Bboogle Teams: Supporting Small Group Communications through Google Apps Integration with the Blackboard Learn Platform Jonathan Smith, Software Architect, Northwestern University Patricia Goldweic, Sr. Software Engineer, Northwestern Universi ty

Project Members Software Development –Jonathan Smith (Software Architect) –Patricia Goldweic (Senior Software Engineer) Blackboard Support –James Altman (Manager, Faculty Support Services) –Brian Nielsen (Project Manager, Faculty Initiatives)

Overview What is Bboogle? What is Bboogle Teams? Examples of Usage Teams in the classroom Demo Teams concepts Integration with Bb Learn and Synchronization with Bb groups Teams tools Architecture Roadmap

What is Bboogle? A Bb plugin that provides Google Apps Integration by providing: Instructor tools to create links in Bb course sites to Google Documents, Sites and Calendars Automatic adjustment of permissions in Google Apps so that instructors and students can collaborate Integration with Google SSO so that no second logins are required for Bb users (optional) Automated Google Apps user provisioning

What is Bboogle Teams? Bboogle Teams allows a class to be divided into smaller groups (teams) Features: –Each team gets its own Google Documents Collection, Site and Calendar –Provides instructors and students easy access to each team’s content –Automatically adjusts content permissions based on team memberships –Supports division of larger communities such as a cohort of students in a specific program

Examples of Usage An engineering class where students work together on a team project A history class where student teams work with Google Docs and Sites using primary sources A journalism class where students collaborate on a research project with practicing journalists

Teams in the classroom Teams may be fluid (students may move from one group to another) May be time-constrained (e.g. a team’s project is due at a specific date) or may have a start date in the future Might be set up through a deliberate process, or just random assignment

Teams Beyond a Classroom A collaborative site for a research project so as to promote undergraduate involvement in research Longer lasting interest groups collaboration around sub-disciplines and to support research areas. A collaborative space for a cohort of students in a specific academic program.

Teams Course Tool

Sample Team Site

Sample Team Site Template

Bboogle Teams Concepts A Bboogle Teams community may encompass a course or academic program, a cohort, etc. A Bboogle Teams breakout partitions a community into a set of disjoint teams, which can be time-constrained. A Bboogle Teams team corresponds to a particular group of people within a given breakout. Each Bboogle Teams community and each individual team is associated to a Google Apps group.

Integration with Bb Learn and Synchronization with Bb groups One or more Bb courses can be mapped to a particular Bboogle Teams community Within a Bb course, a group set can be mapped to a particular Bboogle Teams breakout A given Bb group set can be (re) synchronized with its mapped breakout, thus updating the team assignments according to the Bb group assignments.

Bboogle Teams Tools A course tool provides instructors and students with easy access to their teams’ content. A tool exposes the Blackboard groups integration. It allows instructors to: –Connect a Bb course to a Bboogle Teams community –Map a Bb group set to a Bboogle Teams breakout –Choose the Google Apps group names for each of the teams mapped to the Bb groups in the set –Choose a Google Site Template to be used for all teams in the breakout –(Re) Synchronize a given Bb group set with its mapped breakout

Bboogle Teams Tools A course control panel tool (under construction) provides an easy to use team assignments viewer/editor Supports the creation/editing of teams, breakouts and communities Allows the re-assignment of team members (movements between teams, etc.) Allows the incorporation of external users to the community (identified by a Google address)

Bboogle Teams Architecture

How Bboogle Teams Extends Bboogle’s Architecture Bboogle uses the Gint (Google Integration web service) service to mediate all the Google-related requests Teams adds an additional, higher-level service to Bboogle The Teams service maintains its own database for storage and interacts with Google Services via the Gint service Examples of Teams service requests by the building block: –Verifying that the current user belongs to a certain team –Ensuring that a course’s instructor owns the community mapped to the course –Synchronizing a Bb group set with its mapped breakout

Bboogle Teams Architecture: the Teams web service Uses the Java persistence framework to store relevant data structures: –Users –Communities –Breakouts –Teams –Team assignments Is a RESTFUL web service which in turn uses the Gint web service

Bboogle Teams Architecture: the expanded Gint service Uses a relational database for storage coupled with the Java persistence framework. –Easy to hook up to different RDBMS systems –Can use embedded or external database, including Blackboard’s own Keeps track of request executions in a new table, including logging information Is able to schedule execution of requests (as it implements time-constrained breakouts)

Bboogle Roadmap Bboogle release that uses part of the expanded Gint service (relational db-based) created for Teams Blackboard contributes to the open source project with a release that simplifies installation Northwestern University continues piloting the Teams tools + integration with Bb groups Bboogle Teams gets integrated into Bboogle building block Later (possible) improvements: –Support for primary/secondary Google domains –Tool/user interface improvements –Support for multiple first class Google domains

Bboogle Contacts Bboogle is hosted at the Oscelot projects site The Subversion repository can be found at You can contact us for more details at:

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