Walking the Talk Building a Support Site with

Community System Tools

Wayne Britcliffe, Cathy Colless & Wendy Fountain

Durham 2007

Disappointingly very little discernible traffic

Support Site (The First Attempt)

Organisation/Community module created

Great resources and content– Guide finder born etc.

Big launch and promotion– Workshops– Lunch meetings

What was felt to be the main problem?

Authentication– Potential Yorkshare users would actually already

need to know how to login to Yorkshare– If they know how to login they would then need to

find the support module– We need to keep ALL staff enrolled in the module

Other reasons– Limited presentation options for focus on

transient or key support information– Limits our ability to easily “showcase” good

practice examples– Useful content is more “buried”

Considered Website Instead

Pros

No authentication barrier

Complete design control

We already had web space that needed attention

Content easierto index

Cons

Content already in Blackboard

Guilt pangs – we should practice what we preach

Would require “skills” to maintain and also to develop new content

Our Solution – The Second Attempt

Build the support site with the community portal tools…

Key Reasons Can set up with no authentication barrier Can expose content already developed in Yorkshare Easy for any team member to update Uses tools we expect academic staff to use Able to make it the “gate way” into Yorkshare proper

Branding multiple unauthenticated sites

We wanted a site separate from the default student login page…

Existing student login page http://vle.york.ac.uk

New staff support site http://vlesupport.york.ac.uk

Enabling direct access is a pre-requisite

BB offers a choice of two login approaches

Direct access is a two stage login

Any users connecting to server is logged into Blackboard as the user “guest” automatically.

User initiates a second login with personal username and password

Direct access login process – faster than the eye can see

Classic login page – no login has occurred

Enabling direct access triggers a series of automated page redirects that login with the credentials:

– Username: Guest

– Password: Guest

Community System content displayed

User has an active session and a primary institutional role

Institutional Roles

Different users can have different institution roles

This is why the portal tabs and modules look different for different users

Background Stuff

This is what the systemLooks like when a

student member logs in

This is what the systemLooks like when a

staff member logs in

vle.york.ac.uk

vlesupport.york.ac.uk

What makes the two login pages different ?

Tempting to assume that the two addresses point at two different web sites

The two address both point at exactly the same site

The DNS entry for both hostnames is exactly the same

The two pages are different because the user has a different institutional role

Huh! What user ? What Institutional Role ?

The guest user is logged in !

Counter-intuitive to consider user roles before a user is logged

“Guest” is logged

By default a guest user has therole of guest

But the role can be manipulated !

(and has an institutional role)

Manipulating the institutional role (of the Guest User)

Manipulating the primary institutional role of Guest user is the key to branding multiple hostnames

A hostname (url) can be configured to manipulate the institutional role of the guest user logged in

When setting up a new brand, you indicate an institutional role to override the default role of guest user

This is how the user role is manipulated

Step 1 - Register a DNS address

Ask your friendly DNS manager to register the hostname for the new site in the DNS (e.g. vlesupport.york.ac.uk )

Point the DNS entry at Bb server

Step 2 - Create a New Institutional Role

Step 3 - Create a brand to manipulate the role

This controls the brand after login

Not this one !

Step 4 - Associate the Role with a the Brand

Mange Brands - Option 7

This option manipulates the institutional role of the user GUEST for this brand

The DNS entry is pointing to the Blackboard server

Direct access login is enabled to automatically login the user “Guest”

A brand is associated with the newly registered hostname (url)

The brand is configured to override the default primary institutional role of the guest user to with the role vlesupport_guest

Because no tabs or modules have been setup with permissions for the role vlesupport_guest (yet) nothing will be displayed

Done - the brand is live (but no tabs have been created)

Common to the configuration of all the tabs:availability to vlesupport_guest institutional role

Tab Setup

We used 4 type of Tabs:

Module Tabs:

– Double Column

– Single Column

Link Tabs:

– Link to CMS Content

– Link to Course Content

We didn’t use any Tool tabs

Single & Double Column Module Tabs

Classic tab layout

Not much to say here

Column no. cannot change

Link Tabs to Course Content

Obtain link with “Right click” copy shortcut on the link to the content area within the site

The module must allow guest access to the content

Course without Guest access granted

– access denied error

The course must have Guest access enabled at four levels

Yep.. four different places !

Tab Linked to HTML file stored in the CMS

Obtain link with “right click” copy shortcut on the link to the item in the Content System

Add Public permissions to the item

Example of a CMS Link Tab

After tabs comes modules

We used only three portal module types:– HTML

– URL

– Channel

Didn’t use any of the gimmicky types

URL and channel tabs used extensively in many tricky ways

Examples of HTML Modules

The simplest type of module

Used for the simple static content on the site

Biggest barrier is the VTBE which has inexcusably bad manners

URL Module Types

Bb server fetches page COPY once an hour

Stores a copy of the page on the Bb server

Can be useful in subverting the VTBE

If URL is a dynamic page (eg php or Coldfusion) the script will run each hour when the page copy occurs

Dynamic content

URL Module - Random Content Rotation

Our module showcase contains leader interviews

Random rotation to keep Home tab changing

Coldfusion application to randomly spotlight one leader profile

Hidden Content Areas in 20+ Showcased Modules

The Coldfusion Script on the CF Web Server

We used Coldfusion (could just as easily be PHP, Perl or other)

CF Script contains SQL that retrieves data from BB database

Script contains a random record selection criteria

SQL selects a random record

select

DBMS_RANDOM.value(0,199), ccdeptimg.main_data ccdeptimg, ccleader.main_data ccleader, substr(ccquote.main_data,10,INSTR(ccquote.main_data,'ANSWER:',1,1)-10) quest, substr(ccquote.main_data,INSTR(ccquote.main_data,'ANSWER:',1,1)+9,300) answ, ccportrait.main_data ccportrait from bb_bb60.course_main cm, bb_bb60.course_contents ccart, bb_bb60.course_contents ccdeptimg, bb_bb60.course_contents ccleader, bb_bb60.course_contents ccquote, bb_bb60.course_contents ccportrait where ccart.crsmain_pk1(+) = cm.pk1 and ccdeptimg.parent_pk1(+) = ccart.pk1 and ccleader.parent_pk1 =

ccart.pk1 and ccquote.parent_pk1 = ccart.pk1 and ccportrait.parent_pk1(+) =

ccart.pk1 and ccart.title = 'Showcase Artifacts' and ccdeptimg.title(+) = 'Spotlight Dept Image' and ccleader.title(+) = 'Leader’ and ccquote.title(+) = 'Spotlight Quotation' and ccportrait.title(+) = 'Spotlight Portrait'

Order by 1

Configure the URL Module

Updates once each hour

Selects a new profile to spotlight randomly

Checkbox will force an immediate update

An example of random rotation

The Coldfusion script selects the first record returned by the SQL and slots the content into an html template

Using the Channel Modules

Campus LX Blogs and Podcasts produce an RSS feed

We setup channels for these feeds– Give the site a more dynamic feel

FAQ’s maintained in Blogs– Easy to maintain the lists

Campus LX Suite Blogs

Created an account to be “owner” of the Blogs– “Latest News” Blog

– FAQ Blogs

The Expo tool allows us toexpose Blogs outside a module

Makes the feed public

BUT does not actually share the Blog

Set Blog Permissions

Share view permissions with vlesupport_guest portal role

Note: This is changing in new version of Expo!

Set Portal Channel and Modules

Create a channel for each Blog

Change the hostname!

Channel sorting problem

Known issue with BB Portal Channels

Programmer forgot the Order By statement

Newest post does not appear at top

Breaking news in the wrong order – useless

Fix available via Global Services (££)

Probably worth the cost to keep news breaking on site

Graphics tricks : The top frame

Logo included in Background graphic

Completely transparent banner image pushes standard icons to centre

Graphics tricks : PortletsAll graphics are stored

in the CMS withPublic Permissions

appliedContent in HTMLModules is wrapped in apadded <DIV> to avoid

the cramped look

Site Usage Stats

Steadily increased for first 2-3 months

750 to over a 1000 distinct visits (sessions) per week

Lots of interest from around the globe on how the community system has been used & positive comments on site design

Questions