Building with Blocks Getting Started, Open Source and Collaboration

Building with Blocks: Dartmouth College Dartmouth College –Blackboard user since 1998, Blackboard Academic Suite (nee Enterprise) user since 2002 Extensions we have developed –Photo Roster, My Courses Module, User Management Tools, and currently developing Blackboard Administrator Tools Why develop extensions? – We feel that extensions meet two essential needs: Enhance the User's Blackboard experience Provide added functionality

Photo Roster The Photo Roster provides instructors with photos of enrolled students. Previously hand built by Assistants Additionally provides an list for creating groups in client of choice and a version formatted for optimal printing

My Courses Module The My Courses Module was written to provide informative and flexible display of a User's Course memberships. Courses are separated into current term and other term groupings. Disabled courses are visible to students.

Building with Blocks: The Getting Started Guide What is the Getting Started Guide? –The Getting Started Guide is an entry level guide to developing Blackboard Academic Suite extensions with Building Blocks –Inside you will find instructions for setting up your IDE simple to follow examples of extensions which show how to access the datastore and display information on Users, Courses, and Course memberships, and use the Tag libraries for a Blackboard look and feel complete photo roster application for development purposes

Building with Blocks: Open Source Why Open Source? –“When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves.” - –Economy of effort What about licensing? –There are many flavors of Open Source Licenses (see consult your legal office to determine which is best for your campus

Building with Blocks: Open Source What about Support? – as-is or no support – limited support – "community" support What are my long term obligations? –they are what you want them to be –pass the project on

Building with Blocks: Collaboration Why Collaborate? –Collaboration offers many of the same key benefits of Open Source –Collaboration produces an extension which meets the needs of more institutions –Collaboration develops a support network –We learn from each other

Building with Blocks: Finding Help Finding help is easy –Use the Blackboard Bbdevnet forum –Use Behind Blackboard knowledge bases –Use the Bb Open Source list We've all been there and in most cases you will get a response on the same day! –Use Playing in Building Blocks Think Community!

Thank You! Mark O'Neil, Dartmouth College Useful Resources Getting Started Guide bbas_building_blocks_getting_started_SDK.zip or Bb Open SourceBlackboard Developer Network Behind the Blackboard support site