Overview

Background

In Learn content can be targeted at many levels, in some instances content will directly correspond to a teaching activity and at present Learn is used to allow students to sign up to content - this can determine the teaching activity they must attend (e.g. I want to learn about Wave power and that is taught in the workshops are held on a Friday).

When Timetabling Student Allocator goes live students will self-sign up, or be signed up, for optional teaching activities.  If no efforts are made to ensure consistent allocation of students to optional teaching Activities and Learn Groups then it would be possible for a student to select an invalid combination.

This will not affect all courses.  The only time where Activities and Groups must be kept in line is where the teaching activity (workshops, tutorials, etc) directly relates to content delivered from Learn AND there is more than one option for the student to attend/access. 

Whole Class Session (WCS) enrolments are effectively kept in line by EUCLID course enrolments as there is no choice for the student to attend a separate session.  Both Timetabling and Learn take a feed of course enrolments from EUCLID.

Scope, Objectives and Deliverables

The purpose of this project is to establish a one way data feed from Timetabling's Reporting Database to Blackboard's Learn VLE, which will - where necessary - maintain Learn Groups in line with individual teaching session (or Activity) allocations.  If any transformation of the data is required prior to it being imported into Learn, this will also be in scope.

Objectives:

1. Establish a data feed from the Scientia Reporting Database to Learn.

2. Establish an interface within Learn which imports Timetabling data to form or change the groups required.

3. Educate users on how this works, and provide detail of any business process changes that must take place.

Deliverables:

1. Data feed from Reporting Database to Learn

2. Import mechanism of data into Learn

3. Reference documentation for staff

 Out of Scope:

Data feed from Learn to Timetabling applications.

Benefits

The project will enable content-based Group data to be automatically maintained in line with student-session enrolments in the Timetabling applications.

This will greatly reduce the manual effort and administrative overhead required to maintain Learn groups in line with changes to student teaching session allocations.

It will also mitigate the risk of students being signed up to Learn groups for Activities they are not allocated to. 

Success Criteria

The project will be a success if:

1.  Where required, changes to student Activity selections within Timetabling are automatically reflected in Group memberships within Learn.

2. Staff have been provided with clear communcations on any changes required to their existing business processes for Learn group creation and administration.