Using Snapshot to Manage Enrolments for Sites with

Non-Traditional Enrolment Criteria

Cathy Colless & Anthony Leonard

Durham 2007

Snapshot Consulting Engagement (first attempt)

System installation 2005

Standard engagement questions

Consultant asked us to identify an institutional data source for:

– Users

– Courses

– Enrolments

Replied PeopleDB, SITS, SITS

Engagement Outcomes

Course categories and user institutional roles

5000 course sites with automated enrolments created and ready for use

Course ID format:2004-T2-2020001-A

Implementation approach ..pilot project bids

5000 course sites created. Ready to roll !

Resisted the temptation to walk around campus tossing course sites at passer-bys

Small scale pilot implementation approach (bids)

No enrolment constraints mentioned, approach may have encouraged constraint free proposals

Expected manual sites to be small minority

Diabetes Care Combined modules for diploma and degree level students

Diabetes Care module taught as a combined group of both diploma and degree students

Two separate SITS module codes/credits

Two BB course sites created and built to avoid manually managing enrolments for large cohorts of students

Announcements, discussion boards, blogs all common to the entire group

Less than ideal situation having two sites

Robotic TelescopeAny student taking an Astrophysics programme

Control the robotic telescope

Share digital images

All Astrophysics student at all levels use the telescope

Unable automate enrolments

Health Economics PG Dip Café BaristaAll students in certificate & diploma programmes

Fully distance education

Café site in addition to individual module sites

Tutors not enrolled in Café site

Could not provide automated enrolments based on a programme affiliation

Chemistry college based small group tutorialsall undergraduate chemistry students

All undergraduate chemistry students divided into groups based on residential college

All undergraduate chemistry students in one site

Could not provided automatic enrolments for the site

Started using CSV files generated with SQL

Politics – Graduate Submissionall postgraduate students in Politics

Politics site managed by Post Graduate Programme Administrator for plagiarism detection purposes only

Individual modules leaders did notuse the site

One site used for submission of all Politics post graduate students

Revert to csv files again

Some other general issues

SITS codes and terms change regularly due to scheduling and assessment changes

2004-T2-2020001-A to 2004-T2-2020001-B

Mid term changes cause a major crisis

Course is disabled and disappears if a SITS code changes

Cannot “restore” to an existing course

Reality – End of Pilot Status

Thousands of manual & “CSV file” enrolments

Technology/systems driving practice

40% of Pilot module sites had complex requirements for enrolment criteria

Other 60% represented the less innovative/creative of the bids

Trying to sell what we had in stock instead of what staff actually wanted

Back to the Drawing Board

First attempt relied on intuition

More systematic/evidence based approach for second attempt

Look at solutions from other system addressing similar requirements

Windows Active Directory

Digital Repository - Group Based Access Model

Community System Portal

User Institutional Role

Module orTab

Role Based Access Control

UserList

GroupRole

PermissionPrivilegeResource

Undocking SITS Module Groups from Course Sites

1 BB Course Site

2 BB Course Site

3 BB Course Site

SITS Module 1

SITS Module 2

SITS Module 3

4 BB Course Site

5 BB Course Site

SITS Module 4

SITS Module 5

SITS Module 5T2

The Separation Process – Implementation Options

Considered a separate database table

Wanted to use BB without customisation

Decided to create special “group users”

This would allow us to use the enrolment tools to manage the association between course and a group user

No need to write a building block or stand alone web application to manage flexible enrolments

Original snapshot process

user snapshot

course snapshot

enrollment snapshot

users

People DB

modules (MAV)

SITS

enrollments(SMO)

SITSAdmin

users

Blackboard

courses

userenrollments

VLE Admin

Lecturer

Students

extra courses

extra user enrollments!!

New snapshot process

user snapshot

user snapshot

enrollment snapshot

users

People DB

modules (MAV)

SITS

enrollments(SMO)

SITSAdmin

users

Blackboard

user enrollments

VLE Admin

Lecturer

Students

courses

group users

group user enrollments

Blackboard }group user enrollments

A simple one-to-one case example

Example SITS Module 0280111-T1

What happens:

– a module site Y2007-000123 is created

– a “group user” group.sits.module.0280111-t1

– enrolment of the group user onto the module site Y2007-000123

– enrolment of “real” users based on SITS module group user

The initial result of this is the same as hard coding the link between the module site and the SITS module

Example Data

Scheme BB Course ID Group User Usernames

Old 2006-T1-0110178-A

2006-T2-0110178-A

2006-T1-0110103-A

-

New Y2007-0123

Y2007-0312

Y2008-0123

group.sits.module_0110178-t1-a group.sits.module_0110178-t2-a group.sits.module_0110103-t1-a

This slide is probably not needed?

The next step….Groups based on user attributes

User attributes in People Database

Departmental Association

Level Classification Attribute

– First Year

– Second Year…

– Academic Staff

– Support Staff

Potential for other systems in the future

People Group User examples

group.people.dept_0011.atree_01

All staff in the Biology Department

group.people.dept_0011.atree_09

All first years in the Biology Department

group.people.dept_0014.atree_01

All staff in the Chemistry Department

group.thingspeoplelike.food_fishandchips

All people who like fish & chips

Rolling out the new snapshots 07/08 year

Every project from the pilot phase successfully changed to snapshot based enrolments !

New round of project

Even higher level of proposals with non-traditional enrolment criteria

In Practice – Biology Welcome

All new Biology students

Induction, catch-up and welcome content

Blog

group.people.dept_00nn.atree_nn

In Practice - Plagiarism Awareness

Pan University course

Small changes to contextualised content by each department

Enrolments important to gradebook

Different enrolments for departments

Sociology PG & Staff Seminar Series

Termly programme of seminars

Enrolment of academic and research staff and PG students

Some conclusions

An inflexible snapshot model stifles creative and innovative use of Blackboard

The system will drive the practice if the system is not flexible

When news spreads that snapshot can provide automated enrolment to meet complex criteria demand for this will quickly grow.

Flexible model avoids the need for two parallel systems

“Don't decide how big to build the bridge by counting the

number of people swimming across the big river”

Keith Moala - Tonga

Your questions please.

Enrolment Snapshot

Script to extract list of Group User enrolments in the

BB enrolment table from the Bb database

BB Course Group User Enrolment

Y2007-0001 group.sits.module_0110101-t1-a

Y2007-0001 group.sits.module_0110103-t1-a

Y2007-0002 group.sits.module_0120401-t2-a

Creating the Enrolment Snapshot

BB Course Group User

Y2007-0001 group.sits.module_0110101-t1-a

Y2007-0001 group.sits.module_0110103-t1-a

Y2007-0002 group.sits.module_0120401-t2-a

Script works through the list of group enrolments,looking up the student

enrolments from SITS for each module building up

a Snapshot file.

external_course_key|external_person_key|roleY2007-0001|1055|studentY2007-0001|1138|studentY2007-0002|1139|student