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Access Granted:Providing Students with a Customized List of Required Textbooks

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Textbook Building Block Overview

Purpose: » To provide students with a customized list of

their required textbooks for the semester.

Reason:» Access to textbook information was inefficient.

Major challenge: » Campus bookstore concerned with loss of

control over proprietary data.

Initial process:» Contact the Bookstore Director.» Determine how faculty currently request

books.» Explore options currently available.

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Advantages of this Building Block

» Convenient access for students. » List is available regardless of whether

instructor uses Blackboard.» Students only see textbooks for the courses

in which they are enrolled.» Protects the bookstore data.» Ease of transition during Blackboard

upgrades.

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Textbook Building Block Components

» 2 Perl preprocessing scripts and building block: 1st Perl script: - Processes Excel spreadsheet provided by the bookstore - Makes sure that data is in a form that the

next script can use. - Excel spreadsheet contains: isbn #, dept#, course #, sect #.

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Textbook Building Block Components

» 2nd Perl script:» Reads isbn#, dept #, course #, sect # from

processed Excel spreadsheet.» Sends info to Amazon database in batches of 9

at a time.» Retrieves image of book, title, author, publisher

from Amazon database.» Stores textbook data in mysql database.» Stores isbn# and bb_crs_key in mysql database.

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Structure of Building Block

META-INF WEB-INF module

login.jspbb-manifest.xmlweb.xmlconfig

taglibs

bbData.tldbbUI.xsl bbUI.tld

context.xml MANIFEST.MF

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Building Block Files

» context.xml- create a jdbc container to connect to mysql database

» manifest.mf- not necessary, but many building blocks have them

» web.xml- defines the location of the tag libraries

» bb-manifest.xml- basically defines the building block metadata, must be absolutely correct or the building block will not install

» jsp files- the actual building block scripts

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login.jsp

» Get the ID of the user that logged in.» Get the courses that user is enrolled in.» Compare dept, course, section, and term to

Bb course_key. » Get textbook info from mysql database and

display it with regular html in the module.

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Lessons Learned

» Collaboration between departments requires persistence.

» The basic structure of building blocks can easily be adapted for multiple projects.

» Manipulating sample code is more productive than reading the manual.

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Questions?

For further information, please email:jharri23@utk.edu

Thank You!