picture this: community building with data snapshots tony harris, eric sakai and megan tucker...
TRANSCRIPT
Picture This:Community Building with
Data Snapshots
Tony Harris, Eric Sakai and Megan TuckerCommunity College of Vermont
Vermont State CollegesFebruary 28, 2006
Educate: About the Vermont State Colleges
Five colleges, 11,000 students– Community College of
Vermont– Castleton State College– Johnson State College– Lyndon State College– Vermont Technical College
• 5,500 students• No campus, no fulltime faculty• 12 learning centers statewide• 170+ online courses, 1,700 students
Educate: About the Community College of Vermont
Innovate: Student Services Initiative Timeline
• fa 98 Core Business Process Review• sp 00Begin new SIS implementation• sp 00Bb Learning System• fa 02 SIS live• fa 03 Bb v6 LS Enterprise• sp 04Bb Community Portal & LDAP• sp 05Web registration• fa 05 Content System pilot• su 06Single authentication?
Innovate: VSC Blackboard Community
Demonstration - http://blackboard.vsc.edu
Everywhere: The Snapshot!
• Snapshot: What is it?– A way to import/merge data into Blackboard.
Comes with Enterprise.
• Types of snapshots:– User (has Primary Role in it)– Secondary (Institution) Role– Course/Organization– Enrollment/Membership– Category (Course Catalog) & Category Link.
Everywhere: The Snapshot!
How snapshot works:1. Create a text file in the format for the type of
data you’re snapshotting, with the fields you want imported/updated.
2. Get the file onto your Bb app server.3. Run the snapshot utility, telling it what kind of
snapshot, the file, and the data source key to match on (plus a few other bits of info).
4. The snapshot utility will add new records, modify data in existing records (if you let it), and delete missing (i.e. cancelled/unenrolled) records (if you let it).
Everywhere: The Snapshot!• A note about the snapshot controller:
– The controller handles the get-file and run-snapshot steps so you don’t have to.
– BUT, it doesn’t come with the Bb app, it’s a separate purchase through Global Services.
– If you’re handy, you can write your own.– Or you can do the whole thing manually (not ideal,
obviously).• A note about data source keys:
– These just allow you to separate out your snapshots to make it easy to add/modify/delete records according to criteria.
– Divide by semester, by type of course, etc.– Caveat - you cannot modify/delete a record unless the DSK
of the snapshot file where you’re trying to do that matches the one the record came in on.
– So plan carefully how you want to divide things!
Everywhere: RolesWhat we have to do to create that nifty portal
environment:• Users need to get the right Primary role, so we
can assign branding, tabs, and modules to a primary role.– ** A note about branding: it also works with virtual hosts,
i.e. it’ll brand by the URL you come in on. But that’s not what we needed.
• Users need to be made members of the proper Organizations.
• Users need the right Secondary Roles to do special purpose tabs/modules, and enable access to specialized functions like the Content System.
Everywhere: RolesHow do we figure their roles?• YMMV (Your Mileage (or Methods) May Vary.• A lot of complicated code on Datatel, looking at their employment
contract (Staff vs. Faculty), what their active degree program is (students), and what their primary campus location is.
And for secondary roles?• These really vary widely!• Example: Castleton nursing students stationed on the Lyndon
campus. Or, Content System users (specific courses).• In each case we have a Uniquery script that grabs data Colleague
PersonIDs (i.e. the BatchUID in the snapshot.• We made the users give us the query that gets the right people)• Shell & Perl script combo that reads that data and produces the
very simple snapshot file, and then runs the snapshot program itself to upload it.
• Watch those data source keys, though! You can get confusion if you’re not careful.
Everywhere: SummaryTo summarize doing portal roles:1. Figure out what you want to do with them. Branding?
Permissions? Propagating tabs/modules?2. Have someone in your school who knows how to query your
SIS, and who knows the criteria for getting each cohort of people, write the SIS end and above all get you some nice, unique student identifier.
3. Think about your data source keys, remembering you may want to be able to disable groups of people, and remembering to watch for overlap.
4. Use the query you were given, plus some massaging programming on your end, and produce snapshot file(s).
5. Find a nice way to automate running the snapshot process to import the files. The process will pretty much handle all the messy stuff from there.
Thank You!
Tony Harris - [email protected]
Eric Sakai – [email protected]
Megan Tucker – [email protected]