to any device with which the
user chooses to view it. As such, any functionality within Moodle can be done
with any device. (Go Back)
LMS App
Faculty Grading
App
Student App

ADA Compliance &
Accessibility

Video
Captioning
Video captioning can be done with the Kaltura/CaptionSync integration tool.
(Go Back)
Audio
Transcription
Automatic audio transcription is not available within Moodle. (Go Back)
Compatibility

Moodle is Section 508 compliant, and adheres to other, stricter global standards
of compliance. (Go Back)
Innovations,
Ratings &
Awards

The Moodle LMS has received multiple awards over the last 10 years: Best
Learning Management System, Best Project for Educators, three Platinum and
one Gold award from the eLearning Guild, and many others. View the complete
list. (Go Back)

Upgrades &
Implementation of
New Features

Process The Moodle LMS development process includes four essential components that
overlap. These sub-processes include 1) integration workflow in the Moodle
Issue Tracker; 2) stable maintenance cycles; 3) major release (upgrade) cycles;
4) new feature development. (Go Back)

Moodle Tracker

The Moodle [issue] Tracker provides up-to-date status reports for all bug fixes
and new features of Moodle. Moodle.org developers (and open-source
contributors) use a workflow that ensures that new code receives multiple
reviews before it is included into core Moodle code. Different stakeholder
Timeline
Testing Before
Release
Procedure

Page 7 of 109 |

groups perform these reviews--e.g., Developers, specific Component Leads,
Integration Reviewers, Testers, and Production Maintainers. The review process
itself encompasses four iterative stages before it is considered closed: 1) initial
development and peer review, 2) integration review and problem identification,
3) QA testing, and 4) production testing. At any time, the bug fix or feature
request work may return to the beginning stage, starting the process over again.

Stable Maintenance Cycles

Moodle releases regular updates of the stable version of the software to fix bugs
and other issues. After major version releases, minor updates (releases) will be
required. Version Moodle x.x.1 will occur approximately two months after
each major release (e.g. 2.x). Moodle.org will then be another point release
approximately every two months after that.

Issue triage involves evaluating new issues, recording them, and identify if
issues should be fixed in the stable branch. At Moodle HQ two teams work on
FRONTEND issues (mostly related to user interface) and BACKEND issues
(mostly related to APIs).

Scrum: At Moodle HQ, every three weeks, the FRONTEND and BACKEND teams
review the most urgent issues during a period known as a sprint. At the start of a
sprint there is a period of planning and estimation. Issues are given a relative
rank that is based on features including priority, security, Partner interest,
patches and votes. During the sprint, the team meets daily to discuss solutions
and progress, as well as to organize testing and peer reviews of code. The teams'
work is documented publicly in the tracker. Whenever a solution for an issue is
finished, it is submitted into to the standard integration workflow process
described above.

Major Release Cycles

Since Moodle 2.0, Moodle HQ releases major versions (e.g. 2.1, 2.2) every six
months in May and November. Each release can be different, but generally the
cycles follow a standard process: 1) defining the roadmap; 2) planning and
development; 3) testing; 4) sprints.

Roadmaps are defined based upon community wishes, third-party developments
and important issues within the existing code. Sometimes new features might be
based on earlier features, sometimes they may be something developed by a
third party that needs to be evaluated, and sometimes it might be something
completely new.

Planning and development includes the FRONTEND and BACKEND teams,
employed at Moodle HQ, working on specifications of major new features for
approximately three to four weeks following a major release. The process of new
feature development is described below. When specifications are in place, new
code is developed during sprints and goes through the standard weekly
integration workflow described above.

Testing occurs during development. As new code is integrated, automated
testing is conducted at the code and interface levels, to make sure there are no

Page 8 of 109 |

regressions caused by new features. In the last month before the release, a
feature freeze is called (no new features can be added) and our QA team
performs manual functional testing of Moodle features. The current list of
functional tests is listed in the tracker in the MDLQA project. This list of tests is
extended as new features are added, but it is also being reduced as more
automated acceptance tests are developed.

At Moodle HQ, development takes place in sprints. The sprints are three-week
periods during which developers to focus on a fixed list of issues.

Once a major release has occurred from Moodle HQ, Remote-Learner conducts
its own testing and evaluating of the release with our own infrastructure and
approved plugin list. Remote-Learner generally releases the newest major
release between 90-120 days after the Moodle HQ release. (Go Back)

Training
Documentation

Moodle.org provides a vastly extensive documentation base, updated
continuously by both Moodle experts from Moodle.org, or the countless global
users who contribute to the documentation, debugging, and testing. (Go Back)
Tutorials

Moodle.org has many video tutorials available. In addition, Remote-Learner
offers Learning Spaces, 24/7, modular, online training that users can customize
for their specific set of needs. (Go Back)
Feature Release
Info.
New release notes with each point release can be viewed here. (Go Back)
Face to Face
Option
Two tools within Moodle allow for face to face scheduling. One module is called
Face-to-Face, the other is called Scheduler. (Go Back)
Product
Improvement
Process

Moodle continuously updates their software. Remote-Learner releases a new
version approximately 90 days after Moodle HQ, to further the quality assurance
process, and ensure that any special code to client Moodle instances can be
seamlessly integrated. (Go Back)

Web
Meeting/Conferenc
ing

Webinar Online

Remote-Learner developed the integration for Moodle and Adobe Connect.
Adobe Connect provides the full functionality of a remote meeting space: web
conferencing, file sharing, video uploading and creation of meeting roles (e.g.,
participant, moderator, etc). (Go Back)
File sharing
Video Uploading
Diverse Meeting
Roles

FERPA Safeguards
Verification
Options
The Moodle LMS works with Active Directory authentication login. (Go Back)
Internal
External
Building Block

Metrics & Data

Page 9 of 109 |

Course
reporting
Depending on the exact type of data and metrics you would like to obtain, Remote-
Learners ELIS product has a great deal of reporting functionality. In addition, there
are Moodle plugins for other reporting and analytics features such as Intelliboard,
Starfish Retention Solutions, Gizmo, and even a reporting tool called Configurable
Reports. (Go Back)
Student Activity
Reporting
Options
System
reporting
Options
Intervention
Reporting
Implementation
Implementation
Plan Document
Implementation for the Moodle LMS and/or Enterprise Learning Intelligence
System (ELIS) takes place with SmartStart, our concierge service for Moodle
onboarding. SmartStart personnel work with each client to determine the best
method of implementation and integration with existing data, business process
and educational goals. (Go Back)
Any Other
Advantages
Remote-Learner supports and provides services for Alfresco.
There are a number of standard repositories which work with Moodle. The entire list can be found here:
http://docs.moodle.org/27/en/Repositories and includes google docs, flickr, picasa, dropbox, equella and webdav
to name a few. (Go Back)
Provide
information
regarding
those that are
native or work
within your
system

Moodle offers a variety of content repositories. There are many internal
repositories, as well as others that tie into third party systems such as Google
Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, and others. (Go Back)
Competency
Based
Education

Systems to
create and
track
competency
based learning
including any
capabilities
relating to
customized
creation of
learning tracks
from existing
modules or
assets
Core Moodle has the ability to track progression based on criteria set at the
activity and resource level. (Go Back)


Page 10 of 109 |


LMS Review:
Additional insight
needed.
LMS:
Blackboard Learn
Instructions: URL: www.blackboard.com
We are interested in
your response in
defining the following
capabilities of your
hosted LMS product and
service.

Please check off if the feature is available and add a description
of the feature(if needed) in the spaces below:
Customized Administrative
Role Capabilities

COURSE OR ORGANIZATION USER ROLES
There are five Course User Roles: Instructor, Teaching Assistant,
Course Builder, Grader, and Student.
Administrators can create custom roles based on any of the
standard roles shipped with the product. Standard and custom
roles can be made available to specific courses, and with
configurable privileges. This flexibility focuses on separating, for
example, course builder privileges from instructor privileges, and is
particularly important for institutions with strict expectations about
the responsibilities of different types of staff.
The privileges assigned to all teaching roles (standard or custom)
can be enabled; or disabled using a privilege management
interface. More than 100 privileges are available. As a result,
users may be assigned granular permissions that closely align with
what they are expected to do in Blackboard Learn. New roles are
created from existing roles; and inherit their privileges by default.
Following are the default roles that can be copied to make new
roles:
Course Builder/Organization Builder
Grader/Grader
Instructor/Leader
Teaching Assistant/Assistant
In addition to these course roles, Blackboard Learn also includes a
Guest Role and an Observer Role. The Guest role allows the
course instructor to designate resources that can be viewed by an
individual who is not a member of the course. For example, CCCD
can allow prospective
students to preview and evaluate a course without necessarily
providing them the ability to modify the course contents or participate
in that course.
The Observer role allows instructors to set access to the course for
advisors or other individuals responsible for observing a student in a

Page 11 of 109 |

course. Observers can observe multiple students in each of the
courses in which they are enrolled from one central page.
INSTITUTIONAL USER ROLES
The flexibility to tailor institutional roles within the system is made
possible by allowing the System Administrator to:
Customize existing System Roles
Create new customized System Roles
Copy existing System Roles
Allow users to have more than one System Role
User roles can be as general or as specific as the institution
desires.
For example, institutions can create the following general user
roles:
Student
Faculty
Administrator
Alumni
Prospective Student
Or institutions can create highly customized user roles to further
personalize the experience, such as:
West Campus Undergraduate
East Campus Undergraduate
Undergraduate Faculty
Medical School Student
Medical School Faculty
Recent Alumni
Incoming Freshman
Tailored content can then be delivered based on the individual's
defined role within the institution. This level of customization
allows the school to deliver the right message to the right person at
the right time.
For example, institutions can:
Create specialized content to be delivered selectively to
users with defined roles, such as a Homecoming Weekend
calendar module for
recent alumni;
Develop role-based tabs, such as an entire tab dedicated
solely to orientation activities for incoming freshman;
Create unique user experiences across consortia, multiple
campuses, system-wide implementations, or other instances of
shared Blackboard installations;
Enable or disable access to targeted content areas, such as
restricting student access to the Faculty Senate organization-
site.
System administrators can create an unlimited number of new
System Roles and selectively assign hundreds of Administrator
Panel and Control Panel privileges to them. For example, an
institution might not allow anyone other than the System
Administrator to remove users, or might allow only certain
administrators to categorize courses.
Furthermore, an institution might need to create roles that have a
combination of administrative privileges and course/organization

Page 12 of 109 |

privileges; for example, instructional designers may manage
courses from the Administrator Panel and also from within the
course or organization Control Panel.
Once the System Roles are defined, each Administrators view of
the Administrator Panel and Control Panel will be specific to the
privileges of their System Roles. For example, a Help Desk
employee might have access to the Administrator Panel only to
change user passwords. An instructional designer might have
access to the Courses link on the Administrator Panel but be
restricted to only the content areas of the course Control Panel, for
designing course content. Users will only see those options that
are available to them in the Administrator Panel;
options that are not available based on permissions do not appear.
INSTITUTIONAL HIERARCHY
Administrators can create and manage a hierarchy that reflects
institutional organization in order to share and delegate
administrative duties. Multiple organizational units within an
institution can be given varying degrees of independence in order
to manage their courses, organizations, and users. Institutions can
support multiple organizational units on a single instance of
Blackboard Learn. Administrators with appropriate privileges can
create new Nodes in the hierarchy. Courses, organizations, and
users are then associated with the node, and an administrator can
be assigned with privileges to manage just those associated
objects. Although Administrators can manually create Nodes and
associate objects through the user interface, all of the creation and
management of Nodes and the association of courses,
organizations, and users to Nodes can be managed through
data integration with the student information system.
Flexible System Roles can be used in combination with the
hierarchy to create a robust delegated administration that reflects
the real-world organization of any institution.
USER RIGHTS
To further customize access to information in the Blackboard Learn
platform, each user has a unique login name and password. User
login information can be centrally managed via single sign-on and
authentication applications. The login information identifies who
the user is and what portions of the community or communities they
can access. For example, a user logging in, a student can receive:
One-click access to the courses and communities in which
the user is involved;
Easy viewing of recent announcements related to the
institution or to her specific courses and communities;
Single-step access to information about her student
accounts and registration information
The system administrators ability to define user roles and rights
provides a contextually rich environment that delivers a unique
experience for each individual. Institutions can apply this level of
customization and personalization to accomplish strategic
objectives, such as increasing student, faculty, and staff retention
or forging closer relationships with parents, alumni, and prospective
students. Additional features and functions include:

Page 13 of 109 |

Creation of unlimited customizable, institutionally-named portal
roles
Creation of unlimited role-based tabs
User-level customization capabilities
Special suite of tabs to display select information for users
not yet logged into Blackboard
Context-passing functionality to create a seamless user
experience
within Blackboard and other Web-based services and sites. For
example, when a student links form Blackboard to the library
Website, the library Website recognizes the user as a student
registered for certain classes and shows the books
on reserve for those classes.
(Go Back)
Banner Integration

The SIS Framework is a Building Block-extensible framework that
provides common functionality to all integrations while facilitating
integration creation, configuration, and management within the
Blackboard Learn Administrator Panel user interface. The principle
is based on a separation of functionality. The SIS Framework
provides the UI-based create, configure, and
operation/maintenance capabilities, and the Integration Types
(based on Building Blocks) provide the logic specific to each SIS
integration type.
This enables the SIS Framework to support a mix-and-match
approach to integration while also enabling multiple instances of an
integration type.
This provides a great deal of flexibility in building out SIS
integration solutions as it provides the ability to address integration
needs from the simplest to the most complex.
An additional capability available to all integration types is on-the-fly data
mapping. This enables custom mapping of incoming data objects to
Blackboard Learn data objects. This mapping ability allows you to apply
custom scripts (JavaScript) to incoming data. In the case of the Snapshot
Flat File integration type, you can apply custom header mappings to
match existing data formats to Blackboard formats. (Go Back)
Single Sign On
Authentication & Publisher
Content

The Blackboard Learn platform ships with several methods for end
user authentication, including: LDAP, Active Directory, and
Shibboleth. Comprehensive, documented programming interfaces
allow customers to integrate the platform with other systems to
implement single-sign-on (SSO) environments. Blackboard
Consulting also offers several standard and custom services to
implement a variety of SSO solutions. Any single sign-on solution
developed for one application in the Blackboard Learn platform is
applicable to all applications in the platform. (Go Back)

Course Cartridges

Blackboard Learn is the only learning management system that
includes out-of-the-box strategic integrations with leading
publishers. These integrations, available through exclusive
partnering agreements, are based on Basic LTI and open
standards. While many other learning management systems will lay
claim to integrating with digital content providers, no similar

Page 14 of 109 |

relationships exist among any publisher which provides integration
to this depth with a learning platform. CCC will
benefit from:
Access to infinite content sources from around the world
Ability to build and manage courses quickly and efficiently
Powerful learning tools that engage students more
Opportunity to improve student outcomes by addressing varied
learning modalities
Ability to easily exchange ideas and content with peers
The robust integrations Blackboard has with Cengage Learning,
John Wiley and Sons, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson are the deepest
digital content LMS integrations available on the market today. The
user experience also includes integrations with commercial
partners, individual content creators, shared courses, streaming
services, mash-ups, and open education sources such as Creative
Commons. In addition, our approach enables faculty to choose
which instructional materials are most applicable to their course.
Whether through digital content that has been peer-reviewed and
curated or user-generated video provided by Kaltura, Blackboard
allows our partners in the content industry to remain LMS agnostic
and focus on curriculum. Blackboard also supports the import of
Course Cartridges, which are prepackaged, text - and discipline-
specific digital content developed by leading educational
publishers, delivering professional eLearning tools
and resources.
Please visit the following link for additional information on Course
Cartridges:
http://www.blackboard.com/Partnerships/Extensions.aspx
(Go Back)
LTI Compatible
Learning Apps
IMS LTI SUPPORT
The IMS has merged the Basic LTI and the LTI specifications with
the release of LTI 1.1. Use of the term Basic LTI refers to Basic
LTI 1.0.
Blackboard support for LTI 1.0 has not changed. The latest release
of Blackboard Learn 9.1 brings LTI 1.1 capabilities and
conformance to the LTI 1.1 specification. IMS LTI specification,
provides for simpler integration with tool providers, opening
opportunities for third-party vendors and our clients to more
easily deliver curricular and content tools to Blackboard Learn.
Tools may be created and delivered remotely in a write-once
deliver-to-many platform manner. Institutions may enhance extant
services as LTI providers, facilitating integration of services with
Blackboard Learn wherever a tool URL or Building Block may be
installed. Authorized users are able to easily add LTI links to
courses in a manner similar to how external URLs/links are added.
(Go Back)

LTI tool links are copied when a course is copied and a tool will
inform

Page 15 of 109 |

the instructor if the links require updated permissions to access the
tool.
The link will appear in area of placement and is launched by
clicking the
link.
In sum, Blackboard offers import tools specifically designed for
course designers to import or add content created in, or by,
external sources. There are also standard content export
capabilities within Blackboard Learn, including IMS Common
Cartridge export. Commitment to and continued development of
these industry standards allow for increasing portability and
interoperability between Blackboard Learn and external content and
tools.

Social Learning
Groups

The Groups tool allows instructors to organize students into groups
of any size. Instructors can provide communication and
collaboration tools that only group members can access. Groups
can be created one at a time or in sets. Groups can be designated
as self-enroll which allows students to add themselves to a group,
or manual enroll which allows the instructor to assign students to a
group.Blackboard Learn includes a wide variety of tools and
functionality to support students group work. New groups are
created in four different methods:
ManualGroup shells are created; instructor manually
selects which students go into which group shell.
Multiple GroupsGroup shells are created, and
Blackboard randomly populates the shells with students from
the class roster.
Group Sign-Up SheetsGroup shells are created, via a
signup sheet, and the student selects the group he/she
would like to join.
Student-Created GroupsStudents may create their own
groups, without requiring the instructor to be involved, in order

Page 16 of 109 |

to take advantage of the robust group communication and
collaboration tools
provided.
An unlimited number of Groups may be created that represent
project teams, related lab assignments, or study groups.
GROUP TOOLS
Once created, each group has its own space in the course to
work together. The instructor can allow individual group
members to personalize their group space with personal
modules, such as My Calendar and What's New. The instructor
can enable an assortment of tools to help students collaborate.
Tools that can be made available to a group include:
Blogs: In the group area, all members of a group can
create entries for the same blog, building upon one another. Any
course member can read and comment on a group blog, but
cannot make entries if they are not a member of the group.
Instructors can select the grade option for group blogs.
Collaboration: Users within the group can creat e and
attend chat sessions and virtual classroom sessions.
Discussion Board: Users within the group can create and
manage their own forums.
Email: Users within the group can email individual
members or the entire group.
File Exchange: Group members and the instructor can
share files in this area. All members, as well as the instructor,
can add files. They can also delete files, regardless of who
added them.
Journals: When used in the group area, all members of a
group can view each other's entries, but the group journal can
only be viewed by the group and the instructor. Instructors can
select the grade option for journals.
Tasks: Users within the group can create tasks that are
distributed to all group members.
Wikis: Users within the group can edit their group wiki. All
students within the course can view a group wiki. The instructor
can view and edit a group wiki and can select the grade option
for group wikis.
When selecting to create a Blog, Journal, and Wiki for the
groups, the instructor can choose to make those group tools
graded and reflected as grades in the Grade Center.
When creating an assignment with the Blackboard Assignment
tool, the teacher can assign assignments to each student or as
collaborative work to groups. When using groups, it is possible
to give the assignment to select groups or to all groups. Group
assignments receive a single grade, or the instructor may
choose to grade each student individually. (Go Back)

Page 17 of 109 |


Page 18 of 109 |

Opt In

Our proposed solution has been architected to optimize
customization, interoperability, scalability, and role flexibility. With
the technology skills of todays educator in mind, our enterprise
features under pin a suite of teaching and learning tools whi ch are
designed to enhance classroom instruction or del iver Web-based
instruction. Using the single interface shown in the following
picture, System Administrators have the ability to turn features,
tools, and system components on as they are required without
compromising the rest of the system.

(Go Back)

Page 19 of 109 |

Link to Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn,
etc.

Yes. When creating a Blackboard profile, the user can choose
bring in basic information (avatar, email, about me) from her
Facebook or Twitter account. Users may also choose to add a link
to their Facebook or Twitter profile within their Blackboard profile,
to allow colleagues and peers to easily access and connect to them
through these popular social networking tools.
(Go Back)
Discussion Feed

DISCUSSION FORUMS
The Blackboard solution offers a discussion tool that allows
instructors and learners to create, view, manage, and read
discussion board topics and threads. Graded discussion boards
are linked to the Grade Center but graded in-line, so that the
instructor may view contributor content in context.
The following picture shows a sample discussion forum.

Hyperlinks, graphics and graphic files, video fi les, multi-media files,
and document files can all be attached to a discussion thread.
Discussion board threads can be sorted by topic, author and date.
Each discussion thread allows searching capabilities and
Blackboards discussion threads are easily managed with the tool
options. With the Blackboard platform, discussion threads can be
created at the course level and at the organizational level school -
wide. In courses, teachers can establish group areas that provide
the discussion capabilities to groups of learners collaborating on
joint projects or assignments. The discussion board features offer:
Create an unlimited number of forumsinstructors can create a
distinct set of properties to allow for various pedagogical
approaches to managing interaction.
Manage participation in forumsUsers can sort messages
by thread, author, date, or subject; track read and unread
messages; and collect multiple messages on one page for easy
reading, comparison, and printing.
Manage forums by assigning students administrative
responsibilities.
(Go Back)

Page 20 of 109 |

Lock messages so the messages can be viewed but not
modified or replied to, and creating archives of past messages.
Group Forumscreate groups of students for collaborative
work and enable protected discussion boards and file
exchanges for each group.
Forum and Thread gradingGrade settings are available to
instructors when creating or modifying a forum. Grading the
forum or an individual thread allows instructors to turn grading
on or off for each new thread. Graded discussion boards are
linked to the Grade Center but graded in-line, so that the
instructor may view contributor content in context.
Discussion Board statisticsUsage statistics are available
throughout the Discussion Board, such as number of unread
posts or total number of participants in a forum
Post ratingPost rating can be enabled for any forum
allowing users to rate posts in the forum on a scale of one to
five stars. If enabled, the rating functionality will be displayed to
all users anywhere a post is displayed, including the view of a
post in a thread and on the
Collections page, which is the page that displays all collected
posts.


Page 21 of 109 |

Forum copyAllows instructors to copy forums to the same
Discussion Board or to another Discussion Board in the course
Save Postsall users can save posts as drafts, allowing
them to work on a post in more than one Blackboard session
until the post is ready for publishing. Access throughout the
course for learners and teachers
All Posts on One Page and Instructor Highlighting - All of the
posts in a thread are visible at the same time on one page.
Posts also contain the users course role and forum role.
Inline Replies - When replying to a post, the content editor
used to write a response appears on the same page, in the
context of the discussion.
Post First Allows instructors to require students to post to a
discussion before seeing other students posts

Users can receive notifications about any unread Discussion posts
on their home screen or via email; these notifications include links
directly to the new post. With Blackboard Mobile Learn, users can
read Discussion posts and interact with classmates by posting
comments on their blogs or responding to comments on their own,
directly from their mobile device. (Go Back)
Avatars, Bio, or
Customizable
Profiles

PROFILES
The Profiles feature within Blackboard Learn allows each user to
create a rich profile to identify him- or herself in Blackboard Learn.
Profiles are available with Course Delivery only, but greatly
enhanced with the addition of the Community Engagement license.
With Course Delivery, Profiles require the Cloud Profiles and Tool s
to be enabled through the Cloud Management settings on the
System Administration panel. If enabled, the Profile tool will be
available in My Blackboard, a basic Profile Card (with Avatar,
Name, Nickname, About Me and academic discipline) will display
in the appropriate areas of the system, and the People tool will
allow discovery of users within the college. When a user first logs
in, they will be automatically prompted to create a Profile via the
overlay. If the user chooses to defer creation, they wi ll continue to

Page 22 of 109 |

be prompted at log in, unless they check the "Don't show me this
prompt again" option. If they do that, they can still create
their profile later by going through the Profile option in the Global
Navigation.
With Community Engagement installed, and both the Cloud Profiles
/Tools and Social Profiles/Tools enabled, the Profile capability is
greatly enhanced. Because the Profile is cloud-based, a user can
present the same Profile across multiple Blackboard instances.
Once created, the user can access and edit his or her profile
through the Global Navigation.
The Profile feature includes:
Avatar: the institution can choose to display the local Learn
Avatar (which might have been auto-populated by the institution
or added to Blackboard Learn by the user) in the Profile or
display the Avatar the user has uploaded to the cloud-based
Profile.
Profile Card vs. Full Profile View: In many places where a
user's name is displayed (e.g. Discussion Boards, Blogs,
Spaces, etc.), when a user hovers their mouse over another
user's name, they'll see a Profile Card:

The Profile Card is a brief overview of the user -- a condensed
version of the full Profile. With just Course Delivery and the cloud
enabled, the Profile Card will only show the Avatar, Name,
Nickname, About Me and academic discipline. With Community
Engagement and the cloud + social tools enabled, the Profile Card
will also show interest tags, the link to view the full profile, and
the links to Follow, Block, Report, or Message a user. Viewing the
full Profile is only available with Community Engagement.
By clicking on the "View Profile" link in the Profile Card, a user can
access another user's full Profile:

Page 23 of 109 |

(Go Back)
Internal/External
Access or Sharing
Blackboard Learn provides enhanced content sharing options for
instructors within courses. Instructors can now create and organize
content and related communications in any content area. When
copying a Learning Module, all content within that Module remains
available in the new location. In addition, instructors can move
content in the same manner.Students and instructors can share
content among other users on the system through the tools
provided through content management technology, including:
Passes
Permissions
Versioning
Tracking
Workflows
E-Portfolios
Additionally, students can share content with other group members
within the group area of a course.
BLACKBOARD XPLOR
With Blackboard xpLor, users can share rich learning object
content between systems. Sharing options are available when
creating, editing and publishing content within xpLor. To save time,
users can create sharing defaults that populates the sharing fields
automatically based upon the userss settings. The options are:
Everyone: Any user within xpLor can add this resource to
their courses and to channels
Approved Users: Only specified users can add this
resource to their courses and channels.
No one: Restricts the use of the resource to only the
authorUsers can change sharing options without creating a new
version. The new sharing option does not affect any resource that
has already been shared, but does affect how the resource is
shared from that point on.(Go Back)
Video & Audio
Messaging
Multimedia, video in particular, is a powerful tool for engaging
users online. Blackboard Learn include many options for capturing,

Page 24 of 109 |

embedding, sharing and delivering online video to learners with
tools easy to use by educators.
The ubiquitous Content Editor (HTML, WYSIWYG) in Blackboard
Learn allows instructors, course designers and students to upload
video content files in nearly any format in hundreds of places in the
system. Learn also includes an easy to use YouTube MashUp Tool
which make quick work of finding existing online videos from
YouTube and embedding them everywhere the Content Editor
displays.

With the content editor, users can also record video everywhere.
Users can launch the process of recording video from the content
editor and upload it directly to YouTube and have it immediately
embedded in your content. The videos are all stored as unlisted in
your personal YouTube Chanel.
PARTNERS AND BUILDING BLOCKS
Blackboard Learn has many partners and relationships with
organizations that provide a variety of video creation, cataloging,
and delivery capabilities. Several of these providers have
developed and provide deep integration with the Blackboard Learn
platform using our Building Blocks framework. For example, Kaltura
has partnered with Blackboard to deliver a video application that
supports robust integration of lecture capture and video materials,
to video assignments, and sharing of student and faculty video
content, all fully integrated within the Blackboard Learn platform.
Users can upload, publish, search, create clips from existing video
content, reuse videos across various courses and share video
directly from their Blackboard environment. (Go Back)

Badges, Student Incentives
& Retention

Mozilla Open
Badges
DIGITAL BADGES
Instructors can award badges and certificates for course
completion, certain milestones and custom performance metrics.
Our approach ties badge issuance to specific student performance
metrics and is transparent.

Page 25 of 109 |

Students have a complete view of all earned Achievements as well
as those not yet secured. They can also view progress toward an
unearned Achievement, so that can get visual cues about current
progress and how far away they are from a reward.
And if the institution configures this function with the Mozilla
OpenBadges,they can publish these achievements to their Mozilla
Backpack. This allows them to display verified badges across the
web and share them wherever they want on social networking
profiles, job sites or on a personal website

(Go Back)

Page 26 of 109 |

Credly
Blackboard does not have an official partnership with Credly.
Other
See above.

Mobile Abilities
LMS App

Blackboard Learn can be accessed from a variety of mobile devices
in a variety of ways. The key requirement of any mobile device is
that it must have a compatible browser.
The majority of laptop computers and netbook computers will have
compatible browsers. Larger phones, such as the iPhone, are also
likely to have compatible browsers. With smaller mobile devices it
may be desirable to create device-specific brands that optimize the
overall experience for the end user. Below is an example of
Blackboard Learn being viewed on an iPhone:

The key challenge with mobile devices is not the access in itself;
rather, it is the ability to maintain the quality of the user experience.
Blackboard now offers an interface specifically designed to
optimize the user experience for the iPhone. The branding feature
allows the system administrator to create brands that are designed
to work with specific mobile devices, or categories of mobile
devices.(Go Back)
Faculty Grading
App
This is not a feature that is currently a part of our Blackboard
Mobile Learn product.
Student App

BLACKBOARD MOBILE LEARN
Just as Blackboard saw the challenge over ten years ago for
institutions to put course materials on the web and responded with
the powerful solution of Blackboard Learn, we have created
Blackboard Mobile to bring mobile services to a students smart
phone. Blackboard Mobile Learn empowers students to use mobile
devices for learning, and allows students and teachers to access
teaching and learning wherever and whenever they want through a

Page 27 of 109 |

variety of mobile devices. As an integrated platform, Blackboard
Mobile delivers one-stop access to student life in an easy and
convenient way. Blackboard Mobile Learn empowers students and
teachers to use mobile devices for teaching and learning, including
native applications for iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, and Android.
These interfaces are optimized to facilitate easy use of the
Blackboard Learn functions from the supported devices.
BLACKBOARD MOBILE LEARN FEATURES
Blackboard Mobile Learn currently supports much of the familiar
Blackboard Learn content, tools and functionality found online,
optimized for use on a mobile device.

Push Notifications: Push Notifications make it easy for
students to stay on top of critical course activity. Students
can elect to receive automatic, personalized notifications
on their mobile devices that will connect them with course
content in Blackboard Mobile Learn as i t becomes
available.

Mobile Tests: In Blackboard Learn 9.1, instructors can use
the Mobile Test Creator to easily create mobile-compatible
tests. Students have the flexibility to take these tests either
through Blackboard Learn, or via a beautiful inter face on
their Android and iOS devices.

Announcements: Assignment due? Class cancelled? This is
the place where instructors go to post the news students
need to know now. Students have instant, on-the-go access
to the latest announcements, and instructors can post
announcements from their mobile devices. .

Grades: Students can find out how they did on their last
midterm or homework assignment by using the Grades tool.
They'll even be sent a Push Notification as soon as an item
in their course has been graded. No more waiting around
wondering if a Grade has been posted.

Discussions: The Discussion Board is a key course
communication tool for engaging students. It's a forum for
students to ask and answer questions while allowing
instructors to chime in. Students and teachers can easily
read-up and contribute to Discussions from Blackboard
Mobile Learn they can even upload media from their
mobile device as part of a Discussion attachment.

Journals: Students can reflect on their course Journals
through Blackboard Mobile Learn, as well as comment on
peer Journals. Instructors can also use the app to comment
on student journals.

Tasks: The tasks tool can help students track and manage
the progress of various tasks, from turning in homework
assignments to midterm reminders to purchasing textbooks.
The tasks tool allows students to mark when they've started
a task and when it's complete.

Content: Students can access content uploaded by their
instructors and interact with it on their device, using
Blackboard Mobile Learn or any other application that
supports those documents.

Roster: With the class roster, students can quickly view
their entire class list, making organizing study groups a
whole lot easier.

Page 28 of 109 |

Following are the supported technologies for Blackboard Mobile
Learn.
Mobile Device Ready Versions
iOS (phone & tablet)
4.0+
Android (phone & tablet)
2.3+
For more information on Blackboard Mobile Learn, including device
demos, please visit the following
http://www.blackboard.com/Mobile/Mobile-Learn.aspx..
(Go Back)

ADA Compliance &
Accessibility

Video Captioning

Blackboard does provide accessibility options within the
application, which are outlined below:
Visual System wide skip navigation, meaningful titled
framesets; content authoring tools provide for ALT tags, course
and system icons
Aural Accommodates auditory tools for creating closed
captions and audio (video) descriptions
Motor impairments Blackboard is keyboard accessible,
using standard keyboard conventions.
Blackboard collaborates with clients and users from the
Accessibility UserGroup; practices standards-based design and
development, user testing and interviews; performs greatly
enhanced testing procedures (automated and human-executed);
and conducts an evaluation program before the release of the
product to ensure success with real users.
The following are a few accessibility features and functions of
Blackboard Learn:
Keyboard reordering
Personal styles accepted
Embedded and optional help
High-contrast settings
In partnership with Deque Systems and the National Federation for
the Blind (NFB) we have made significant accessibility
improvements all across the product in Blackboard Learn, Release
9.1. We received the NFBs non-visual access certification on
Release 9.1 on a critical series of use cases for instructors and
students, ensuring that using tools such
as screen readers or keyboard-only is easy with Blackboard Learn.
Blackboard Learn was the first LMS Gold
Level Certified for Non-Visual Accessibility
by the National Federation of the Blind. For
example, Blackboard Learn includes an
accessible wrap around the YouTube
player. This was a direct result of a
collaboration with Blackboard Idea
Exchange clients for mashups, who not only

Page 29 of 109 |

raised this issue, but collaborated with us on a solution.
As we work with all of our clients, if a critical compliance issue is
discovered in any of our releases, our Support and Product
Development teams endeavor to address the issue in a timely
manner to maintain system accessibility.(Go Back)
Audio
Transcription
Recordings created in the Voice Authoring tools can be saved
as MP3 and WAV audio files, which are supported by many
transcription applications. Also, audio content allows for a
transcript to be uploaded alongside the content item. (Go
Back)
Compatibility

Please provide more information as to what type of compatibility
you are referring.
The Blackboard Mobile Learn application allows student users to
access the same course map and content available on the web
version of the course. Users interact with the course in the same
way as they would via a laptop or desktop computer, including
posting discussions, updating blog posts, viewing the course roster,
tracking various tasks, viewing grades, and receiving
announcements. Students can natively view course documents
without leaving the application (for example, viewing videos, PDFs,
and other documents directly within the course site).Additionally,
instructors can use Blackboard Mobile Learn to add
announcements.
Following are the supported technologies for Blackboard Mobile
Learn.
Android 2.x
Android 3.x
iPod iOS 4.x
iPad iOS 3.x
iPad iOS 4.x
Wi-Fi Access via Android Phones
To view a demonstration of Blackboard Mobile Learn on Android
and Apple devices, please visit:
http://blackboard.com/Mobile/Mobile-Learn/Device-Demos.aspx.
(Go Back)
Innovations,
Ratings & Awards
Conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG)
2.0 Priority AA, Issued December 2012 by Deque Systems
Blackboard Learn is the first and only LMS in the world to deliver a
conformance statement by a third-party, demonstrating our focus
and determination to deliver excellence for everyone.
Gold Level Certification for Non-Visual Access, Issued by the
National Federation of the Blind (NFB)
Blackboard was the first LMS in the world to achieve this
certification. With valuable input from our clients and a strong set of
development and testing tools, we invest in accessible products
and capabilities that meet the wide range of our clients needs. To
fulfill this promise we are continually partnering with industry
experts to audit our code and user interface design techniques to
ensure the accessibility of the products. (Go Back)
Blackboard is committed to ensuring that our e-Education platform
is usable and accessible. With valuable input from our clients and

Page 30 of 109 |

a strong set of development tools, we will continue to invest in
developing accessible products and capabilities that meet the wide
range of our clients needs. To fulfill this promise we are
continually auditing our code and user interface design techniques
to ensure that our applications are usable by everyone, to the
greatest extent possible, regardless of age, ability, or situation.
Blackboard measures and evaluates accessibility levels using two
sets of standards: Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act issued from
the United States federal government and the Web Accessibility
Initiative (WAI) issued by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
A community of users has created an active user group that meets
regularly called the Blackboard Accessibility Interest Group. This
group of over 100 clients works in sub-committees on various
topics that interest them and have a real impact on the Blackboard
community at large. Fortunately, the group has allowed Blackboard
team members to be a part of their activities; representatives from
Blackboard Client Support, Technical Communications, Product
Design, and User Interface Design have all participated and
continue to work closely with this strategic group of clients.
Conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) 2.0 Priority AA, Issued December 2012 by Deque
Systems
Blackboard Learn is the first and only LMS in the world to deliver a
conformance statement by a third-party, demonstrating our focus
and determination to deliver excellence for everyone.
Gold Level Certification for Non-Visual Access, Issued by the
National Federation of the Blind (NFB)
Blackboard was the first LMS in the world to
achieve this certification. With valuable
input from our clients and a strong set of
development and testing tools, we invest in
accessible products and capabilities that
meet the wide range of our clients needs.
To fulfill this promise we are continually
partnering with industry experts to audit our
code and user interface design techniques
to ensure the accessibility of the products.
Our commitment to accessibility also extends to our user
documentation. For example, online tutorials at our On-Demand
Learning Center are generated with 508 compliance settings and
include closed-captioning. As we work with all of our clients, if a
critical compliance issue is discovered in any of our releases, our
Support and Product Development teams endeavor to address the
issue in a timely manner to maintain system accessibility.(Go Back)
Upgrades & Implementation
of New Features

Process

Blackboard Learn ships two releases per year. Each release
consists of maintenance fixes, enhancements and/or new features.
Blackboard may also release standalone Building Blocks at times
to address system needs. However, any new Blackboard Learn
features would be included in the two releases. Building Blocks will
primarily be used for integrations with external services such as

Page 31 of 109 |

SafeAssign and Blackboard xpLor. Below is the planned release
schedule.

The College can download new releases and Building Blocks
without additional charge as part of the annual software license fee.
For a hosted solution, Blackboard Managed Hosting engineers
apply new releases and Building Blocks in coordination with the
College System Administrators. All customers are notified about
releases, their availability dates, and the new features, functions
and capabilities through email and on our client support site,
Behind the Blackboard. At this site, System Administrators
can access support bulletins (as shown in the following picture) as
well as updated documentation including, but not limited to,
Release Notes, technical specifications, user manuals, and quick
guides. Our maintenance strategy and schedule of releases is also
accessible at this site.

Known issues are documented for our clients along with current
release
notes on our support website, Behind the Blackboard from the
Support
Bulletins interface shown in the following picture:

Page 32 of 109 |

Blackboard also provides a Customer Support Wiki, from which
clients may access dynamic support updates from the Blackboard
team as well as tips, solutions, and best practices from the large
Blackboard community of users.
PRODUCT UPDATE CENTER
Blackboard is focused on continuous improvement of the client
experience, including helping administrators easily and efficiently
access information and updates about the platform. The Product
Update Center provides a central location to easily and efficiently
implement updates to the core platform and extensions.
The Product Update Center, developed by Blackboard Cloud
Services and located in the System Admin Panel, provides updates
specific to your Blackboard Learn installation and any installed
Building Blocks. If a newer version of Blackboard Learn is
available, an indicator will display the number of versions; the
College can select which version to download. For clients with
customizations to the Blackboard Learn platform, Blackboard offers
additional support in the form of Integration and Customization
Maintenance (ICM). ICM provides clients with Blackboard
Consulting assistance to support planned Blackboard Learn
software upgrades or ad-hoc client questions. ICM is a
subscription-based service to simplify client planning and budget
forecasting for upgrade management; helps relieve cust omization-
related challenges clients may encounter when upgrading
Blackboard software; and protects and provides a viable return on
client investments in custom technology solutions. (Go Back)
Timeline

Please refer to the immediately preceding requirement.
Testing Before
Release Procedure
Blackboard has both a QA functional test organization as well as
a dedicated Performance Engineering group. To ensure quality
during the entire product life cycle, the QA group has a dedicated
team for development and a dedicated QA Maintenance team.
Blackboard follows an agile development process that involves
QA and Performance Engineering throughout the Software
Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Blackboards QA process is
modeled upon industry best practices, including IEEE, CMMI, and
ISO9001 standards. QA and Performance Engineering begins in
the requirements phase and continues with the software
development phase, then proceeds into the official QA
test phase, and completes with the review and process
improvement phase. Throughout the SDLC, Blackboard has
defined and ensures that strict entrance and exit criteria are met.
In the development phase, the QA and Performance team has
dedicated QA analyst and performance engineer for each agile
team, developing the test artifacts in conjunction with application
development. All QA test cases include detailed step by step
instructions to ensure repeatability (this also greatly helps in
isolating any deficiency when client finds issues missed by QA) by
a dedicated test execution team. During the development phase,
continuous software builds during the day are monitored by the
development team, followed by automated nightly builds by the
Configuration Management (CM) team that include build,

Page 33 of 109 |

Test Tools
Functional/Automated
Testing:

Borland SilkTest
Borland SilkPerformer
JUnit
APTest Manager
Perforce
Various Blackboard developed automation
tools
Performance Testing
(load generation):

Mercury LoadRunner
Grinder
Performance Analysis:

JProbe (Java Profiling)
Eclipse Java Profiler
DProf (Perl Profiling)
Oracle SQL Analyze
SQL Server Profiler
Hotsos Oracle Profiler
Various System Tools
Various Blackboard Debugging Tools
Trend Analysis and
Usage Patterns

Webalizer
Sherlog
WebTrends
Various Blackboard SQL Analysis Scripts
(Volumetrics of data growth)
deployment and installation, and automated nightly testing on all
supported platforms. When the application development phase is
at a point in which development deliverables are complete, stable
builds are handed over to QA and the QA group then takes
responsibility of testing for system assurance and scalability.
Every QA test cycle consists of over 2400 hours of manual and
automated functional testing that cover:
Full regression testing of all existing features
Full testing of all new test cases
Test coverage across all certified and supported operating
systems, databases, and browsers
Test coverage across application license levels and special
configurations
Internationalization and Localization testing
Performance verification test (PVT) across all supported
platforms to ensure that code incorporated into our released
products has not degraded performance. The PVT is a
compilation of load simulation scripts across the Portal,
Content and Learning Systems. The script activities and
distribution of activities are based on actual usage
patterns of various institutions hosted within the ASP.
Performance team follows SPE (Software Performance
Engineering), which is a methodology developed by two leading
Performance Engineers (Connie Smith and Lloyd Williams). The
methodology is a supported extension to UML (Gang of Four) in
which we study the performance impact of the development
process. Using modeling techniques, such as Performance Use

Page 34 of 109 |

Case Analysis (High-Risk Performance Use Cases) and sequence
diagramming, we are able to reverse engineer existing
code or architect efficient new code by understanding the
resource (interface, method invocations, sql executions, CPU,
memory, etc.) that will be used by the application or subsystem
under load. We then work with the developers to design and then
program efficient, high-performing code.
In addition to the Performance teams responsibility for the PVT
during QA cycles, they also spend time focusing on a given
subsystem, studying capacity, scalability, and most importantly
performance inhibitions (inefficient method calls, poor SQL
execution, thread contention, improper synchronization). They
also use this time to expand the unit test coverage. Subsystems
covered during these cycles are identified for one or more of the
following: porting (Perl to Java), re-factoring, code optimization, or
acceptable/scalable. The teams use a combination of a number of
tools for each test cycle and for other specialized test ing and
engineering activities. A list of tools by category, include but are
not limited to the following:

(Go Back)

Training
Documentation

Blackboards client support site has been recently redeveloped to
provide greater online help resources for our client community.
First launched in 2002, Behind the Blackboard is a web-based
client extranet where Blackboard clients and strategic partners can
access up-to-the-minute resources and information about
Blackboard products and services. It isa central hub for submitting
questions, reporting problems, and tracking
their resolutions. The new Behind the Blackboard client support
site
offers many new features to enhance this process, including:
A Static Navigation Toolbar so visitors can get around the site
quickly
and easily
"My Bookmarks" allowing users to book mark pages they want
to
revisit within the site
"Your Last 10 Pages" so users can see the last ten
actions/tasks they
logged
"Advanced Case Management" for finding support tickets by
status,
date, and keyword
A Comprehensive Reference Center including a title search for
documentation
Software Download Center to quickly and easily get the latest
software updates
Support Bulletins and RSS feeds for documentation updates,
case
communications and the product news

Page 35 of 109 |

Role-based Pre-login Pages full of support-related content so
students, faculty and administrators can access inf ormation
about
Blackboard
(Go Back)
Tutorials

Blackboards core functionality allows clients to create software
tutorials
and demonstrations. Several of our clients have created tutorials
and
demonstrations of the Blackboard Learn platform and how they are
using
these applications to enhance their educational offerings.
Blackboard also offers a digital resource library
(https://help.blackboard.com/en-
us/Learn/Reference/Blackboard_Learn_Videos). Blackboard Learn
Video Resources were created by Blackboards Content
Development Team
and subject matter experts to aid in end user training for system
administrators, faculty, students, and other users.
Blackboard Learn Video Resources include over forty flash file
videos
(Quick Tutorials), Getting Started Guides, and Effective
Practices
studies available for clients at no cost. Clients may search for
resources
to help with understanding and building a course, communicating
and
collaborating, or assessing learners.
Some examples of features highlighted on the site include:
Importing a Course Package
Adding Multimedia
Moderating Discussion Forums
Creating Notification and Alert Rules
Deploying Group Assignments
Checking the Student Performance Dashboard
Blackboard Online Help
All clients have access to our client support site, Behind the
Blackboard.
Documentation is posted to this site and is user-specific. The
documentation includes User Manuals, Installation Manuals,
Release
Notes, and Integration Guides for System Administrators. User
Manuals
may be accessed in Word format and as online help; Installation
Manuals,
Integration Manuals, and Release notes are in a PDF format.
Documentation is maintained by posting the latest versions to the
support site. All users may access Behind the Blackboard and the
documentation appropriate for their user role
(student, instructor, system and admini strator).
These Role-based Pre-login Pages are full of support-related
content so

Page 36 of 109 |

students, faculty and administrators can access information about
Blackboard.
(Go Back)
Feature Release
Info.
PRODUCT UPDATE CENTER
Blackboard is focused on continuous improvement of the client
experience, including helping administrators easily and efficiently
access
information and updates about the platform. The Product Update
Center
provides a central location to easily and eff iciently implement
updates to
the core platform and extensions.
The Product Update Center, developed by Blackboard Cloud
Services
and located in the System Admin Panel, provides updates specific
to your
Blackboard Learn installation and any installed Building Blocks. If
a
newer version of Blackboard Learn is available, an indicator will
display
the number of versions; the College can select which version to
download.
For clients with customizations to the Blackboard Learn platform,
Blackboard offers additional support in the form of Integration and
Customization Maintenance (ICM). ICM provides clients with
Blackboard
Consulting assistance to support planned Blackboard Learn
software
upgrades or ad-hoc client questions. ICM is a subscription-based
service
to simplify client planning and budget forecasting for upgrade
management; helps relieve customization-related challenges clients
may
encounter when upgrading Blackboard software; and protects and
provides a viable return on client investments in custom technology
solutions.
(Go Back)
Face to Face
Option
Please refer to the Blackboard Training overview following the
features
table.
Product
Improvement
Process

Blackboard provides a product
suggestion box for each of our
platforms
on our client support site and
extranet, Behind the Blackboard.
When a
client enters a suggestion, it is
placed in our Suggestion Box. The
Suggestion Box is the single place
where all suggestions go, whether
it is

Page 37 of 109 |

from an individual client, a user
group, a partner, or other
stakeholder.
Blackboard Product Managers
review enhancement requests to
help
inform strategy, feature,
and design decisions in
each release. Every
suggestion helps us
understand our clients
better and ultimately
helps us
improve our products.

Blackboard
understands our
products are mission-
critical systems at your
organization. To
ensure quality and
stability, we carefully determine how and when we introduce
change to the products. This means that suggestions are
typically addressed when we focus on a specific feature in a
release. During this process, we revisit suggestions and consider
them for inclusion in the release.
A recent example of this is Blackboard Learn, Release 9.1 and
subsequent Service Packs. Ideas to better enhance features
and
workflows come from the suggestion box (as well as face-to-
face client meetings, our product development partnership,
beta, and other client programs). Enhancements range from
fairly significant improvements with more change, such as our
new approach to assessment management, to simple client
suggestion such as the need to see the point total for a test as
an instructor adds questions. Data informs our decisions and is
one of the factors weighed in our product strategy. Many times
the suggestion is addressed by going beyond the initial idea
and solving the root of the problem. By adding context, we can
solve problems in creative ways that address a broader range
of issues, providing more value to more clients. For
improvements to existing functionality, we use a crowdsourcing
toolto share the issues targeted for a specific Service Pack with
Bug Squad
members. The members vote on the bugs they deem the most
critical and can even add others to the list. Our Sustaining
Engineering team then uses the results to reprioritize the
release.
We also offer on-site client visits where Product Management
may
present our roadmap and solicits feedback and ideas on broad
categories, or run focus groups on specific features to better

Page 38 of 109 |

understand our client needs. With each release, we compile the
list of relevant, client-suggestions that influenced the product
features. This gives clients a view into how their upfront effort
was used and made a difference. Based on your suggestions,
we may also invite you to join some of our client feedback
programs and even be involved in helping Blackboard make
decisions during the development of that specific feature. In
the
meantime, you can always provide
feedback to us by joining a
community of innovative clients,
such as the Blackboard Idea
Exchange (BIE).
(Go Back)

Web Meeting/Conferencing
Webinar Online

BLACKBOARD COLLABORATE
Blackboard also offers a set of integrated services through the
Blackboard Collaborate platform, which delivers an open,
education-focused online collaboration platform that provides a
wide
spectrum of collaboration that includes Web Conferencing, Mobile
collaboration, Instant Messaging and Voice Authoring. Blackboard
Collaborate services integrate with Blackboard Learn to provide an
incredibly robust synchronous and asynchronous experience for
your
users.
OTHER COLLABORATIVE PLATFORMS
Blackboard Learns open API (including support for IMS LTI) allows
customers and other providers of synchronous platforms the ability
to
integrate these platforms with Blackboard Learn.
(Go Back)
File sharing

Blackboard Learn provides enhanced content sharing options for
instructors within courses. Instructors can now create and organize
content and related communications in any content area. When
copying
a Learning Module, all content within that Module remains available
in
the new location. In addition, instructors can move content in the
same
manner.
Students and instructors can share content among other users on
the
system through the tools provided through content management
technology, including:
Passes
Permissions
Versioning
Tracking
Workflows
E-Portfolios

Page 39 of 109 |

Additionally, students can share content with other group members
within
the group area of a course.
BLACKBOARD XPLOR
With Blackboard xpLor, users can share rich learning object
content
between systems. Sharing options are available when creating,
editing
and publishing content within xpLor. To save time, users can
create
sharing defaults that populates the sharing fields automatically
based
upon the userss settings. The options are:
their
courses and to channels
resource to their
courses and channels.
author
Users can change sharing options without creating a new version.
The
new sharing option does not affect any resource that has already
been
shared, but does affect how the resource is shared from that point
on.

Because Blackboard is fully scalable, Blackboard does not provide
file
size limitations. Upon award of contract, Blackboard would be
happy to
consult with the College to assist you in determining the
appropriate
storage size you need and assist you in developing your hardware
configuration to ensure the College is leveraging current
technology to
assist you in making a sound investment.
Blackboard Learn allows users to upload essentially any file type
including HTML, Word, XML, PDF, PPT, and multimedia files such
as
video sequences, still pictures, and sound files.
Blackboard Learn also allows metadata fields to be added to
content
and populated by any content owner during or after the upload
process.
The platform supports General Metadata, IMS, Dublin Core, and
the
ability to create custom metadata. Each category can be turned
on/off by the System Administrator. All files in the system
collection can be tagged
with metadata.
General Metadata

Page 40 of 109 |

Name
Description
Keywords
Learning Objectives
IMS Metadata
Identifier
Catalog Type
Catalog Entry
Language
Resource Type
Educational Context
Age Range
Difficulty
Free Resource (yes/no)
Restricted Use (yes/no)
Dublin Core Metadata (which is a standard that librarians
use for
categorizing library materials)
Title
Creator
Subject
Description
Publisher
Contributor
Date
Type
Format
Identifier
Source
Language
Relation
Coverage
Rights
Custom Metadata
Any
(Go Back)
Video Uploading

VIDEO EVERYWHERE
Video Everywhere is the ability to
seamlessly record and reuse videos
in Blackboard Learn for faculty and
students.
The ability to record a video on the fly
and have it seamlessly
embedded
in course materials, interactions, and
feedback is included in the
content editor and is ubiquitous
throughout course workflows.
The ability to easily reuse videos
provides great efficiency. An
important

Page 41 of 109 |

use case is faculty reuse of grading
feedback. Students often have the
same problems or strengths in their
work, and the instructor ends up
generating the same feedback over
and over. The ability to easily choose
from ones own library of video
feedback snippets as part of the
grading process will be very useful
for faculty.
The videos are created and managed
through integration with YouTube.
The user needs to have a Google
account, which is free. If the user has
not already done so, they need to link
YouTube service to their Google
account. The user needs to perform
this once under Google Account
Setting page. Video storage and
management on YouTube is free, but
subject to YouTubes terms of use.
Videos created this way by default
use the YouTube privacy choice of
Unlisted, which means the user
needs to have the URL to access the
video, and that the uploaded videos
do not appear on YouTubes public
area or in search results.
This feature generates mobile-
friendly content. Video clips created
using this tool render well in the
browser on a mobile device as well
as in
Mobile Learn.

Record from Webcam enables instructors
and students to quickly record videos with
their webcams
Video Library lists all videos
associated t their YouTube account (newest
.
Users can preview and reuse any
of the
previously recorded videos.


Page 42 of 109 |

Multimedia, video in particular, is a
powerful tool for engaging users
online. Blackboard Learn include
many options for capturing,
embedding, sharing and delivering
online video to learners with tools
easy to use by educators.
The ubiquitous Content Editor
(HTML, WYSIWYG) in Blackboard
Learn allows instructors, course
designers and students to upload
video content files in nearly any
format in hundreds of places in the
system.
Learn also includes an easy to use
YouTube MashUp Tool which
make quick work of finding existing
online videos from YouTube and
embedding them everywhere the
Content Editor displays.

With the content editor, users can
also record video everywhere. Users
can launch the process of recording
video from the content editor and
upload it directly to YouTube and
have it immediately embedded in
your content. The videos are all
stored as unlisted in your personal
YouTube Chanel.
PARTNERS AND BUILDING
BLOCKS
Blackboard Learn has many partners
and relationships with organizations
that provide a variety of video
creation, cataloging, and delivery
capabilities. Several of these
providers have developed and
provide deep integration with the
Blackboard Learn platform using our
Building Blocks framework.

Page 43 of 109 |

For example, Kaltura has partnered
with Blackboard to deliver a video
application that supports robust
integration of lecture capture and
video materials, to video
assignments, and sharing of student
and faculty video content, all fully
integrated within the Blackboard
Learn platform. Users can upload,
publish, search, create clips from
existing video content, reuse videos
across various courses and share
video directly from their Blackboard
environment.
(Go Back)
Diverse Meeting
Roles
Please refer to our content in response to
the Customized Administrative Role
Capabilities requirement.

FERPA Safeguards
Verification
Options

LEARN SOFTWARE SUMMARY
The Learn platform is designed with
secure access and authorization models
to support and help enforce the privacy
policies of each customer. Blackboard
develops products that support FERPA
and provide information, tools and utilities
that allow institutions to configure their
systems so they can meet even stricter
privacy standards. While Blackboard
cannot know or anticipate all state, local,
or international laws and policies that may
need to be applied to the handling of
personally identifiable information,
FERPA regulations are used as
guidelines to develop flexible privacy
management within Blackboard Learn and
other Blackboard applications.
LEARN SOFTWARE DETAILS
(See contents of
https://help.blackboard.com/en-
us/Learn/9.1_SP_10_and_SP_11/Adminis
trator/020_Security/001_Privacy)
HOSTING & SUPPORT SUMMARY
In the event that Customer approves or
provides Blackboard staff access, in the
course of providing any agreed upon or
contracted services, to

Page 44 of 109 |

non-public end user educational
information covered under the Family
Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974
("FERPA"), Blackboard shall maintain the
confidentiality of such information in
accordance with the provisions of FERPA.
(Go Back)
Internal
Built in
External
Building Block

Not required

Metrics & Data
Course reporting

Yes. Please refer to our Blackboard
Reporting Overview in the pages following
the features table.
Student Activity
Reporting Options
Reporting Overview in the pages
following the features table.
System reporting
Options
Intervention
Reporting
Implementation
Implementation
Plan Document
Implementation Planning
Overview
Blackboard Consulting Services
partners with our clients to design,
develop and implement customized,
integrated Blackboard solutions. Our
experienced consultants provide
project management and technical
integration services to ensure the
success of each Blackboard
implementation. Our expertise in
integrating Blackboard with a variety
of administrative, security,
authentication and Student
Information Systems is available
throughout the implementation
lifecycle and to the extent required by
each client.

Page 45 of 109 |

Our consultants work closely with our
clients from scope to implementation.
In fact, we insist that our clients
assign a Client Project Manager to
manage the financial and operational
aspects of the project onsite and
serve as the single point of contact
for all Blackboard project issues and
questions. This Client Project
Manager should have the authority to
make decisions concerning the
integration and provide leadership to
the client team members.
The Blackboard Project Manager is
likewise responsible for overall
management of the project, as well
as tasking and supervision of
specified project activities. The
Blackboard Project Manager is
responsible for ensuring that the
project is completed to specification
and within cost and schedule.
Blackboard consultants can provide
the level of project management,
analysis, design, and development
expertise through each stage of the
project lifecycle, required by the
specific needs and constraints of our
clients. Costs and timelines will vary
widely based on the complexity and
extent of the services provided;
however, the process begins with the
completion of a services agreement
and is finalized with the deployment
of the system and a final report of the
customization.
The following steps provide an
overview for a successful
implementation of a tailored
Blackboard system.
Project Scope
Project Planning Call
Onsite project initiation
engagement
Hardware/Software Plan
Initial Project Plan
Requirements
Requirements Analysis

Page 46 of 109 |

User Interface (UI)
Specifications
Test Plan
Revised Project Plan
Design and Development
Custom Software
Test Cases
Operating Procedures
Systems configuration
Design review
Testing
Test Results
Administrator Training
Deployment
Deploy system
Finalize report of
customization
For more detailed information on
Blackboards implementation
processes, please refer to
Blackboards Sample Implementation
Plan in the following pages past the
features table.
(Go Back)

Blackboard Learn content management technology
works by storing and controlling access to
reusable content objects created by users from
across and within the institution. For instance,
an instructor who creates a learning object that
will be used in 15 sections of a course would
have to create 15 different files (one for each
course) if the institution is without a content
management system. With content management
technology, the learning object is created and
stored just once, and the instructor simply links
to it from all 15 course sections. The online
course materials for each of the 15 sections
reuse the learning object by linking to it. The
result is reduced resource consumption and
more effective use of the teacher's time.
Through the content management capabilities of
Blackboard Learn, a teacher can create, store, or
update information in one place, regardless of
the number of times that information is used for
different classes.

Page 47 of 109 |

Blackboards content management technology has
evolved as the first system in a new class of
content management applications required to
meet the needs of todays districts and schools.
Blackboard believes that academic content
management applications must include
capabilities in four key areas:
Learning Content Management
ePortfolio Management
Virtual Hard Drive Management
Library Digital Asset Management
The first product with all of these capabilities, the
content management technology of Blackboard
Learn also has the advantage of being offered by
an enterprise-level software provider with deep
development expertise in the e-Education
market. It implements the unique Blackboard
Building Blocks architecture which supports
development of third-party extensions and
incorporates Blackboard's work in a variety of
portfolio and content management standard
projects such as the ePortfolio Consortium and a
number of IMS projects.
EXPANSIVE KNOWLEDGE SHARING
Based on enterprise-class system architecture,
Blackboards content management technology
provides functionality in four areas:

Page 48 of 109 |

Learning Content Management: Easily and effectively
share and reuse large volumes of individual content
assets across classes, schools, and districts in a cost-
effective manner.
EPortfolio Management: Assemble, present, and share
information within online portfolios for student and/or
teacher to use in academic growth documentation and
class preparation.
Virtual Hard Drive Management: Cost-effectively
accommodates the virtual storage needs of today's digital
education environment.
Library Digital Asset Management: Creates an interactive
environment for faculty to search, access, and incorporate
digital library resources for use in class preparation.
Content Management enables students and teachers
to have granular control over which content
items they share and with whom they share
them. From a single file space, an individual
piece of content can be shared with the entire
class or just one user. Permissions on the
content such as read, write, and manage
privileges can be assigned to other teachers or
groups of teachers. A teaching assistant can
use the workflow functionality to send a version
of course materials to the staff member for
editing and approval before it is published in the
class. The faculty member can use one-click
WebDAV access to access the content on the
remote server and edit it directly. The system
can manage multiple versions of a piece of
content and track its editing history. Users can
also tag each piece of their content with
metadata that follows common standards for
easier searching and reuse.
LEARNING CONTENT MANAGEMENT
The content management capabilities of Blackboard
Learn integrate with the course delivery and
community engagement capabilities to provide
learning content management capabilities
including versioning, tracking, and workflow.
This functionality enables a teacher to display a
learning object in multiple courses but only have
to manage and update it in a single instance.
LEARNING CONTENT MANAGEMENT FEATURES AND
FUNCTIONS
Blackboard Learn content management technology
separates the display of content from its
centralized management to enable students and
teachers to have granular control over which
content objects they share and with whom they

Page 49 of 109 |

share them. Creation, storage, and edits of a
piece of content occur in a single location per
instance. All information links are automatically
updated, thereby reducing the time involved in
managing content and the storage space needed
by having a single instance of the content.
Content Reuse in Courses
Users can link to their files in the Content Collection
directly from their course environment, allowing
multiple courses to access the same piece of
content.
When building a course, users can add content that exists
in the Content Collection in addition to content on their
local hard drives.
If a piece of content is added to multiple courses, it is only
stored once in the Content Collection. When updated, it is
updated for all courses automatically.
By adding a piece of content from the Content Collection
to a course the instructor is creating a virtual link to:
Latest version of the content (default)
Specific version number
Permission Setting
This function allows for users to set specific access
to their files with an expiration date or a limit on
the number of visits to that file.

Content can be shared with:
Individual users
Members of courses including specific roles (e.g., student,
teacher)
Groups of users by portal role
All users with accounts on the system and/or guests
The content owner can decide what level of access to
provide
Read Write
Remove Manage

Page 50 of 109 |

Permissions can be set on individual items, folders, or all
items within a folder
Passes
Through passes users can share files and folders
with the teacher, students, groups, the class, or
by role as well as with external resources.
Passes allow the user to identify the parameters
for who, what, where, and when a piece of
content will be shared with others.

Students and teachers often need to share their
content with users outside of the class. Passes
allow users to share information with other
individuals within the institution or with external
contacts
Passes make it easy for users to share content securel y
with others based on:
Number of views of the content
Customizable time limits (e.g., 1 week, 3 months)
Users simply create a pass and email it to users they want
to share the content
Versioning
Versioning allows users to automatically keep track
and access previous versions of their files and
content. If a file is edited or modified,
Versioning allows users to go back and access
the old copies before the changes were made,

Page 51 of 109 |

providing an automatic backup for overwritten
files.
Versioning allows users to collaborate on content
development by creating separate copies of the document
after each users has made his changes.
Versioning provides a view of all of the versions that have
been created including creation date and who created
them.
If the content owner does not want the latest version, they
can roll back to a previous version
Tracking
This function allows the content owner or manager
to review all access information to a specific
piece or multiple pieces of content.

Creates an audit trail that captures and displays
information on all actions that have been performed on a
piece of content including:
Content read
Content modified
Comments added
Content copied
For every activity that is tracked, the system also captures
Username of the person who performed the action
Date and time of the action
IP address of the user who performed the action
On which version of the content the action was performed
Searching
Searching allows users to search for files or content
in the system based on name, various file
properties or standards-based metadata (e.g.,
IMS, Dublin Core, etc.).

Page 52 of 109 |

A flexible and powerful search interface allows users to
search:
Full text of all items in the Content Collection
Content metadata
Content properties (i.e., file size, creation date, etc.)
Smart searching ensures that results returned only
included content to which the user has access
Searches can be saved for later use
Bookmarks
Bookmarks allow users to identify and link specific
pieces of content to their navigation to access
that content more easily.

Users may choose to organize their content in hierarchical
ways based on course structures, etc.
Bookmarks aid content navigation by enabling users to
mark and easily find content that they are working with at
any given time
Provides one-click access to commonly used content
collections
When a piece of content is no longer frequently used, the
bookmark can be easily removed.

Page 53 of 109 |

Workflow
Collaborative development of content requires the
ability to route content to other users. Users can
send files to other users allowing them to edit
the file, make comments, approve/not-approve,
and grade, and then return the file to the original
owner.
Users can create a Workflow Activity associated with any
item in the Content Collection
For each Workflow Activity, the creator designates
settings including:
Priority
Deadline
Permissions for the content item
Workflow types include:
Review
Complete
Approve
Grade
Remind
The following pictures show the Workflow interface:

Page 54 of 109 |

EPORTFOLIOS
The Blackboard Learn platform provides tools to
assemble, present, and share their ePortfolios
easily. Students develop ePortfolios to enable
learning assessment, support development, and
meet requirements. Faculty ePortfolios are used
to document academic and professional growth.
With linked interfaces for customizing an

Page 55 of 109 |

ePortfolios style, users can specify colors,
fonts, background images and overall content
layout beyond the classic frame-based
presentation.
Blackboard Learn content management technol ogy
enables users to create multiple ePortfolios for
different audiences and to share them with users
both inside and outside of the institution.
ePortfolios owners can collect independent
entities called Personal Artifacts that make up
the content presented in the ePortfolio. Within
the ePortfolio, Artifacts are organized through
the use of Portfolio Pages. Using the interface in
the following picture, Artifacts can be added
from external sources with the Browse
functionality or created as part of the ePortfolio
authoring process with the Add Artifact
functionality. Once created, Artifacts can be re-
used in other ePortfolios making the content
reusable and establishing the Portfolio as a
platform for collecting and presenting important
content.

ePortfolios can be published within a course to
submit a final assignment or presentation. A
group can collaborate on the completion of an
ePortfolio to present the assignment and the
process by which they collaborated on the
project. The group can share the ePortfolio with
the class to allow for peer review by allowing
comments to be added to a portfolio.
PORTFOLIO TEMPLATES
The ePortfolio tool provides a step-by-step wizard
interface allowing users an easy to use interface
to build their online portfolio. The portfolio also
includes a templates tool that offers pre-

Page 56 of 109 |

designed formats for various types of items such
as resumes, skill lists, and other templates.
These items help students create a
comprehensive ePortfolio and helps users
determine the items that will be appropriate to
add to the portfolio and the items which should
be left out of the portfolio.
Authorized System Administrators can design whole
ePortfolio templates that govern settings that
apply to the entire authored ePortfolio enabling
standardization of requirements throughout the
institution. Templates can control all aspects of
the ePortfolio style and overall layout. Template
designers have the flexibility to define whether
certain template settings are restricted (and
cannot be altered).
PORTFOLIO SHARING
Blackboard ePortfolios provide the added benefit of
portability to users outside the institution in
which the owner creates them. Using a Share
Portfolio interface, ePortfolio owners determine
which users can share the content and
informationboth internally and externally.
Understanding ePortfolios as a valuable tool in both
academic and professional development, the
Blackboard system provides improved access
and streamlined management by:
Enabling teachers and students to develop their own
ePortfolios to meet academic goals
Enhancing academic advising and mentoring processes by
providing a showcase of work and accomplishments
Enabling each user to create multiple ePortfolios based on
the intended audience
Allowing sharing of portfolios with users both inside and
outside of the institution
VIRTUAL HARD DRIVE MANAGEMENT
Students and teachers take full advantage of a
networked learning environment by developing
all of their teaching, learning and research
materials in digital formats, resulting in a need
for file storage space that is accessible
anywhere. Many institutions are beginning to
offer network file storage space as a service to
students, and many more want to add this
capability. Unfortunately, available technologies
for doing so have been difficult to administer,
complicated to use, and often functionally
inadequate. Management difficulties have led to

Page 57 of 109 |

inefficient use of resources, ultimately resulting
in increased costs.
VIRTUAL HARD DRIVE FEATURES AND FUNCTIONS
The electronic repository included with
Blackboards content management technology
enables institutions to easily provide and
manage virtual hard drive space for students,
teachers, and staff. By integrating Internet-
based file storage with the Blackboard platform,
content management technology makes it easier
and more secure for students and teachers to
take advantage of this service through the
familiar Blackboard user interface.
Virtual Hard Drive Space
This feature provides a personal work area or
virtual hard drive where users can store,
organize, and share files.
Anytime anywhere access to personal, class, school or
district file storage areas
Enables secure storing of files and folders
Users can access and edit files via Blackboard Web user
interface and/or WebDAV
All key file management functions are easily accessible
from a single page

Content Areas

Page 58 of 109 |

Content areas provide easy organization of content
for all users.
My ContentEvery user can
have their own personal
content storage area
Course ContentWhen a
course or organization is
created, a corresponding
content area is also created
Institution ContentCan be
used to share information
across the institution (e.g.,
English Department, PTA,
course catalogues, honor
code, etc.)
Library ContentLibrarians
can place domain-specific content and create e-Reserves
WebDAV
With content management technology, users can
create Web folders on their local computers,
which enables them to drag and drop files from
their own drives directly to the Content
Collection.
WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning)
allows users to collaboratively author and edit files on a
remote system
One-click WebDAV
Enables drag and drop file management
Users can create, edit, and manage files using common
desktop applications (e.g., MS Word, MS Excel, etc.) while
they are automatically saved to their Virtual Hard Drive
Space

Disk Quota/Bandwidth Settings

Page 59 of 109 |

This feature allows Administrators the ability to
control individual users' space and access
configuration to ensure maximized system
utilization.
Administrators can set disk quotas for users, courses,
organizations, etc.
Bandwidth settings can be configured for users, courses,
organizations and institution to manage network utilization
and costs
By controlling bandwidth sittings, administrators can limit
system abuse such as students using their Virtual Hard Drive
space as a giant MP3 share drive
LIBRARY DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT
Using content management technology, librarians
can make subject-specific library content such
as e-Reserves available for use in courses. In
addition, teachers can interface with their
institution's existing library systems to allow for
search and incorporation of digital content
within the online course environment.
LIBRARY DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT FEATURES AND
FUNCTIONS
Libraries need ways to integrate their collections
into the content used in online courses. The
content management capabilities of Blackboard
Learn provide libraries and teachers with the
capability of integrating the library information
with the online courses, groups and other
resources to improve access to information and
resources.
e-Reserves
Users can access library resources through
electronic versions.
Many libraries create digital versions of copyright-cleared
reserve readings also known as e-Reserves
Content management enables integration of e-Reserve
resources into online course sites
Allows librarians to manage copyright-cleared e-Reserve
content for courses including controlling access to e-
Reserves by courses
Students and teachers no longer have to use hard copy
reserves or log into separate e-Reserve systems
Content Metadata
Through this feature, users can utilize any content
available in the Content Collection regardless of
file type.

Page 60 of 109 |

Metadata tagging allows unstructured content created for
courses to be integrated into the overall knowledge
collection of the institution
Supports leading metadata standards including IMS and
Dublin Core
Facilitates effective content sharing, searching and
integration of library content into course environment
Library Digital Asset Management and Library
Integration
Integrating with the institution's library system(s)
allows for management of content and resources
available through different systems and servers.
Integrates eLearning with library resources
Allows teachers to access and assign library databases and
e-Materials from course environment
Course environments can be populated with links to
discipline-specific collections
Enables librarians to manage library-related content in
courses
Library searches can now include content housed in the
Content Collection
UNDERSTANDING BLACKBOARD CONTENT
MANAGEMENT
Content management technology provides clients
with flexible file sharing and content
management options including:
Granular and flexible file sharing allows users to share
folders and files with anyone inside or outside the
institution.
Easy-to-use integrated WebDAV
Ability to create and share ePortfolios for classes to increase
their content sharing abilities.
Advanced content management capabilities including
versioning, workflow, and tracking capabilities.
All the functional capabilities for managing content and
ePortfolios to every user within the institution.
Content management technology offers the simplest
means of creating and managing content for use
throughout the institution, not just in a single
course. Fully integrated with Blackboards
online course and community environments, the
our content management capabilities provide the
ability to access information throughout the
institution, share information and content, and
manage edits and changes to content directly.
CONTENT MANAGEMENT ARCHITECTURE

Page 61 of 109 |

Content management architecture delivers a
responsive, highly scalable system that allows
for minimal downtime and, when necessary,
quick and systematic recoveries. Blackboard
Learn content management technology features
a modular architecture that can meet a diverse
set of deployment and configuration parameters
ranging from a single server to a collection of
application and database servers attached to a
storage area network. Tested and designed to
support large scale implementations for tens of
thousands of users, Blackboard Learn offers
enterprise-critical technology including
application and database load balancing, fault-
tolerant fail-over and dozens of additional
architectural components designed to ensure
system performance and functioning.
The Blackboard platform provides administrators
with a broad range of functionality and options
for how to present the system to users, the
network, other IT systems on campus, as well as
enterprise systems critical to maintaining and
integrated e-Education environment.
Institutions who have already integrated the
Blackboard Learn platform with their student
records or human resource systems do not have
to complete any additional work to ensure their
data is integrated with content management
technology, which takes advantage of the data
that is already populated in the Blackboard
platform.
(Go Back)

Provide information
regarding those that are
native or work within your
system

Over the last 15 years, Learning Management
Systems (LMS) have transformed education
enabling you to create rich interactive learning
materials, effective online assessments, and
interactive discussions. But the LMS can build
walls between you and your peers, making it
difficult to share content you create or use
content others have shared.
xpLor removes these restrictions by allowing you to
use the same learning materials in various LMS
environments with unprecedented ease. xpLor
leverages the strengths of your LMS and moves
content to the cloud.
Blackboard xpLor is a global learning object

Page 62 of 109 |

repository for rich educational materials
including assessments, assignments,
discussions, HTML pages, and more. But
Blackboard xpLor is much more than just a
content repository. It is also an authoring
environment, with familiar content creation
tools. It enables sharing and discovery of
educational content with a rich metadata engine
and also enables copyright management using
the Creative Commons system. Plus, all content
is delivered through the Blackboard Learn
course environment for a seamless experience
for students.
xpLor houses shareable, reusable content that is
accessible to courses within several LMS
platforms. You can:
Create or upload content.
Protect your content.
Share your content with other users and institutions as
determined by specific parameters and sharing filters.
Search for content according to grade level, subject
matter, standards, and other criteria.
Deliver your content seamlessly across multiple courses
and systems simultaneously.

Sharing options are available when creating,
editing and publishing content within xpLor. To
save time, users can create sharing defaults
that populates the sharing fields automatically
based upon the user's settings. The options

Page 63 of 109 |

are:
their courses and to channels
resource to their courses and channels.
author
Users can change sharing options without creating
a new version. The new sharing option does not
affect any resource that has already been
shared, but does affect how the resource is
shared from that point on.
For additional information about Blackboard XpLor, please
visit the video link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUOjgax8VO4
(Go Back)

existing modules or assets
Blackboard Learn has long pursued support for competency-
based learning such as adaptive release, outcome
alignment, badging, and asynchronous course
management. As the use of this pedagogical approach
develops in global education, Blackboard continues to
listen, adapt and develop new capabilities related to this
area. Of particular relevance to the topic as requested,
we look closely at Adaptive Release. This functional
area of the Learn system allows the instructor or
instructional designer to develop responsive learning
paths where the specific path taken by a particular
student is dependent upon their demonstrated
competence with an identified object in the course such
as an exam, assignment or other marker where the
competence is recorded. For example, a student might
submit an artifact such as a paper, video presentation or
portfolio. The instructor evaluates that demonstration of
competence and then records, perhaps using a rubric,
the achievement level demonstrated by the student.
Depending on the achievement level, the student might
be presented with particular resources and activities to
progress their learning. This pathing could be developed
with much granularity, or it could be handled in larger
modules or components of the learning. This pathing, or
Adaptive Release, can be applied to any object
presented to the student such as a file, content,
assignment or exam, folders containing such or modules
structuring such.


Page 64 of 109 |

The instructor, program or institution might also consider
aligning content and activities to particular learning
outcomes or Goals in order to facilitate reporting and
management in terms of competencies. The structured
information that results provides opportunities to report
within the course, or across the institution with either our
Analytics for Learn solution or custom reporting. Student
progress can be monitored in a granular way while the
student is able to mark progress via the system of
Achievements or badges in the system. This ongoing
tracking of progress is critical in a competency based
approach because these pedagogical approaches tend
to be more asynchronous between students, so tools
such as the Needs Grading function in Learn allow for
this more nuanced approach to the student learning
experience.

More and different approaches to competency based
learning are being undertaken within academia.
Blackboard continues to partner with external vendors
looking at unique ways to approach this area and we
implement ongoing improvements to the platform as this
approach develops through thought and deed across the
institutions.


insight needed.
LMS:
Canvas
Instructions: URL: http://www.instructure.com/
We are interested in your
response in defining the
following capabilities of your
service.

Please check off if the feature is available and add a
description of the feature(if needed) in the spaces below:
Capabilities

Two features of Canvas stand out with respect to roles: Sub-Accounts
and Permissions.
Sub-Accounts allow you to create an organizational hierarchy so that
administrative tasks can be filtered within a specific department,
campus, program, etc. More information can be found here:
http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4214/l/73673-what-can-
i-use-sub-accounts-for
Course level and account level Permissions can also be managed at the
Account or Sub-Account level. Canvas supports the ability to modify
existing roles or create entirely new roles that satisfy unique use cases.
Here is a short video (with a transcript) that will provide a nice overview
of Canvas Permissions:

Page 65 of 109 |

http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4210/l/135150-
permissions-video
This link will also provide some useful information about setting custom
permissions:
http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4214/l/43006-how-do-i-
set-permissions-for-an-account-level-admin
(go Back)

Banner Integration

Canvas integration with Banner comes in one of three (3) flavors:
Manual CSV Upload, Automated (Scheduled) API Integration (most
common and easy to set up), and Real-time Luminis Message Broker
(LMB) integration. While LMB real-time integration provides an ideal
solution, SunGard does charge a premium for it so thats why most
schools opt for the schedule-driven integration. Typically, updates will
occur ever hour, four hours, or day depending on needs.

Integration points include:
Accounts
Terms
Courses
Sections
Users
Enrollments
Crosslists
Groups
Group Enrollments

Canvas also supports automated grade publishing into Banner. A
description of this functionality from an instructors perspective is
shared here:
publish-grades-to-banner (Go Back)
Publisher Content

Course Cartridges

Integration with publisher content can come in a variety of forms but
most commonly, publishers provide content in Common Cartridge (CC)
format. Canvas supports CC imports via the Course Import Tool as
described here:
http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4152/l/57076-what-
does-the-course-import-tool-do
Canvas also supports QTI imports using this same tool. This standards-
based format is often used by publishers for delivery of question banks.
Instructure also has a number of premier partnerships with publishers:
http://www.instructure.com/partners (Go Back)
LTI Compatible
Learning Apps
LTI integration is a strength of Canvas. In fact, we recently launched an
open, vendor-neutral website that showcases over 130 LTI integrations.
The press release and related links can be found here:
http://www.instructure.com/press-releases/instructure-launches-
open-vendor-neutral-website-for-education-app-catalog


Page 66 of 109 |

With respect to learning apps specifically supported within Canvas using
LTI, all of the ones in the following link are supported:
https://www.eduappcenter.com/
And, Canvas has an intuitive mechanism for adding LTI tools not listed
within eduappcenter.com so you can integrate with any other tool that
supports LTI. (Go Back)

Social Learning
Groups

Canvas natively supports the creation of Groups and Group Sets at both
the course and system levels (e.g. for clubs, faculty collaboration spaces,
etc.). This link provides a variety of resources related to the creation
and use of student groups in a course for social learning:
http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4152/l/55483-what-are-
student-groups (Go Back)
Opt In

Canvas supports opt in for both course enrollment and group
membership within a course. In fact, a variety of related options exist to
support different use cases. Self Enrollment, self registration, and open
enrollment functions described here will likely be of interest:
http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4214/l/135439-what-is-
the-difference-between-self-enrollment-self-registration-and-open-
registration
With respect to Group opt-in capabilities, refer to this link:
create-self-sign-up-groups (Go Back)
Link to Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Canvas supports direct integration with a variety of social networking
tools including the ones listed here. In fact, with Facebook and Twitter,
a user can receive private Canvas directly within the 3
rd
party tool if
desired. Here is a list of existing integrations but keep in mind that we
have a large number of LTI integrations and can extend further if
needed:

integrations-are-or-can-be-enabled-with-canvas
(Go Back)
Discussion Feed

By default, an instructor is subscribed to discussion forums created
within a given course and he/she can choose notification frequency.
A unique feature of Canvas is that if an instructor or student opts to
have discussion notifications forwarded to an email address (enabled
by default), he/she can reply to a post without accessing Canvas. The
email reply will be appropriately directed to the correct forum. This
capability also exists with Conversations Canvas built in mail
utility.

Student subscription to forums is described here:
http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4212/l/126078-how-do-
i-subscribe-to-a-discussion-as-a-student (Go Back)
Avatars, Bio, or
Avatars are displayed throughout Canvas in places where a users
identity is displayed (for example, a forum post, Conversation message,
Gradebook, assignment submission). This link describes the process of
editing an avatar within the Canvas Profile page:

Page 67 of 109 |

add-a-profile-picture

Profile and bio editing is supported within Canvas and described here:
edit-my-profile (Go Back)
Internal/External
Access or Sharing
Within the context of a user and his/her profile, personalized links can
be added to external or internal resources. See the previous response
regarding the process of editing a Profile.

Additionally, Canvas includes an ePortfolio feature that allows a student
to create a sharable online presence that, for example, showcases
artifacts from assignments submitted in a course that demonstrates
expertise. ePortfolios are easily configured via a wizard and are not
constrained by course enrollment:
use-the-eportfolio-getting-started-wizard
Additionally, content within courses can be made public. (Go Back)
Video & Audio
Messaging
Video and audio messaging is a particular strength of Canvas as its
Multimedia tool supports the real-time creation of media in the places
where it makes the most sense. These include Conversations,
Discussions, homework submissions, comments by both instructors and
students around homework submissions, questions and responses to
questions, any place the Rich Content Editor is utilized, and so on. Here
is a link to one example of how its used within the context of a
message:

attach-a-media-comment-to-my-message

Additionally, this tool supports the upload of media files created by
other tools (e.g. an cell phone) and if needed, well transcode the
content for support on mobile devices (e.g. iPad). (Go Back)

Retention

Mozilla Open Badges

Canvas has a LTI app that support the display of an individuals Mozilla
Backpack in Canvas either within the profile view or within a course.
Importantly, the CanvaBadges app and BadgeSafe app both support the
publishing of badges so that as students earn badges, its easy for them
to show them off. Here is a link to the Open Badges LTI tool:

https://www.eduappcenter.com/apps/Open_Badges#.U2P6La1dVg4
(Go Back)
Credly

Supported via our WordPress integration:
https://www.eduappcenter.com/apps/wordpress#.U2P8Y61dVg4
WordPress must have the BadgeOS plugin. (Go Back)
Other

We previously mentioned CanvaBadges and BadgeSafe in this response.
Here is some additional information on using these tools within Canvas

Page 68 of 109 |

courses so that students can earn badges based on progress within a
course.

CanvaBadges: https://www.canvabadges.org/
BadgeSafe: https://www.accreditrust.com/truecred-
framwork/badgesafe-for-canvas/96-badgesafe-for-canvas
(Go Back)

Mobile Abilities
LMS App

Version 3.0 of the Canvas App comes in both phone and tablet versions
for Android (4.0+) and iOS (7.0+). It has recently been redesigned to
better support native mobile and tablet functionality (e.g swipes, 2-
finger double taps). It offers an incredibly fluid mobile learning
experience that has been optimized to support all learning activities
within a mobile environment.

Also worth mentioning is that Canvas Apps are free to all end users.
They simply navigate to the appropriate App store, search for the app,
install it, and input the site credentials to gain access to all course
content and activities.

Android Mobile Phone App Guide:
http://guides.instructure.com/m/18555
Android Tablet App Guide:
http://guides.instructure.com/m/18560
iOS Phone App Guide:
http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/18561
iOS Tablet App Guide:
http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/18562
(Go Back)
Faculty Grading App

The Canvas Speedgrader for iPad App can be downloaded via the Apple
App Center (Android coming soon) and supports rapid grading of
student submissions via an intuitive interface. This resource also
supports rubrics and written or multimedia commenting of assignment,
quiz, and forum submissions.

How-to guide:
use-speedgrader
Video Overview:
speedgrader-overview-video (Go Back)
Student App

The Student app and instructor app environments are combined within
the Canvas App described above. Access to functionality varies based
on a users rights within a given course. (Go Back)

Video Captioning

Canvas multimedia tool natively supports captioning of either uploaded
videos/audio tracks or videos/audio recordings created within Canvas.

Page 69 of 109 |

SRT and WebVTT formats are supported and a user can either upload a
captioning file created by a 3
rd
party tool or create one via the
integrated subtitle creation tool.
Captioning for new or uploaded videos:
create-captions-for-new-or-uploaded-videos-in-canvas
Captioning for external/linked videos:
create-a-caption-file-for-an-external-video
Viewing Captions:
view-captions-in-a-video
(Go Back)
Audio Transcription

Canvas utilizes Amara (http://www.amara.org/) for integrated
captioning support and Amara also has transcription services. One
would simply download the transcription/captioning file from Amara
and upload it as a linked attachment to the page that contains the video.
(Go Back)


Page 70 of 109 |

Compatibility

Unlike older learning management systems, Canvas was designed from
the ground-up to support HTML5 with no use of java. This greatly
enhances support of core functionality on all devices and in most
modern-day web browsers regardless of the platform or version. That
said, we officially support the last 2 versions of Internet Explorer, Safari,
Firefox, and Chrome on a PC.
In the event that a new version of a supported browser is released and it
breaks functionality in Canvas, our agile development process is able to
rapidly push fixes into our native cloud-hosting environment to ensure
minimal impact on the end users. For mobile, we officially support our
native Apps that utilize core mobile functionality.
Worth mentioning is that Videos, once created within or uploaded to
the Canvas Multimedia tool, are transcoded for support on all mobile
devices including iOS devices.
Only Conferencing (a feature that isnt a core component of course
delivery) relies upon Flash and that is currently being refactored for
HTML5 delivery. Once completed, end users will be able to benefit from
all native Canvas functionality without the use of plugins.
(Go Back)
Awards
Refer to the Instructure Website and in particular, our press releases:
http://www.instructure.com/press-releases/

Indiana University recently completed a pilot of the three major learning
management systems. The ratings can be found at:
http://next.iu.edu/index.php

Northwestern University pilot results:
http://dailynorthwestern.com/2014/04/30/campus/canvas-
announced-as-blackboard-replacement/

Results from other higher education evaluations:
http://www.instructure.com/reviews-higher-education

On the fun side of the awards spectrum, Instructure was recently
included in an OpenView Lab March Madness face-off against other
tech giants like Amazon, SAP and Salesforce.com to determine the
Most customer-centric company in tech.

And the winner? Instructure! Read here to find out more about this fun
but telling independent recognition:
http://labs.openviewpartners.com/most-customer-centric-
company-in-tech/ (Go Back)


Page 71 of 109 |

Upgrades & Implementation of
New Features

Process

Canvas's approach to change management aims to eliminate
problems with service pack upgrades experienced in legacy LMSs
(for example, long waits for dramatic changes that require re-
training and system down-time or a disjointed community of users
on different versions and service packs).

With Canvas, we utilize an agile development process where
updates and security patches happen as soon as possible, with
little or no downtime. There are no versions of Canvas only the
current version. Feature enhancements are gradual, incremental,
and easy to adopt. Major tool enhancements typically provide
users with the ability to opt-in/opt-out (e.g. the new version of
Conversations). Entirely new tools can be enabled by admins (e.g.
Mastery Gradebook or Draft State). This approach lets positive
change happen not just between semesters, but when it's most
needed. (Go Back)
Timeline

Canvas' agile development methodology means Canvas can fix
application issues and release new functionality faster.

Bug fixes and security patches are released immediately, as often
as several times per week. This is a hugely beneficial advancement
because it means your teachers and students are able to
immediately benefit from improvements to the day-to-day
functionality without experiencing any overt changes to the tools
and feature they are used to, and, most importantly, without
having to wait around for the next quarterly service pack.

Enhancements that are considered to be "features" are always
rolled out in our normal release schedule every three weeks. Here
is a schedule for updates through the end of 2014:
http://guides.instructure.com/m/4214/l/199567

More significant changes or major additions roll out more
gradually, and are driven primarily by customer feedback and
collaboration.

Importantly, Canvas has a Feature Flag function that allows an
institution to decide when it wants to role out a more significant
enhancement. Management of feature rollout using Feature Flags
is discussed here:
how-do-i-manage-new-features-for-my-institution (Go Back)
Procedure
All updates are communicated directly to Canvas clients both in
email format and via the Release Notes area of our Help Center.
Enhancements are made available for testing three weeks in
advance of the release (minimum) through a .beta instance of your
Canvas site. This instance is a replicated version of your production

Page 72 of 109 |

site and gives you the opportunity to try things out before deciding
if a feature should be rolled out to faculty and students once made
available in the production environment. It also gives you an
opportunity to provide feedback on your experience with a new
feature. (Go Back)

Training
Documentation

Complete and always up-to-date product documentation can be
found online at: http://guides.instructure.com/
(Go Back)
Tutorials

Video guides for nearly all aspects of Canvas functionality can be
found online at: http://guides.instructure.com/m/4210

Instructure provides plenty of complimentary training
recourses: http://guides.instructure.com/m/4151/l/57232-
what-training-resources-does-instructure-provide-clients

(Go Back)

Release notes are available online at:
https://help.instructure.com/forums/337224-product-release-
notes

All Canvas customers have a production site, a beta site to evaluate
new functionality, and a test site for risk-free experimentation.
(Go Back)
Face to Face Option

Instructure offers a variety of asynchronous, live online, and live in-
person training options:
types-of-live-training-does-instructure-offer-to-clients
(Go Back)
Product Improvement
Process
To view what features Instructure is working on, please visit:
http://product.instructure.com/
Note that this site has a direct connection to our product engineers
and includes an up-to-the-minute update status at the top center
of the page.
Instructure continually solicits product feedback from the Canvas
community. Any Canvas user can request a feature through the
Canvas help tool which will take them to this area of our
community site:
https://help.instructure.com/categories/20057816-feature-
request-categories
(Go Back)

Webinar Online

Canvas integrates with a variety of third-party web conferencing
tools like Adobe Connect, Blackboard Collaborate, WebEx, WizIQ,
Zoom, and Big Blue Button Premium. We also include as part of
our core offering an integration with Big Blue Button at no extra
charge.

Page 73 of 109 |

Canvas native integration with Big Blue Button for video
conferencing (http://bigbluebutton.org/) is offered as a value-add
for our customers and doesnt provide all of the features made
available in their premium offering but it is quite robust and
satisfies the needs of most institutions. Specifically, the included
BBB integration supports webinar sessions of up to 50 users per
session and works much like other conferencing tools that you are
familiar with (desktop, video, and audio synchronization/sharing).
It also supports archival of recordings for up to 14 days (Premium
includes more robust archival and recording management tools).
For en explanation of how BBB integrates with Canvas, refer to this
link:
are-conferences (Go Back)
File sharing

Within BBB, presentation materials can be uploaded by a
presenter and shared via the application but a student would
not be able to download the shared file in its native format for
offline review/collaboration. Fortunately, Canvas itself does
support file sharing and collaboration as described below. An
instructor can simply link to a file or collaboration within the
BBB chat tool so that all users can collaborate as needed. And,
with Desktop Sharing, review documents together.

The Canvas Files tool is made available both at the Course and
User level. Drag-n-drop can be used to easily upload batches of
files from a desktop and move files between folders and courses.
Then, files can be linked or locked depending on sharing needs.
More information on File management can be found here:
are-files
And here is a video on the Files functionality:
http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4210/l/130594

Additionally, Canvas includes a Collaborations tool that integrates
with EtherPad and GoogleDocs so that groups of students in a
Course or Group can collaborate in real-time on a document. Here
is some additional information:
are-collaborations

And heres a video for instructors to learn more about
Collaboration use within a course:
collaborations-overview-video (Go Back)
Video Uploading

Videos can be uploaded within the Files interface for linking within
Modules, Pages, forums, assessments, etc. (discussed in previous
response) and uploaded via the Canvas Multimedia tool
throughout Canvas:

Page 74 of 109 |

http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4152/l/48622-how-
do-i-upload-a-video-using-the-rich-content-editor

Supported multimedia file formats are shared here:
types-of-media-files-can-be-uploaded-into-canvas (Go Back)

In the context of web meetings/conferencing, Big Blue Button has
two roles: Moderator and Viewer. Canvas integration allows an
instructor to define what users and/or groups can participate in a
conference.

FERPA Safeguards

Canvas gives the institution the tools it needs to maintain FERPA
compliance. Specifically, Canvas allows access to student
information only to those that have been granted permission to
view it. By default, that is the administrator(s) for the Institution's
Canvas instance and faculty who are teaching courses in which the
student is enrolled. It is possible to grant permission to others
identified by the institution as "School Officials" (as described in
FERPA guidelines), or to remove permission from either
administrators or faculty. In short, the institution is in full control.
One related feature that might be of interest is the ability to enable
a notification option that will present a message to users when
adding an external service that supports notifications. It includes
the following text: Notice: Some notifications may contain
confidential information. Selecting to receive notifications at an
email other than your institution provided address may result in
sending sensitive Canvas course and group information outside of
the institutional system. (Go Back)
Internal

Canvas complies with the regulations of FERPA by safeguarding and
restricting unauthorized access to information maintained in
Canvas. All access to Canvas is encrypted. There are no
exceptions. When transmitting SIS data, the information is SSL
encrypted in transit and, when it arrives in the Canvas system, it is
protected by the same account and role-based permissions that
secure all other data. (Go Back)
External Building
Block
LTI tools (equivalent to Building Blocks) and Canvas Plugins all
utilize SSL encryption for data transfer (e.g. grade pass back data
from a third party assessment tool). An institution can enable or
disable access to any LTI tool or Plugin if a question about
compliance exists. While we can confidently state that Canvas and
the transmittal of data between Canvas and approved integrations
is secure, we encourage you to evaluate FERPA compliance of third
party integrated solutions and related services before enabling
such integrations. (Go Back)

Metrics & Data
Course reporting

Depending on the role and permissions, Canvas provides access to
data via reports on the following topics:

Page 75 of 109 |

Student progress through Modules
Student grades (individual), with assignment-by-
assignment comparisons to the class mean
User interaction report (individual)
Student-teacher interaction report (individual)
User access report (individual)
Student outcomes report (individual)
Last login report (with IP address)
Course outcomes report (all students)
Course statistics, including total number of discussions,
assignments, quiz questions, disk space usage, etc.
User page views with browser info (individual)
Course Analytics in Canvas provide the instructor and administrator
with a means to evaluate individual components of a course along
with student performance. An overview can be found within the
following link:

are-analytics-for-my-course

Reports can also be executed by an instructor to reveal Quiz
Statistics. Via this interface, instructors can even download
detailed item and student analysis reports for offline review. And
lastly, Course Statistics provide a general overview of course
related assignment, interaction, and storage related data. (Go
Back)
Student Activity
Reporting Options
Student Analytics in Canvas are closely tied to the Course Analytics
shared in the previous response. Summary page view,
participation, and grade information is presented that can then be
drilled down upon to reveal a more complete picture of student
performance. Here is a summary of individual analytics:
http://guides.instructure.com/s/2204/m/4152/l/66791-how-
do-i-view-analytics-for-a-student

Student Interaction and Student Access reports provide an
additional view into student activity.

Lastly, the administration and faculty can track students progress
as measured by Outcomes at the course level or in summary via
the Admin Reports interface. (Go Back)
System reporting
Options
At the account administration level, Analytics evaluate individual
components of all the courses in the institutions account and
provide an overview of the account's activity.
Analytics takes a three-pronged approach to generating
quantitative data: justification, intervention, and learning.
Justification focuses on system reports and how the system
is being used.
Intervention looks to predict which students will become
at-risk students and how to meet their needs.

Page 76 of 109 |

Learning focuses on learning outcomes, the effectiveness
of the teaching style, and the division of time between
students achieving competence and those falling behind.
Site Statistics are also presented within the administrative toolset.
This video provides a nice overview of the above features:
statistics-and-analytics-video

Admin Reports provides another convenient way at extracting
relevant data from Canvas. Below are examples of default reports
but additional/custom reports can be developed to mine data that
suits a unique need.

Grade Export shows the student final grade results for all
students in a given term.
Last User Access shows the last login for active users.
Outcome Results shows the learning outcome results for
all students. This report also includes question banks.
Provisioning will export all the needed information that
relates to provisioning Canvas.
Recently Deleted Courses shows all the courses for a given
term that have been deleted in the last 30 days.
SIS Export will export all the needed files for Users,
Accounts, Terms, Courses, Sections, Enrollments, Groups,
Group Memberships, and Cross Listings.
Student Competency shows the outcomes results for all
students. For detailed reports, create outcomes at the
account or sub-account level and add those outcomes to
course activities. Course level Outcomes are not included
in the report.
Students with no submissions shows all students enrolled
in a course in a given term that have not submitted an
assignment between the given date range in a course.
Unpublished Courses shows all the courses for a given
term that are not published.
Unused Courses shows all courses that have none of the
following items: assignments, announcements, discussions,
files, modules, pages, or quizzes.
Zero Activity shows all the students enrolled in any courses
in a given term.

This and more information is also available through the Canvas API,
allowing institutions to crunch the raw data however they want.
(Go Back)

See previous response. In addition to built-in outcomes, statistics,
and analytics tools that fulfill most intervention reporting needs,
we also integrate with 3
rd
party intervention-focused solutions like
AspirEdu, Copley Retention and Starfish Retention. (Go Back)


Page 77 of 109 |

Implementation
Implementation Plan
Document
A copy of our implementation plan is attached with this response.

Canvas is a modern LMS built from the ground up to embrace the
best of what the web has to offer. As a native cloud application, we
dont rely on disruptive version upgrades or service/maintenance
packs. We make minimal changes over time with little disruption
and give you control over when major functionality is released to
your users. Over 10 million Canvas users are on the same
application. We feel LMS admins should take Christmas off not
upgrade their LMS.

Schools that migrate to Canvas see a significant increase in user
adoption. We attribute this to the ease of use with Canvas. The
amount of time you spend training and supporting your LMS
(Canvas) will be reduced so you can spend more time advancing
online learning at Tri-C.
(Go Back)

Provide information
regarding those that
are native or work
within your
systemyour system

Canvas incorporates built-in (a.k.a. native) repository features and can
integrate with 3
rd
party content management solutions catering to very
specific needs. Additionally, we are in active development of a new,
enhanced Learning Object Repository that is scheduled for a fall 2014
release and will focus on the sharing, finding, and remixing of course
content by teachers and designers within an institution.
Each of these options are discussed below:
- Native content repository features that exist today:
Canvas natively supports sharing of content between users (core
function of content repositories) in the following way:
Files within a Course, shared amongst teachers and users
Files within a Group, shared amongst members
Files from a user's Profile via Files to any course or Group
Files between courses or Groups, by common users, via Files
All or part of a course (content, activity, etc) to another course for
any common teacher via Course Copy
Entire Question Banks between courses via Question Bank
Bookmarking
Entire Question Banks to all teachers and courses within a Sub-
Account
Outcomes to any Rubric or Question Bank within a course or Sub-
Account
Outcomes to all teachers and courses within a Sub-Account
Rubrics to any assignment within a course, or to all teachers and
courses within a Sub-Account
All or part of any course to the world via the Public course setting
(along with Creative Commons licensing)

Page 78 of 109 |

Instructors can easily migrate and share content among current and
past courses. From a logical architecture standpoint, each course is a
shared content repository that is available in its entirety or only
selected portionsto instructors who have been granted access to the
course. Content can even be shared across institutions.
- New content repository features in active development
(production release scheduled for Fall 2014):
In addition to Canvas's existing capabilities to support course
management, replication, and content sharing, Instructure is actively
developing new Learning Object Repository (LOR) features to enable
educators to dynamically share high-quality learning materials with
their peers worldwide. With the ability to discover content easily
both within a institution or with educators around the world
educators will easily be able to create engaging courses without
spending countless hours creating materials from scratch. The new
LOR will:
Help educators quickly import materials to create high-
quality, engaging courses
Enable educators to rate the available materials, allowing the
highest quality tools to rise to the top based on the ratings
from the community
Foster a community of instructional innovation and
collaboration by encouraging sharing and remixing of faculty-
authored materials
Support institutional management of curricula for maximum
efficiency and reusability
Integrate tightly with the Canvas LMS, enabling teachers to
seamlessly add courses, lesson plans and other materials
directly to the LOR as they create them, so sharing materials is
quick and easy
Wed be happy to schedule a WebEx meeting with our Products team so
that they can share examples of what is in active development along
with our strategic vision moving forward (NDA may be required).
- 3
rd
Party content management/repository solutions that
support Canvas integration:
Canvas integrates seamlessly with Pearsons Equella shared content
repository. Enabling integration with Equella makes all repository
content readily available for inclusion in all content areas of Canvas and
by using this approach, youd also be able to benefit from native Equella
content management features.
Additionally, a variety of content management tools have been
integrated with Canvas using LTI. If you navigate to
https://www.eduappcenter.com/ and filter by the Content category,
youll currently see 79 examples of content providers that use LTI. We
also support more direct, plug-in integrations with other providers so if
theres one of interest, let us know and we can confirm if either the
integration exists or is possible.

(Go Back)

Page 79 of 109 |

Systems to create
and track
competency based
learning including
any capabilities
relating to
customized creation
of learning tracks
from existing
modules or assets

With respect to tracking student progress for competency based
learning, the Canvas Learning Mastery view of the Gradebook gives
teachers immediate insight into student progress on competencies as
measured throughout the course. For most competency-based courses,
this alone is enough and theres no extra setup required. Its discussed
in greater detail here:
http://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/179359-how-do-i-use-the-
learning-mastery-gradebook. Note that the same data can be extracted
administratively for review/analysis.
If one wishes to accommodate a specific learning track from existing
modules or assets in an automated manner, he/she might want to set
requirements within a Canvas module and then establish prerequisites
for another module so that a) student progress can be tracked and b)
requirements must be met for a student to move on to another module.
This link discusses the configuration of module requirements in
Canvas: http://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/61967-how-do-i-
add-requirements-to-a-module
Modules can consist of single or multiple learning objects and progress
can be tracked directly within the UI as described here:
http://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/102031-how-do-i-view-the-
progress-of-my-students-in-modules
Another example of how one might accommodate a specific
competency-based learning need is to use an assignment group that has
been configured to drop the lowest x -3 assignment scores, where x is
the total number of Assignments in the course. In this scenario, each
assignment is configured to measure competencies (i.e. Outcomes, via
rubric or Question Bank).
In this example, Canvas bases the final score on performance on the top
3 Assignments in the Assignment Group.
If there is a specific workflow that you hope to achieve and it hasnt
been addressed above, wed be happy to discuss requirements and
available options with you further. Ultimately, there are many ways to
accommodate varying pedagogical needs in Canvas. (Go Back)

insight needed.
LMS: Desire2Learn Integrated Learning Platform
Instructions: URL: www.desire2learn.com
response in defining the
following capabilities of your
service.

Please check off if the feature is available and add a
description of the feature(if needed) in the spaces
below:
Customized Administrative
Role Capabilities

With over 500 distinct permissions, the number of unique roles that
can be created is endless. Unique to Desire2Learn Learning Suite is
the ability to set advanced access and security permissions for roles at

Page 80 of 109 |

any level of your organization, all the way down to an individual tool
or feature within a tool.
Throughout the organizational hierarchy you set up with D2L, users
can have different roles and responsibilities as they move through
different areas of the system. In addition, we provide bulk tools to
both create these org units as well as manage the enrollments
throughout them. (Go Back)
Banner Integration

Yes, Desire2Learn has multiple approaches to integrating with
Banner. The integration includes course creation, user creation,
and user enrollments, and can also include a grades send back to
Banner. These approaches include:
Approach 1 Banner Adapter (requires Luminis Message
Broker): Supports real-time course creation, user creation, and
user enrollment. Also provides a UI for Faculty to manage the
submission of Grades into Banner. The integration also includes a
cross-listing interface to manage mappings for both courses and
sections.
Approach 2 Holding Tank: Our SIS-agnostic middleware
approach supports real-time course creation, user creation, and
user enrollment. Grades can be submitted back to Banner through
a scripted bulk process. The integration also includes a cross-
listing interface to manage mappings for both courses and
sections.
Approach 3 Custom API Integration: Desire2Learns extensive
APIs can be used to build a more custom integration. Further
scoping would be required for this option.
(Go Back)
Publisher Content

Course Cartridges

Our solution supports the import of IMS or SCORM compliant ePacks
or course cartridges from most textbook publishers. Desire2Learn has
partner relationships with many major content publishers and is a
standards compliant platform, easily allowing ePacks to be imported
in most major formats. Content Development Partners create online
courses, unique multimedia materials and custom course materials,
and engage in the Desire2Learn Partner Network to ensure that their
content is compatible with Desire2Learn Learning Suite. (Go Back)
LTI Compatible
Learning Apps
D2L supports IMS LTI v1.1.1 and is heavily involved in the process of
developing specifications around core LTI v2 and associated,
individual services specifications. D2L is committed to the ongoing
support and implementation of this standard.
We have LTI-Based integrations with many of our publishers, and
often they will include deeper data exchange through our APIs. These
include:
Cengage

Page 81 of 109 |

CourseSmart
MacMillan
McGraw Hill
Pearson
Wiley
Vital Source
And more
Desire2Learn also supports alternative authentication
methods, including:
The Desire2Learn API uses variable management within
the product to accommodate external authentication
directories such as LDAP, Kerberos, Active Directory, and
custom systems.
Desire2Learn can also implement Single Sign-On from
diverse systems like portals, libraries, and other content
systems. Administrators can set up fail-through
authentication against a secondary source like the system's
own database in the event that the primary source (for
example, the LDAP server) fails.
Shibboleth authentication is supported by Desire2Learn
Learning Environment. It is deployed and configured as a
custom project through Desire2Learn Professional Services
Organization.
We integrate with Central Authentication Service (CAS) as a
single-sign-on protocol for the web so that learners can
access multiple applications by providing their credentials
(such as user ID and password) only once.
(Go Back)

Social Learning
Groups

D2L has different tools to handle social groups depending on the
use case of Cuyahoga Community College. These include:
Course-Level Groups used for creating private
discussion areas, shared file folders, and group
submission dropboxes. Content and resources can also be
conditionally released to groups within a class.
Wiggio Groups D2L offers a feature set known as Wiggio,
which allows for student-let ad-hoc group creation for
hosting virtual meetings, conference calls, chats, and
collaborative document sharing.
Community Groups Course shells can be converted to be
used as a community group or club. Students can be given
a greater amount of permissions to manage these groups,
and the language, branding, and toolsets can be modified
to be more appropriate for the group. (Go Back)
Opt In

Referring to the answer above, both the Course-level groups and
Course shell-based groups have an opt-in function. In a course,
groups can be configured to be a self-sign-up. In the organization,

Page 82 of 109 |

Community Groups use our Self Registration tool to enable opt-in.
The Self Registration tool can also require the user to complete a
form, and for the group leader to approve registration. (Go Back)
Link to Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn,
etc.

Desire2Learn also enables Cuyahogas users to add links to
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
and Google+ in their user profiles.

(Go Back)
Discussion Feed

Users can subscribe to entire categories of forums, individual
forums, and individual threads as an email notification. These
notifications can be sent out immediately, or just sent as daily
digests. (Go Back)
Avatars, Bio, or
Yes, Desire2Learn Learning Environment provides users with the
ability to create an individual user profile allowing for a personalized
space. Users have the ability to add information to their user profile,
which can be seen by other users with the appropriate permissions
set. This information can include everything from a picture and
nickname to addresses, likes/dislikes, and other user-configurable
information. (Go Back)
Internal/External
Access or Sharing
Inside of Desire2Learn Learning Environment, files can be shared
through a variety of different tools for file sharing. These include:
Group Lockers shared file folders that allow users to
submit files to a group.
Wiggio our ad-hoc group tool also supports a shared
files area.
Blog the blog tool allows for sharing externally outside
the system.
Desire2Learn ePortfolio (separate product offering) is a
robust social platform for sharing files to peers and
groups. It also supports a presentation module which
allows for external sharing. (Go Back)
Video & Audio
Messaging
Desire2Learn Learning Environment includes both a Record
Audio and Record Video tool. These tools can be used in many
areas for the students to record and embed multimedia directly
into content areas. (Go Back)

Retention

Mozilla Open Badges

Desire2Learn can integrate with badging platforms that support
the Open Badges standard through an LTI integration. (Go Back)
Credly

Credly supports integration with Wordpress, and D2L can
integrate with Wordpress via LTI. (Go Back)
Other

Desire2Learn can also integrate with other Badges, Incentives,
and Retention offerings through LTI initiatives. D2L is also
working on a badging solution for future release. (Go Back)

Mobile Abilities
LMS App

Desire2Learn Learning Environment includes a web-based mobile
interface built specifically for mobile access. Included with
Desire2Learn Learning Environment at no additional cost, mobile
users can read content, view their grades, see the latest news, view a
courses calendar, and read and reply to discussion boards. All of these

Page 83 of 109 |

tools are available in a format designed and optimized for mobile web
browsing. (Go Back)
Faculty Grading App

Desire2Learn provides the Desire2Learn Grader app which
supports both online and offline grading for content submitted to
our dropbox tool. This app supports MS Office Types (Word,
Excel, PPT), .PDF, Apple Iwork, TXT, RTF, HTM and HTML, PNG,
GIF, JPG, TIFF, and iPad-supported audio/video (mp3, mp4, etc.)
(Go Back)
Student App

Desire2Learn offers students the Desire2Learn Binder app for
both online and offline viewing of content. (Go Back)

Video Captioning

Desire2Learn supports Video Captioning with multiple tools:
1. Videos uploaded into Desire2Learns content tool are
rendered in a D2L player which supports the addition of
captions.
2. Desire2Learn Capture (additional product) is a Lecture
Capture solution, and this solution supports the addition
of captions.
3. Desire2Learn Learning Environment also integrates with
Kaltura, which supports the addition of video captions.
(Go Back)
Audio Transcription 3rd party
integration
There is no native feature for audio transcription in Desire2Learn,
however standard audio transcription tools that support web-
browsers. D2L does internal quality assurance testing with
assistive technologies like JAWS
, NVDA, VoiceOver, and Dragon

NaturallySpeaking to proactively identify and address issues.
In addition, Desire2Learn has other Accessibility integrations
such as ReadSpeaker for reading content pages out to users with
learning disabilities. (Go Back)
Compatibility

The Desire2Learn Learning Environment, Desire2Learn Learning
Repository, and Desire2Learn ePortfolio all comply with the
applicable industry standards of Section 508 of the United States
Rehabilitation Act of 1973. D2L designs and tests web applications
against the World Wide Web Consortiums (W3C
) Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2 level AA and Section 508.
In addition, Desire2Learn is Gold Level certified with the National
Federation of the Blind. (Go Back)
Innovations, Ratings
& Awards
Awards
D2L is also the only LMS vendor that has pledged to
review their accessibility program with the National
Federation of the Blind yearly as part of their Nonvisual
Access Certification and is the only LMS vendor to achieve
Gold level certification on multiple occasions (2010, 2011,
2013).
On July 8, 2013, as a demonstration of our commitment to
accessibility, D2L was awarded the Dr. Jacob Bolotin
Award for groundbreaking work in accessibility by the
National Federation of the Blind (NFB).

Page 84 of 109 |

Innovations
Uploaded videos convert to HTML 5 player and support
closed captioning
HTML editor creates semantic markup by default
Special Access - Prompts authors for alt text on adding images
Allows for individual time limits for assessments
WCAG AA checks for color contrast during content
creation and warns the user
Allows authors to add ACCMD to content
Equation editor produces accessible output by default
All authoring practices demonstrated in documentation are
accessible
Founders of Desire2Learn Accessibility Interest Group
http://collaborate.athenpro.org/group/d2l/
Additional information on Desire2Learn Accessibility Standards
Compliance can be found at:
http://www.desire2learn.com/products/accessibility/standards/
(Go Back)

New Features

Process

Desire2Learn is implementing Continuous Delivery which is a method
of delivering updated technology to our clients that enables rapid,
incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to
users. This frictionless model makes it possible to increase
collaboration with our clients and adapt software in line with user
feedback and needs for incremental and easily integrated changes.
With continuous Delivery, smaller updates of new features that do not
impact a key workflow or require retraining will be released as part of
the regular monthly update.
These features are loaded into the system automatically, however it is
at Cuyahogas discretion as to when these features are turned on.
When released, the features will be turned off by default in the update
allowing Cuyahoga to have the control to toggle on these features
within a 12 month period from release before they are turned on by
default. (Go Back)
Timeline

With continuous Delivery, smaller updates of new features that do not
impact a key workflow or require retraining will be released as part of
the regular monthly update. When released, the features will be
turned off by default in the update allowing Cuyahoga to have the
control to toggle on these features within a 12 month period from
release before they are turned on by default. (Go Back)
Testing Before
Release Procedure
Cuyahoga will have access to a test environment that will allow
them to test new features before rolling them out to their
production environment. (Go Back)

Training
Documentation

D2L documentation is provided online through the Desire2Learn
Resource Center website via the Community. Desire2Learn Resource
Center is the source for the most recent user documentation. Users

Page 85 of 109 |

can leverage the integrated search engine located in the main
navigation bar to immediately find relevant topics and resources.
Documentation is also offered in downloadable packages that are
targeted to three audiences: one for system administrators, one for
instructors and course designers, and one for learners. These packages
are downloaded from the Community. (Go Back)
Tutorials

Implementations of Desire2Learn include access to our self-
directed training videos, which is a library of student and
instructor-oriented videos detailing the use of each tool. In
addition, our Desire2Learn Community site includes help guides
and recipes for using the tools more effectively. (Go Back)

Yes, feature releases include training resources to help your team
understand what is new in the system. In addition, your dedicated
account manager can help facilitate demonstrations and Q&A
sessions with your team to further understand the effects of the
release. (Go Back)
Face to Face Option

Our trainers can deliver hands-on workshops onsite at our clients'
locations and share best practices on teaching and learning.
Training typically takes place in a lab setting with each participant
working from their own training course. (Go Back)


Page 86 of 109 |


Page 87 of 109 |

Product Improvement
Process
Desire2Learn is a client-centric company focused on
meeting client needs. Client input drives our development
roadmap. Clients can contribute ideas and input a variety of
ways:
Community Website | This open discussion forums is visited
daily by Desire2Learn employees and used to interact in real
time with clients and respond to their suggestions.
Product Idea Exchange | Within the Community, clients can
post a unique idea, vote on posted ideas, add their
comments, search ideas, view recent and popular
ideas/feature request, and subscribe to ideas to be altered to
any updates.
Focus Groups | Clients can join focus groups on specific topics
of interest to contribute ideas and innovate collaboratively.
User Conference | Desire2Learn hosts an annual user
conference where clients and Desire2Learn employees can
work collaboratively face-to-face.
Client Site Visits | Product Managers, Trainers, and anyone
who visit clients often get an opportunity to speak to
administrators, instructors and even students about how
they use the system and what they would like to see from it.
(Go Back)

Webinar Online 3
rd
Party
Integration
Desire2Learn has deep integrations with Adobe Connect,
Blackboard Collaborate, Webex, and Microsoft Lync, and we can
also integrate with other LTI-based tools like Big Blue Button. In
addition, our Desire2Learn Capture (optional)offering supports
live and archived webcasts that integrated directly into the
environment as its native to our solution. (Go Back)
File sharing

Files can be shared using multiple different tools:
Group Locker shared storage areas for files
Wiggio our ad-hoc groups tool supports shared folders
and document creation/sharing
Desire2Learn ePortfolio our robust sharing platform
allows users to share files from both the web and mobile
devices. (Go Back)
Video Uploading

Video can be uploaded using the following tools:
Video Note this tool exists in almost all content entry
areas and supports the recording of video directly into the
content
Drag and Drop Video in Content our content building
tool allows for the drag-and-drop of video directly into a
lesson, and our system will provide an HTML-5 based
player to make it suitable for all devices. In addition, the
video player includes options for adding closed captions.
Desire2Learn Capture our lecture capture solution for
displaying live and archived video in courses. This

Page 88 of 109 |

solution also supports the uploading of pre-existing video
content. (Go Back)
Diverse Meeting
Roles
Yes, through our integration with third party tools like
Blackboard Collaborate, Webex, Adobe Connect, and Microsoft
Lync, different and hierarchical meeting roles can be controlled
within a web conference. (Go Back)

FERPA Safeguards

Desire2Learn understands the importance of regulatory compliance
with respect to the security and privacy of information. Our solutions
have been engineered to address privacy-based regulatory
requirements. Confidentiality elements are controlled by a Cuyahogas
system administrator. The system allows administrators to flexibly
define what information is public (e.g. directory information), what is
private (e.g. non-directory information) and to indicate whether a
specific role has the ability to see non-directory information.
(Go Back)
Internal

Desire2Learn complies with the prohibitions under FERPA: we do not
disclose any information to anyone except to those that our client-
schools authorize, and those people are internal only. We provide a
framework for our clients to determine what user information fields
may be considered appropriate for a directory, which is accomplished
through a User Information Privacy setting. In addition, there are
additional security permissions to control access to fields such as
email addresses and student IDs. Since our clients have taken
different approaches to FERPA, we attempt to make the system as
flexible as possible. It is ultimately up to the system administrator and
instructors to configure the system to best reflect their privacy (and
regulatory) requirements.
(Go Back)
External Building
Block
Our policy is that we do not give access to the data we handle by our
Desire2Learn Cloud offering other than to authorized personnel; we
do not give direct access, but instead our clients ask us to provide
them with specified information. (Go Back)

Metrics & Data
Course reporting

The User Progress tool provides progress reports to learners,
instructor, and auditors. The User Progress tool acts as an all-in-one
view of interactions users have with various tools and features within
an organizational unit (e.g. a course). Instructors can use the User
Progress tool to gain quick insight of usage patterns of one individual
learner and compare them to that of their peers. The User Progress
tool provides a snapshot view of all activity within Desire2Learn
Learning Environment such as:
Grades
Learning Objectives
Content
Discussions
Assignments
Quizzes

Page 89 of 109 |

Checklists
Surveys
Login History
In addition, our Intelligent Agents tool can be used to create
automatic emails that send out to teachers, counsellors, coaches, or
other interested individuals when certain criteria are/are not
achieved.
(Go Back)
Student Activity
Reporting Options
Using the User Progress tool described above, the faculty member can
also see detailed information at the individual student level. At the
student level, the reports show more specific information such as time
spent on activities, submission dates, and comparisons against the
group.
Also, as mentioned above, Intelligent Agents can be set to check for
incomplete/complete activities or for certain grade thresholds and
automatically email invested stakeholders. Furthermore, using
organizational rubrics, this could even be used to track activities that
are happening across the system as an early alert system. (Go Back)
System reporting
Options
Desire2Learn Analytics Essentials provides a useful interface through
which Cuyahoga can create reports detailing system activity.
Desire2Learn Analytics Essentials enables users to select a wide
variety of data to report on and to shape reports through the use of
filters and other parameters. Desire2Learn Analytics Essentials
provides three different categories of reports:
Class and User Progress Dashboard
Inline Tool Dashboards
Administrative Dashboards
The data available for Desire2Learn Learning Environment to report
on is contained in datasets. Once a dataset is chosen to report on, a
render type can be selected (render types define the format of a
report). Custom filters can also be added to reports to constrain the
information to only show specified and relevant results. The available
render types are as follows:

Area Graph Pie Graph
Bar Graph Table
Line Graph

In addition, our additional offering Desire2Learn Insights is essential
for administrators, steering committees, information technology
personnel, system auditors, financial analysts, and many other
stakeholders who want to make informed, organizational, and cross-
organizational decisions without purchasing expensive business
intelligence software or hiring a large team of business intelligence
and database analysts.
Desire2Learn Insights provides on-demand access to data related to
your Desire2Learn instance to help improve your organizations
understanding of how your eLearning solution is used. Desire2Learn
Insights is a flexible solution to create your own reports or create
export files without having to extract raw data or understand

Page 90 of 109 |

Structured Query Language (SQL). In some cases you may have some
additional user-based information that you want to incorporate into
the academic solution.
(Go Back)

Intervention
Reporting
Inside of Desire2Learn Learning Environment, our Intelligent
Agents tool can be used to trigger emails and flags based on
learning objective performance happening across the system.
Using this tool, Cuyahoga can build a framework to evaluate key
metrics and indicators and flag students for intervention as they
progress through multiple courses.
In addition, Desire2Learns Insights (optional) Student Success
System module provides a more in-depth platform for identifying
at-risk users. Desire2Learn Insights empowers institutions with
predictive analytic tools to improve student success, retention,
completion, and graduation rates. Student Success System uses
statistical analysis to generate predictive models that enable Cuyahoga
to identify at-risk students and intervene appropriately to improve
their rate of success and increase institutional effectiveness.
The predictive analysis is used by the Student Success System is
adaptable to the instructional approach of each course enabling the
monitoring of student engagement and achievement expectations per
course. Weekly predictions are based on five possible domains:
Course Access | The course access domain compiles Desire2Learn
Learning Environment logins as well as accesses of course-specific
homepages as a demonstration of a students engagement in a course.
Content Access | The content access domain describes engagement
by tracking access of content material for the course.
Social Learning | The social learning domain uses data captured
within Desire2Learn Learning Environment discussions to show the
level of student engagement. The sociogram visualization is critical in
identifying students that may be performing well in terms of their
grades, but may be disconnected from the class socially which could
present a risk for dropping out or transferring.
Grades | The grades domain describes student performance on
assessments. The grades predictive chart provides a compact
visualization of student performance across all course assessments
while also comparing student performance relative to classmates.
Preparedness (optional component) | This domain consists of a set
of data elements from a Student Information System (SIS), including
admission scores, overall institution performance and demographics
to provide a view on a students level of preparedness for the course.
(Go Back)
Implementation
Implementation Plan
Document
Please see the attached sample implementation plan included
with this document.

Predictive Analytics

One of Desire2Learns biggest differentiators is our focus on deep
analytics, learning outcome assessment, as well as predictive

Page 91 of 109 |

modeling to provide valuable insights that will improve learner
success. These offerings include:

Insights and Learning Objective Reporting
Desire2Learn Insights allows you to see the results of learning by
reporting on the assessments and mastery of skills. Desire2Learn
Insights fills in the gaps as it measures how the student and instructor
used the learning suite to transform the educational components into
knowledge and the mastery of skills. The reports of Insights allow for
filtering at program, department, course, and student levels to help
Cuyahoga access to the effectiveness of your programs. In addition,
other reports help identify at-risk students, grade trends, quiz item
analysis, and much more.

Student Success System
The Student Success System the early intervention system in
Desire2Learn Insights that empowers institutions with predictive
analytic tools to improve student success, retention, completion, and
graduation rates. Student Success System uses statistical analysis to
generate predictive models that enable Cuyahoga to identify at-risk
students and intervene appropriately to improve their rate of success
and increase institutional effectiveness.

Degree Compass

Degree Compass is a personalized, web-based course
recommendation tool that uses predictive analytics to guide
learners course selection in a way that not only enhances the rate
of academic success but also drives on-time completion of their
degree or training.

Personalization and Adaptive Learning Paths

Also unique to Desire2Learn is our focus on creating a truly
personal experience for both students and faculty members.
Without courses, faculty members are able to create courses that
selectively release content based on the users past performances.
In addition, the courses themselves can be restructured to suit
each delivery model, including blended, purely online, or even a
gamified course.

Release Conditions

Instructors can create custom learning paths and provide a personal
learning experience by attaching release conditions to items within a
course. For example, learners can be prevented from accessing
specific items until they meet the associated condition such as a
required score on a quiz or viewing a certain amount of course
content. In this case, access to aspects of a course is fuelled by
successfully meeting an objective. Another example of customizing
learning paths with the Release Conditions tool is that a release
condition can be set up to trigger additional resources for learners

Page 92 of 109 |

who receive a low score on a quiz (i.e. under 50 per cent) and would
benefit from additional help.

Desire2Learn LEAP
In our commitment to provide instructors and learners with the tools
and technology that personalize the learning experience, D2L
acquired Knowillage Systems, Inc. in September 2013. Knowillage
Systems is the creator of the dynamic adaptive learning and semantic
engine technology called LeaP derived from the phrase Learning
Path.
LeaP strives to improve learner engagement and achievement by
using a language processing engine and an adaptive analytics
algorithm to systematically determine gaps in a learners skill set and
then provides the right tools, content, and techniques to address those
weaknesses right at the moment of learning. By combining a
learners scholastic profile with learning objectives, activities,
assessments, and information regarding their content mastery, LeaP
guides the learners on a personally, optimized learning path, in real-
time, according to their individual learning pace and style.
At the heart of LeaP is an adaptive engine that is designed to increase
efficiency in the content-mapping process. In the past, creating
personal learning pathways for each learner required a significant
amount of labor to create the personalized map, search for the right
content, and input learning activities and assessments to address each
individual learners areas for improvement.

Flexible Branding
Many aspects of our solution can be tailored by your administrators
and course designers to align with your organizations vision and
brand:
system variables
organizational units and
structures
roles and permissions
languages
colors
navigation bar layout
homepage layout
presentation and
navigation settings
interface development
(widgets)
features to
accommodate
accessibility

In addition, the Homepage tool enables complete customization for
home pages at the organization, course, and any level in between. For
instance, a department can have its own unique color and scheme,
look and feel, department news, and department events. Widgets can
be positioned and sized to fit individual homepages. Some of the
widgets available include: bookmarks, calendar/events, content
browser, Google search, my courses, my settings, news, picture
library, role switch, and updates.

The flexibility of these course pages allows Cuyahoga to be
creative with your course delivery. For example, a course shell
could simply start in the content tool to encourage user adoption,
course shells could have a dynamic landing page made from other

Page 93 of 109 |

web-based languages, or you could have a course land on a
virtually captured lecture accompanied by a twitter feed.

Pervasive Offline Capabilities

Lastly, Desire2Learns mobile apps have the advantage of being
offline enabled. Our apps are free to use and integrate directly
back into Desire2Learn Learning Environment, and all support
offline features.

Desire2Learn Binder (offline supported)
The Desire2Learn Binder platform has been designed to help
educators world-wide make the transition from print to digital by
simplifying the discovery and acquisition of publisher content through
eTextbook integration into the online learning experience.
Furthermore, the Desire2Learn Binder platform includes engaging,
intuitive cross-platform mobile, and desktop applications that allow
learners to consume purchased eTextbooks, course content
originating from Desire2Learn Learning Environment as well as other
personal learning objects all in a single location with the tools they
need to stay productive and organized.

Desire2Learn Assignment Grader (offline supported)
Desire2Learn Assignment Grader for iPad

is available from the
Apple
App Store for free. With it instructors can grade and leave
feedback wherever they go even offline. Desire2Learn Assignment
Grader enables offline, mobile access to assignments in the Dropbox
tool in Desire2Learn Learning Environment and the ability to grade
those assignments from a tablet device.

Desire2Learn ePortfolio App

Our immersive social sharing app also supports the offline
creation of learning artifacts, and once reconnected to wifi this
app will synchronize with the web-based server. With
Desire2Learn ePortfolio users can:

Take photos, record video, record audio and add them to your
portfolio. Add content (image, audio recording, reflection, or
link) to Desire2Learn ePortfolio directly from your device.
Create items and share, tag, or add them to collections in one
location
Share items with peers, mentors, and instructors.

In addition, Desire2Learn also supports a lifelong ePortfolio called
MyDesire2Learn for when the user leaves Cuyahoga Community
College. (Go Back)
Content Repositories:
Provide information regarding
those that are native or work
within your system

Desire2Learn Learning Repository is an integrated, powerful content
management tool. By incorporating industry standards and
specifications such as IEEE LOM, Dublin Core, GEM, and CanCore,
Desire2Learn Learning Repository enables the creation, importing,
storing, tagging, searching, reviewing and reusing of learning objects,
and the creation of Open Educational Resources. It also supports the

Page 94 of 109 |

creation, upload/download, and use of SCORM compliant IMS-
Content Packages making it easier for Cuyahoga to use and reuse
content.
Desire2Learn Learning Repository is directly integrated in both the
content and WYSIWYG get tools and allows for multiple repositories
of content to be aligned to departments, schools, courses, and subject
matter, and additionally provides robust publishing workflows and
metadata management.
Desire2Learn Learning Repository also supports the dynamic linking
of content, allowing for the centralization of learning objects that
update automatically throughout courses when changed once
centrally.
Learning Objects in Desire2Learn Learning Repository are all tracked
and versioned, so that the history and changes to learning objects can
be reviewed throughout their use.
Desire2Learn can also integrate third party repositories through
the LTI standard. (Go Back)
Competency Based
Education:
System to create and track
competency based
existing modules or
assetsa
Yes Desire2Learn has a robust competency tracking and reporting
system. These competencies can be tied into Release Conditions,
which can be used to trigger content release or notifications
based on the achievement/lack of achieve of competencies.
Competencies can be assigned in almost all activities within the
system, including quizzes, individual quiz questions, sections of
questions, assignments, grades, rubrics, individual rubric criteria
and more.
The Competencies tool tracks information about the knowledge,
skills, and abilities that the learners at Cuyahoga acquire as they
participate in courses or other learning experiences.
D2L enables support for creating multi-tiered competency structures;
the management of these structures can be distributed across
organizational units (e.g., a course, department, or entire institution)
and integrated to form one organizational competency structure. (Go
Back)

LMS Review:
Additional insight
needed.
LMS:
Moodlerooms
Instructions: URL:
response in defining the following
capabilities of your hosted LMS
product and service.

Please check off if the feature is available and add a description of
the feature(if needed) in the spaces below:
Capabilities

Through Joules multi-level Roles feature, administrators and
instructors have the flexibility to easily manage user access,
permission, and security of content. With numerous roles and

Page 95 of 109 |

levels of permissions, administrators and instructors can fully
customize each users capabilities and interactions within the
course.

These standard roles can be customized and new roles can be
created by changing the more than 500 capabilities and
permissions that are available in Joule. Capabilities and
permissions each determine a users ability to view, access, use
and even edit specific activities and data. There are no limits on
the number of configurable roles that can be created.
Administrators can add, modify and delete users or their roles
using the administration block. When each user account is created,
a default role can be assigned. Administrators can also manually
assign appropriate roles and permissions to each user. Guest roles
can be used to provide a temporary workspace. A Capability report
can be run (located within Site Administration), which shows, for a
particular capability, what permission that capability has in the
definition of every role (or a selection of roles), and everywhere in
the site where that capability is overridden. (Go Back)
Banner Integration

Publisher Content

For single sign-on in a federated enterprise environment, Joule
supports CAS and Shibboleth. (Go Back)
Course Cartridges

LTI Compatible
Learning Apps

Social Learning
Groups

Joule supports groups within courses an extremely valuable
capability for collaboration between students. The Groups feature
allows an instructor to assign instructors and students to one or
more groups within a course. Instructors can then create separate
workspaces for groups of students in the course or in one or more
specific activities. Groups can be created at the course level and
activity level, as well as made invisible (so users can only see their
own groups) or visible (so users can work within their own groups
and, with read only access, view other groups as well). (Go Back)
Opt In

If CCC enables e-mail-based self-registration authentication, users
will see "Is this your first time here?" instructions and a "Create
new account" button on the front page. Users then simply fill out a
registration form that mirrors a user profile to create an account.
Upon completion, students then receive an e-mail at the address
they specified in their account profile to confirm their account.
(Go Back)
Link to Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Links to major social networking sites can be placed within the
course. (Go Back)
Discussion Feed

Forums:

Page 96 of 109 |

Joules Forum module provides collaborative discussion board
capabilities. Instructors can use these to engage students in
relevant discussions in order to share and apply what theyve
learned or ask questions about things they are unsure of.

Forums can be created at the site level, course level, and group
level. This means a forum can be assigned to a specific course or
group within the course. Forums exist in a hierarchy that makes it
easy to categorize and organize discussions. Forums are made up
of topics, which serve as separate sections for communication and
collaboration about particular topics of conversation. Within a
topic area, users can create discussions to which others can then
post replies. Forums also include predefined modes that allow
students to read the replies of other students only after they have
posted their own original thoughts.

Chat:
Chat sessions can be enabled to allow specific groups to easily
discuss a collaborative project, or they can be used as a virtual
office for communication between learners and instructors.

In addition to the Chat module, users can send instant messages
using the messaging feature. If the recipient is online at the time
the message is sent, they will receive the message instantly in a
pop up and be able to respond immediately for an instant
messaging-like environment. (Go Back)
Avatars, Bio, or

All Joule users have an associated user profile (account). The user
profile page gathers together all the known information about a
particular user including detailed reports and logs regarding the
activity of that user. The user profile is also used to personalize the
user's view of the system, in terms of preferred language, theme,
timezone, email visibility and more.
Standard fields in a users profile include (among others) the
following:
Basic fields such as user name, password, last name, first
name, city/town, country, email address
Email display: This controls the visibility of the address to
others, allowing the user to show or hide his/her email in the
class.
Email activated: One can either enable or disable emails being
sent to the email address in their profile.
Timezone: This field is used to convert time-related messages
on the system (such as assignment deadlines) from the default
Joule timezone to the time in whichever zone the user has
selected.
Preferred language: A Joule site might have multiple
languages installed from language packs. This sets the user's
preferred language.
Preferred theme: If site configurations allows, users can set
their own preferred theme. User themes override site themes
unless the course theme setting is force"

Page 97 of 109 |

Description: In this field the user can enter some text about
him/herself, be it information about his/her studies, hobbies,
qualifications, etc. This text is visible to anyone that views the
users profile.
Picture (or Avatar)
Interests: Users can list interests, allowing them to connect
with others who list similar interests.
And more (e.g. Web page, ICQ number, Skype ID, AIM ID,
Yahoo ID, MSN ID, ID number, Institution, Department, Phone,
Mobile Phone

Additionally, Joule allows clients to create custom profile fields in
custom profile categories. (Go Back)
Internal/External Access
or Sharing

Joule is very efficient with uploaded files. Each one is stored in a
central space or within a users private files area, which can be
accessed in all courses across the site for easy reuse of content. If
a second user uploads the same file, Joule stores it once, but
references it twice. It is also smart enough to avoid conflicts
between users and versions. Through Joules Repository API,
instructors can also share and reuse content from various external
media repositories.
Furthermore, Moodle 2.0 brings with it the Community Hub, a
directory of courses for public use or for private communities. This
hub will allow instructors to publish, find and share content and
courses between other CCC instructors, Moodlerooms clients and
Moodle sites across the world. By expanding its reach and
possibilities in regards to gathering content, CCC will be better
equipped to ensure the highest quality of content is used within its
programs. (Go Back)
Video & Audio
Messaging

Moodlerooms offers a variety of options for video and audio
messaging including:
Kaltura
Within the Moodlerooms platform, Joule, users have the ability to
create video via webcam through a third-party integration with an
open- source company called 'Kaltura.' Joule supports this
webcam integration via the Kaltura Moodle plug-in. With the
Kaltura webcam feature in Joule, clients can easily, quickly, and
cost effectively enhance their courses with video and interactive
rich-media functionality that includes creating and managing audio
and video within the LMS in addition to searching, uploading,
importing, editing, annotating, remixing, sharing, and advertising
content. Additionally, with Joules flexible HTML editor, course
designers may upload audio or video files directly into their course
files area and embed them within content pages. Students and
teachers also have the ability to create a visual conversation within
grading tools and forums. Designers may also embed content from
social media sites like YouTube.com, Vimeo.com or
SlideShare.com to name a few. Please note that Joule does not
support the ability to edit video.

Blackboard Collaborate

Page 98 of 109 |

Blackboard Collaborate provides a synchronous online learning
and web collaboration tool that will support your entire instructional
cycle and support staff to interact and collaborate in real time at the
greatest savings and the greatest benefit to your organization.

Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing enables instructors and
students to interact and collaborate in real time by adding
synchronous content to asynchronous distance learning or
combining blended online/onsite learning activities.

Blackboard Collaborate enterprise instant messaging (Blackboard
IM for short) offers an academic-centric instant collaboration
solution designed to promote learning through group work and
academic and administrative help.(Go Back)

Retention

Mozilla Open Badges

Another way to handle rewards and recognition is to award
badges to the user as they complete tasks in their courses.
Badges are managed through an integration with the Open
Badges project and allow the learner to accumulate badges in
their profile as they work in the site.

Badges are a good way of celebrating achievement and showing
progress. Badges may be awarded based on a variety of chosen
criteria and are fully compatible with Mozilla Open Badges.
Badges created in Moodle may be displayed on a user's profile or
pushed to their Open Badges backpack and public badge
collections in their backpack will display in their Moodle profile.
(Go Back)
Credly

Badges awarded through Credly and added to a user's Open
Badges Backpack will be visible, as will Badges awarded in Joule
through Open Badges. (Go Back)
Other

The Certificate module creates PDF certificates/diplomas for
students of the course and is completely customizable.
Administrators and instructors can add borders, watermarks, seals
and even show grade information. The Certificate module enables
instructors to set conditions for issuing a certificate to a student.
For example, the instructor can determine whether to enable all
course participants to receive a certificate or achieved a score
above a specified grade threshold for a single activity,
combination of activities grades or the whole course. The format
of the certificate issued can be customized with custom images,
borders, watermarks, logos and signatures. The layout can
support grades, date of issue, code number for tracking, and other
details. (Go Back)

Mobile Abilities

Joule is a lightweight, Web-based application that can be accessed
on any mobile device with an Internet connection and cookie-
enabled Web browser. Moodlerooms has released a theme that

Page 99 of 109 |

optimizes sites and courses for mobile use. Virtually all actions can
be performed through a mobile device. (Go Back)
LMS App N/A
Faculty Grading App N/A
Student App N/A

Video Captioning Joule cannot add or auto-caption. However, if you caption a video
in a way that works, it will work. (Go Back)
Audio Transcription Please refer to the response above.
Compatibility

Joule supports the use of assistive technologies such as screen
readers, text magnifiers and speech-to-text solutions. (Go Back)
Awards

As an internationally developed tool, Joule's Moodle core is
designed to meet a variety of world accessibility requirements,
including Section 508, Section 504 and W3C.

Moodlerooms is dedicated to providing standards-based solutions
to ensure accessibility and interoperability. Based on the open-
source LMS Moodle, Joule is content agnostic and allows
instructors to easily import content to their courses from external
sources, including standard test item formats and test generation
applications. Joule also supports the following standards:
SCORM 1.2/AICC
ADA/Section 508
W3C
WCAG 2 Level A
IMS Enterprise enrolment data plug-in 1.1
Also IMS Enterprise Web services, developed as an
application of Moodle's Web services API
IMS Content Packaging 1.1.4
IMS Common Cartridge
IMS QTI 2.0 - for exchanging questions and tests between
systems
IMS Learning Information Services (LIS) version 2.0
(Go Back)

New Features

Process

Joule version releases typically contain updates such as:
Bug fixes
Security patches
New feature enhancements
New reviewed third-party and community-contributed plug-
ins

Core Moodle updates generally contain:
New features

Page 100 of 109 |

Security fixes
Bug fixes

Patches are released on an as-needed basis and are applied to all
client sites as soon as possible (following testing by Moodlerooms).
(Go Back)
Timeline

Moodlerooms typically releases new versions of Joule twice a year
(Summer and Winter) and maintenance releases as needed.

Additionally, open-source Moodle, the core of Joule, releases new
point release versions of Moodle approximately every 2 months,
which are rolled into either new versions of Joule or maintenance
releases, depending on what is included in the Moodle release.
(Go Back)
Procedure

Moodlerooms Quality Assurance process involves the entire
software development process - monitoring and improving the
process, making sure that any agreed-upon standards and
procedures are followed, and ensuring that problems are found
and dealt with. It is oriented to 'prevention.'

Moodlerooms Quality Assurance team also performs testing,
which involves operation of a system or application under
controlled conditions and evaluating the results (e.g., 'if the user is
in interface A of the application while using hardware B, and
performs C, then D should happen'). The controlled conditions
should include both normal and abnormal conditions. Testing
should intentionally attempt to make things go wrong to determine
if things happen when they shouldn't or things don't happen when
they should. It is oriented to 'detection'.

The Quality Assurance process encompasses all of the SDLC.
From requirement gathering to implementation, there is always a
task to be performed throughout the SDLC.
Stage 1: Requirements Gathering - During requirements
gathering, our QA team brings all questions/scenarios/ possible
limitations/gaps to the attention of our development team, as it is
always easier and more cost effective to address issues at this
stage versus when in Development/QA/Implementation. While
gathering requirements, a Test Plan is created. This is a work in
progress until the scope has been fully defined and the client
has signed off on features. This is also an ideal time to begin
creating high-level scenarios and use cases.
Stage 2: Coding - During coding, our QA team will add additional
detail to all testing documentation. Developers and QA are in
communication regularly during this stage. The QA team will
also begin testing in the developer's environment before the first
promotion to the Experimental environment. Once again, from a
cost perspective, it's much easier and cost effective for a
developer to fix/address issues while actively coding the feature.
The first two stages allow for a lot of quality work to be
performed. The next few stages allow for a lot of testing work to

Page 101 of 109 |

be performed.
Stage 3: Testing - During testing, this is where all the preparation
and planning is executed. This stage allows for several (if
needed) rounds of development and testing. Testing will be
performed in both Experimental and Staging environments.
Stage 4: Implementation - During implementation, this is where
knowledge exchange is performed to ensure clients and
Moodlerooms training and support teams are fully up-to-speed
with the new functionality.
(Go Back)

Training
Documentation

Moodlerooms provides detailed FAQs, technical documentation,
user manuals and tutorials. All documentation and tutorials are
freely available online.
Joule also provides direct access to step-by-step tutorials and
embedded links to contextual, customizable help documentation.
This gives participants access to help directly within the platform
for immediate end-user support. Additionally, Moodle.org provides
very thorough technical and user documentation online called
Moodle Docs. Available technical documentation includes
developer documentation, self-help user documentation and
tutorials for administrators, developers, instructors and students.
Clients can also create non-credit courses or upload site-wide
available resources in order to provide tools that support and
encourage best practices and effective learning behaviors.
(Go Back)
Tutorials

Please refer to the response above.

Face to Face Option

During our face-to-face workshops, the Moodlerooms team visits
your facility and delivers specialized training to your designated
staff. This hands-on training is designed to be flexible and
powerful. Face-to-face workshops enable administrators and
educators to work directly and in person with Moodlerooms
training team, with significant time dedicated to Q&A that allows

Page 102 of 109 |

your team to get all of their critical questions answered. Costs for
workshops include up to 10 participants. (Go Back)
Product Improvement
Process

A large portion of this process is involved with the Moodle
Community. An average of 9000 users participate each month in
the Using Moodle discussion forums at Moodle.org. These
educators and technologists are amongst a pool of 1.2 million
individuals who have registered and participated in the discussion
over the past ten years. Join the discussion and bring your new
ideas to the table.

Moodlerooms is a proud Moodle Partner and contributes our
development resources, as well as financial funding to the Moodle
project to keep Moodle free and open. Over the past six years,
Moodlerooms has contributed millions of dollars in royalties, as
well as numerous plugins that extended Moodle capabilities to
handle integrations with Google and Microsoft, critical IMS
Common Cartridge import and export, IMS Learning Tools
Interoperability for external content repositories, as well as
innovations with course formats and rubric checklists.

Issues and feature requests with the software can be tracked by
anyone in the community in the Moodle Tracker. Although these
assets are open and available, because of the special nature of
educational communities, any issue that might be labeled as
security will enter a security workflow which will addresses the
issues in the code and communicates any problems to all
registered site administrators about a security code release.
Developers who are interested in helping write and maintain
Moodle have full documentation to get started with guidelines,
architecture, process, etc.. Contributions made by our excellent
Moodlerooms developers are available for review in the
community, as well. (Go Back)


Moodlerooms offers an easy-to-use online web
meeting/conference tool, Blackboard Collaborate.

Blackboard Collaborate provides a synchronous online learning
and web collaboration tool that will support your entire instructional
cycle and support staff to interact and collaborate in real time at the
greatest savings and the greatest benefit to your organization.

Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing enables instructors and
students to interact and collaborate in real time by adding
synchronous content to asynchronous distance learning or
combining blended online/onsite learning activities.

Blackboard Collaborate enterprise instant messaging (Blackboard
IM for short) offers an academic-centric instant collaboration
solution designed to promote learning through group work and
academic and administrative help. (Go Back)

Page 103 of 109 |

Webinar Online

Please refer to the above response.
File sharing

Video Uploading



FERPA Safeguards

Joules flexibility allows administrators to edit settings, roles and
permissions to ensure compliance of FERPA rules. Moodlerooms
can assist with this during the implementation process. For
example, CCC can:
Disable e-mail-based self-registration (Joule offers several
other ways of authenticating users). This way CCC can be sure
that everyone accessing its site is authorized.
Do not use the opentogoogle setting (this prevents
information in a Joule site from appearing in a Google search)
Eliminate the guest login option or edit guest permissions to
prevent view of profiles and participants lists
Configure the Front Page so that the courses list is not visible
for unauthenticated users
Edit permissions to prevent student users from viewing the
profiles of others (even if the two students are in a course
together, the profile shows the list of courses a student is in,
and thereby discloses non-directory information). (Go Back)

Internal

External Building
Block

Metrics & Data
Course reporting

Joule provides relevant and powerful activity and participation
reports that track all user interactions within Joule. Joule reports
allow quick visibility of reliable and accurate tabular reports which
can be used to track individual student performance, specific
learning activities, and course-wide trends which can be exported
to CSV or XLS.

Aside from simply viewing the course grade book, Joules Course
Reports provide simple views of student engagement and
performance within course activities, including the following report
views:
Activity Grades Provides a simple view into the activity
grades for users in the course

Page 104 of 109 |

Activity Views Provides a quick look at the number of
times users have viewed each activity in the course. This
provides teachers an idea of the popular or most used
resources or activities in a course.
Assignment Submissions Provides the teacher with a
view of all assignment submissions for all students in the
course.
Dashboard A quick view of charts for the most common
reports: Recent Activity, Forum Posts, Quiz Submissions
and Assignment Submissions. These charts are intended to
provide the teacher with a quick idea of the level of activity
in the course.
Forum Posts Provides a quick look into the usage of each
forum in the course by providing a list of students and
number of posts they have each made in each forum
Glossary Posts Provides a quick look into the usage of
each glossary in the course by providing a list of students
and the number of posts they have each made in each
glossary.
Needs Grading Provides a quick list of all of the activities
in a course that have attempts that need to be graded by
the teacher
Outcomes A quick list of all the students outcome ratings
for each activity that has been assigned an outcome
Quiz Submissions Provides a quick look at all student
attempts for each quiz in the course, along with the grade
for each attempt and the final grade
Recent Activity Provides a view of all activity for all of the
students in the course. From a graph perspective, this
report provides you with a basic usage chart for the course
and all students in the course
Roster Quick look at all of the users who are enrolled in
the course and the last date they accessed the course
SCORM Provides a list of all SCORM packages and the
SCOs within those packages that students have accessed
in the course. This report also reports the attempt, time on
attempt and grade for the SCO.
Wiki Posts Provides a quick look into the usage of each
wiki in the course by providing a list of students and the
number of posts each student has made in each wiki
(Go Back)
Student Activity
Reporting Options

Instructors can monitor student progress using powerful log reports
that indicate what participants are doing when and for how long.
Each line or record in a log contains a timestamp and information
about activity at that instant. Filters within Course log reports
selectively reduce or focus the information shown in the report to
show any combination of group, student, date, activity and actions.
Instructors can see what pages the student accessed, the time and
date they accessed it, the IP address they came from, and their
actions (view, add, update, delete). Filtering is done with drop
down menus and is therefore easily available to both technical and

Page 105 of 109 |

non-technical users.
Joule supplies several reports that support student tracking as well,
including:
Learner Reports - Fourteen reports that allow a student to view
a wide range of data regarding their activity and performance in
a course
LearnerView Reports - Thirteen reports that allow instructors to
drill down to view activity and performance data for a particular
student
Class Reports - Thirteen reports that allow instructors to view
aggregated data for all students in the course regarding their
activity and performance
Exception Reports - Show reports about what users did not
perform a particular activity or achieve a particular grade

Additionally, the grade books Outcomes report helps instructors
monitor class progress by providing information about the overall
grade average for the class, activities that use a course or site-
wide outcome, the average score for each activity using the
outcome, and the number of grades given to students for each
activity using the outcome.
(Go Back)
System reporting
Options

Currently, Joule allows data access using our Administrator
reports, which allow administrators full access to the data in the
database and the ability to create any report they desire using SQL
queries. In our product roadmap, we have plans to include
additional standard reports at the Site and Course Category levels.
Categories are a container type within Joule, which can be
configured at the program, department, college or university level
to allow grouping of courses and data for reporting purposes.
(Go Back)

With our Personalized Learning Designer, instructors can automate
elements of their course so that participants have different
experiences based on their interaction with the course. This allows
instructors to quickly identify key behaviors, then to take action to
remediate or accelerate learning. This feature is great for
automating feedback, reminders or follow-up processes, and
recommending training based on a user's specific performance
within the course.

The Personalized Learning Designer offers instructors the ability to
create and modify one or more "rules" within a course. Rules
trigger events in the course, and Joule automatically performs
specific actions.
These actions include:
Presenting a pop-up message
Sending an e-mail
Routing the user to a specified course activity or URL
Locking or unlocking certain activities or groups of activities

Page 106 of 109 |

Adding or removing users from a group within the course

In this way, actions are similar to Conditional Release (a
component of core Moodle). However, rather than just hiding and
revealing individual course activities, rules can apply to multiple
course activities (e.g. use a release code to hide or reveal
numerous activities at the same time). Moreover, rules provide
more actions than just hiding or revealing content. (Go Back)
Implementation
Implementation Plan
Document

Our SmartStart implementation package provides you with
valuable resources, training and personal guidance so you can
deploy a comprehensive, integrated and fully branded Joule site
that allows you to leverage the full capabilities of the platform right
from the start. This level of implementation provides several
specialized guidance sessions (two of which are on topics of your
choice) and three Q&A sessions that allow you to tailor your
implementation plan to meet your programs unique challenges
and requirements.
Package
Details

Client
Meetings
Kick-off (Up to 1 hr.)
Joule Professional Development Planning (up
to 1hr. with Learning Solutions Consultant)
2 Administration Panel Q&A Sessions (Up to 2
hrs./each)
Course Deployment Strategies & Long-Term
Site Management (Up to 1 hr.)
Conduit or Authentication (Up to 2 hrs.)
Creating Course Templates (Up to 1 hr.)
Reporting strategies (Up to 1 hr.)
3 Q&A Sessions or Flex Topics Meetings (Up
to 1 hr./each)
Pedagogical Choice Meeting (up to 1 hr. with
Learning Solutions Consultant)
Final Configuration Review & Wrap up and
Welcome to Support (Up to 1 hr.)
Onsite
Meetings
0
Total
Meetings
16 hours
Included
Training
2 Seats in Site Administration in 2 (mandatory)
4 Flex Seats (In your choice of any online or
webinar courses)
Package
Duration*
75 calendar days
Cost $7,500
(Go Back)

Ease-of-Use
Joule has a number of powerful and flexible instructional design
tools that allow course creators to design effective, engaging, and

Page 107 of 109 |

individualized online courses, offering a modern user interface
including dashboard views, collapsible navigation menus, and an
improved look and feel for ease of use. Based on core Moodle,
Joules streamlined component-designed architecture is based on
a simple, straightforward block and module interface enabling
administrators and instructors to customize the structure of their
courses and sections. Joule has been updated to provide users
with a more robust AJAX feel, keeping the familiar while allowing
administrators to decide how much or how little of the interface to
show to their users.

Conduit
Moodlerooms has created a systems integration tool called
Conduit that allows administrators to quickly load critical
information from an existing SIS, ERP, assessment or other
learning database into Joule. Conduit provides the flexibility to
manage enrollments, users and courses to make administration
easier by allowing administrators to easily automate these vital
tasks.

Scalability
Using VMware vSphere
TM
5, the industrys most reliable platform
for data center virtualization, Moodlerooms is able to offer the
highest levels of availability and responsiveness for CCCs Joule
site, as well as optimize IT service delivery and deliver the highest
levels of application service agreements. The specific configuration
of our Cloud architecture successfully supports more than
1,000,000 users and provides on-demand scalability that allows
Moodlerooms to proactively dial resources up or down as needed
to account for changing numbers of enrollments for all clients.
One of the biggest benefits of cloud computing is constant access
to additional resources. This means CCC is not tied to the limits of
hardware. The Cloud allows us to add capacity on demand,
providing a highly scalable resource pool from which to draw on for
increased computing power and storage capacity as needed.
(Go Back)
Provide information
regarding those that
are native or work
within your system
Now it's easy to create, find and curate quality content in one
place; deliver it to students through their LMS; and share the most
successful content with the world.
Blackboard xpLor provides the ability to:
Discover global or specific content with an easy, robust search
engine
Create modern content-rich course materials for flexibility and
collaborative authoring
Fully-supported in the cloud to limit your costs to host and
manage
Simple and straightforward interface
Share content cross-platform inside the cloud with no importing
or exporting
Tie content to federal and state standards and/or competencies

Page 108 of 109 |

Find content shared globally or in specific channels
(Go Back)
existing modules or
assets
Moodlerooms has a few methods to accomplish this including our
Personalized Learning Designer and our Outcomes feature.
Personalized Learning Designer
Its like having a personal assistant
Re-mediate or accelerate learning paths based on an
individual student's performance within a course.
Give every student the attention the need within your course.
Whether students need extra help or are ahead of the curve,
they will be able to get the most out of every course.
Allows instructors to quickly identify key behaviors, then to
take action.

All students are unique and deserve specialized learning paths that
cater to their needs. With our Personalized Learning Designer,
instructors can automate elements of their course so that
participants have different experiences based on their interaction
with the course. This allows instructors to quickly identify key
behaviors, then to take action to remediate or accelerate learning.
This feature is great for automating feedback, reminders or follow-
up processes, and recommending training based on a user's
specific performance within the course.
The Personalized Learning Designer offers instructors the ability to
create and modify one or more "rules" within a course. Rules
trigger events in the course, and Joule automatically performs
specific actions.
These actions include:
Presenting a pop-up message
Sending an e-mail
Routing the user to a specified course activity or URL
Locking or unlocking certain activities or groups of activities
Adding or removing users from a group within the course

In this way, actions are similar to Conditional Release (a
component of core Moodle). However, rather than just hiding and
revealing individual course activities, rules can apply to multiple
course activities (e.g. use a release code to hide or reveal
numerous activities at the same time). Moreover, rules provide
more actions than just hiding or revealing content.
Outcomes
Joule includes an Outcomes feature that allows the manual
creation or import of learning outcomes to the site and/or to a
specific course. Instructors can decide which site outcomes to use
in their course and can add new outcomes specific to that course,
as well. Each outcome can then be mapped to course and/or site.
At any time, administrators can see for each outcome which
courses are using it and the number of course activities to which it
is mapped.
For example, the Outcomes feature can be used to create

Page 109 of 109 |

assignment-specific grading criteria for each assignment. An
activity might have more than one outcome, and each may have a
grade against it (usually on a scale). Instructors have the ability to
assess student performance with an overall grade as well as using
individual learning outcomes. Grade information and outcome
grades are automatically passed through to Joules grade book.
Using the Learner Outcome Report, administrators, instructors and
students (depending on their role-based access) can quickly see
which courses are using which outcomes. Using Joules ability to
thin slice data created in the learning management platform,
outcome information can be filtered by:
Individual user
Specific outcomes
Specific learning activities
Single or multiple course
(Go Back)

Analysis of LMS Categories of Function

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Analysis of LMS Categories of Function

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Office of eLearning & Innovation

Access, Learning, and Success - Cuyahoga Community College

and Google+ in their user profiles.

, NVDA, VoiceOver, and Dragon

Вам также может понравиться