Blackboard/Portal integration FAQ
Ben Plumpton, Portal Manager, 25th September 2008
1. Why do we need both the Portal and the VLE?
2. How do they work together?
3. Why and how often do students use the Portal?
4. How do students access the VLE?
5. Since Nathan Bodington will still be there during 2008/9, how does the Portal know which VLE a module is using?
6. Now we've got the VLE, do we need the Portal any more?
7. Why are Blackboard announcements being shown in the Portal?
8. Which links and information should go in the VLE and which in the Portal?
9. Our department uses Consolidated Modules in the Portal, should we switch to doing this in the VLE?
10. What is the difference between the 'My School' tab in the Portal and the 'My Department' area in the VLE?
11. Which staff have access to the Portal?
12. What do teaching staff see in the Portal?
1. Why do we need both the Portal and the VLE?
The VLE is a specialist system for learning and teaching content and functionality. The Portal is an overarching system which provides a 'way in' to a huge range of university systems and information (e.g. email, admin functions in Student Services, university news, library account, Students Union information, useful links related to all aspects of the university). So the two systems have different functions.
2. How do they work together?
The VLE is one of the university systems that the Portal gives 'single sign on' access to. So when a student or lecturer logs in to the Portal, they can access the VLE with a single click without having to log in again. Announcements from Blackboard are also shown in the Portal, in a special channel on the Homepage tab.
3. Why and how often do students use the Portal?
Students tend to log in to the Portal frequently, mainly because it is their means of accessing their email. On a typical term time weekday, approximately half the student population will log in to the Portal at least once.
The spring 2008 Portal survey, which attracted responses from about 10% of the student body, showed that they appreciated having everything in one place, the targeted and personalised content, the ease of use, and being able to sign in once rather than many separate logins to different systems.
4. How do students access the VLE?
Students are told to access Blackboard via the Portal. This is consistent with how they access other university systems, they have come to expect this consistency, and it saves them having to remember many separate web addresses.
The Portal provides two ways of accessing the VLE:
1. By clicking a 'Quicklink' on the Homepage tab of the Portal (the first thing you see when you log in to the Portal). This link takes you in to your 'Home' area in Blackboard, the same as you would see if you logged in manually.
2. By going to the 'My Modules' list on the My Studies tab of the Portal. Each module has a number of links including a VLE link, which takes them direct to that module's area within the VLE.
5. Since Nathan Bodington will still be there during 2008/9, how does the Portal know which VLE a module is using?
When a student or lecturer goes to the 'My Modules' area in the Portal, the list of modules they are studying or teaching is drawn, as it is in the VLE, originally from Banner. There is a VLE link provided for each module, which 'deep links' into the correct module area in the appropriate VLE. How this works is that after a module has been made available to students in Blackboard, the VLE link will go to Blackboard. Otherwise, where there is a known module area in Bodington, the link will go there. Failing that users will be shown a page explaining that either the module is not yet available to students or there is no online component to the module. Contact Faculty VLE Support Officers about local arrangements for making modules available in Blackboard.
6. Now we've got the VLE, do we need the Portal any more?
The Portal does many things that Blackboard is not designed to do. It enables targeting according to different aspects of a student's life, so different people see different content (e.g. announcements relating to their Halls, news specifically for students with disabilities, links according to year of study). It provides single sign on to various other systems (so you don’t have to log in again). It offers a personal calendar and community groups functionality, and is used by the university to communicate with students for a myriad of reasons.
It would conceivably be possible to do considerable custom development in Blackboard to replicate the functionality that already exists in the Portal, but it would seem wasteful to make a substantial investment to re-create something that is already working well. Also, more extensive custom development within Blackboard would make it more complex and expensive to maintain and upgrade. So the university will concentrate on providing learning and teaching through the VLE, and the Portal will continue to be used as an access mechanism for the VLE and for all the other purposes detailed above.
7. Why are Blackboard announcements being shown in the Portal?
Blackboard announcements appear in a special channel on the Portal's Homepage tab, below the user's Personal Announcements channel. This has been done partly because students are used to seeing all their other announcements in the Portal, so it helps consistency, and partly to improve the likelihood that students will notice important learning and teaching related announcements.
When a student has read an announcement, either in Blackboard or via the Portal, they can 'dismiss' it so they don’t see it again. Whichever system they dismiss it in, it will disappear from both.
8. Which links and information should go in the VLE and which in the Portal?
Fundamentally, the VLE should be used for learning and teaching links and information, and the Portal should be used for administrative links and information.
It is sometimes difficult however to categorise some items, in which case links can appear in both the Portal and the VLE, in order to help students find them (and bearing in mind that students may categorise things differently from staff!). So, for example, links to reading lists appear in the My Modules area of the Portal and in the VLE. The main thing is that, whichever route students use to find information, it should take them to the same place, so there is no confusion and no need to maintain multiple versions of the material.
9. Our department uses Consolidated Modules in the Portal, should we switch to doing this in the VLE?
Consolidated Modules are a device in the Portal that allow staff to provide information to groups of modules at once. A staff member with access to several modules can 'consolidate' any or all of them. The resulting 'consolidated module' will then show in the Portal's 'My Modules' list to anyone (staff or student) who sees any of the individual modules concerned.
Consolidation is mainly done for the sending of administrative announcements, and usually for groups of modules that are somehow connected but not in a way that could be automatically detected. For example, the School of Computing might consolidate all the modules that use a particular programming language in order to send announcements about license arrangements. Or the School of Healthcare might consolidate all the modules relating to healthcare practice in order to communicate easily with their students out in the NHS. Schools who have been using Consolidated Modules for administrative purposes can continue to do so.
10. What is the difference between the 'My School' tab in the Portal and the 'My Department' area in the VLE?
The My School tab in the Portal is intended to allow schools and departments to show a web page to their users, generally one with links to school/department administrative news and information. The web page concerned is framed within the Portal, and maintained outside the Portal by the school or department as part of their website maintenance activity. Different web pages can be shown to different categories of users, i.e. undergraduates, taught postgraduates, research postgraduates, staff. Some schools are simply showing their usual home page to all categories of users, and some are developing special pages for the Portal. The latter is recommended where possible, as the pages can be aimed at internal users and do not need to 'waste space' by showing the university header since that is already shown at the top of the portal.
The My Department area in the VLE has been provided for schools and departments who wish to use it for school- or department-wide learning and teaching purposes. If a school or department has chosen to use the VLE My Department area extensively, they can choose to show this in the Portal's My School tab, thus avoiding duplication of effort.
11. Which staff have access to the Portal?
All staff have access to the Portal. Accounts are automatically created for anyone associated with modules in Banner. Many other staff also have Portal accounts, e.g. administrators who need to make announcements for any reason. Any member of staff who finds they can't log in to the Portal is very welcome to ask for an account via the ISS Helpdesk. New staff joining the university are recommended to write on the ISS 'yellow form' that they require a Portal account.
Note that, at present, the development of the Portal has been mainly related to students, and so most of the content is student-related. A Staff Portal Project has been proposed and is currently under investigation.
12. What do teaching staff see in the Portal?
The key functionality that teaching staff tend to use in the Portal is the My Modules area, where modules they are teaching are listed. For each module staff can click through to the VLE module area, the module reading list, the module timetable, and the module past exam papers. They can also use the 'Module Studio' to send module-related announcements (either through the Portal or by email or both) to all or some of the students and staff on that module. The module areas in the Portal can also be used to provide news, discussion board, links, files for download and photos. Modules using the VLE are unlikely to use Portal module areas for teaching purposes, but they may still be used for administrative announcements, and potentially for consolidated modules (see FAQ 9 above).
Note that there is also a Community Groups feature in the Portal (accessed using the Groups icon in the top right above the tabs), very similar to the Module Studio, where anyone can request a group for university-related purposes, ranging from research groups to student societies. Groups have collaborative features such as discussion boards, news, files, photos, links and chat facility. Groups are sometimes used by departments for staff student committees or subject societies.
More generally, the rest of the content that staff see is very much the same as students, with a few exceptions. This will hopefully change over time as the proposed Staff Portal Project starts to develop more content for staff and provides more useful targeted information. In the meantime, where there are differences between the different categories of students (undergraduate, taught postgraduate and research postgraduate students), then staff will see the undergraduate version, on the grounds that the majority of staff users will be those interacting with undergraduates.
Staff classed as 'faculty' in Banner will see a link to 'Web for Faculty' on the Student Services & Admin tab, to enable them to access facilities in Banner such as class lists etc. Staff classed as 'employee' in Banner will not have this access.
Functionality that students see but staff do not includes.
- Desktop Anywhere (remote access to M drive, access to cut down cluster desktop software, browser for accessing IP restricted sites)
- Printer credits
- Online payment facility (for paying fees, accommodation)
- My calendar.
An online 'tour' of the portal for students (uses Flash) is available as part of the ISS Student Induction at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/iss/training/Student_Ind/main_menu.html.