Deep Caliper Event IntegrationBlackboard Learn and Kaltura Video Platform

Dan Rinzel, Senior Product Manager, Analytics @ BlackboardJeff Rubenstein, VP Product Development @ Kaltura

Session Agenda

• What is IMS Global & Caliper Learning Analytics?

• Why does it matter and how are Blackboard & Kaltura involved?

• Project goals for integrated events

• Spec maturity & lessons learned

• Demonstration

• Key takeaways

Statements regarding our product development initiatives, including new products and future product upgrades, updates or enhancements represent our current intentions, but may be modified, delayed or abandoned without prior notice and there is no assurance that such offering, upgrades, updates or functionality will become available unless and until they have been made generally available to our customers.

The New Learning Experience

A new approach to education that fosters better engagement, interaction and quality learning through the delivery of leading-edge technology, services and data capabilities

A focus on the learner

Connected and tightly integrated workflows

A delightful new user experience

Integrated data and analytics

An accessible and always-onenvironment

The Challenge

Lots of DataCurrently

accessible only through Kaltura

The Goal

Integrated insights for teachers into what students are doing across tools and experiences

Usage data first, progress data to come

Caliper Learning Analytics

• IMS Global as an organization

• Interoperability Standards – LTI, LIS, Common Cartridge, Extended Transcript, Caliper

• Create a viable tool ecosystem for .edu that avoids vendor lock-in

• LTI focuses on launch semantics and SSO, includes grade post-backs

• Caliper focuses on learning event interoperability, to get away from the data silo problem

Project Goals

Overall Goal: prove out event interoperability between a launch system and a tool provider.

Leverage existing event instrumentation (native or Caliper) in both systems

Send instrumented events from the tool provider, including metric profile events not “known” to the launch system

Leverage existing integration mechanics between systems, including LTI

Extend the LTI launch handshake in the existing B2 securely to include Caliper semantics

Leverage existing event capabilities in the launch system

Integrate events correctly alongside “native” events in the launch system Use the launch system as (interim or final) Caliper LRS

Development Process

Lightweight internal milestone deliverables (by month or quarter) – best fit with mainline dev schedules on both sides

DevOps coordination of Test/Dev systems for integration testing

Periodic check-in status meetings & email threads for real work

Spec maturity and workarounds

Caliper’s third actor – the Learning Record Store is neither a tool consumer nor a tool provider, but could have capabilities of either/bothComplicates relays between potential event “receivers”Preserving identifiers from the launch system is not mandated

Object life cycles on the launch system and the tool could impact the record storeEvent payload size and the describe operationGroup membership and contextual relevance

Demonstration

Today and Future - Kaltura

Today: Media Metric Profile

Next: Assessment Metric Profile

Other parameters

Today and Future - Blackboard

Today: Caliper event collection & relayNext: Enterprise Learn deployment support, Discussion profileNext next: xAPI support

xAPI & the future

There is a similar specification in the world of SCORM – Blackboard is working with both IMS & ADL to drive towards a convergence that we hope will make it easier on everyone in the ecosystem.

Other goals for Blackboard & Caliper

• Support for Caliper 1.1 Discussion profiles

• Certification as a record store when that is available

• Convergence or “ambidexterity”• Support for 9.1 Enterprise releases

Key Takeaways

Co-development against the spec for systems already instrumented for events is largely enabling the correct handshake and mapping/ transforming event syntax

Metric profiles and object extensions provide a great mechanism to support workarounds to enable success between any two systems

The context identifiers matter, and are not uniform across system boundaries

Some level of interoperability between Caliper & xAPI is highly desirable to avoid competing event ecosystems, but which actor’s responsibility is it?

Thank You!

Dan RinzelSenior Product Manager for Analytics @ Blackboarddan.rinzel@blackboard.com

Jeff RubensteinVP, Product DevelopmentKaltura, IncJeff.Rubenstein@kaltura.com

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