Advanced Shibboleth Integration with Blackboard - QUTBlackboard is a course-management system designed to allow students and faculty to participate in classes delivered online or to use online materials and activities to complement face-to-face teaching. The mini-grant project aims to develop authentication, authorisation and auto-provisioning integration tools for enabling Blackboard in a federated environment. Having Blackboard systems federated at participating universities will enable smooth transition between sites for users because of the federation single sign-on. This will facilitate the delivery of course content from multiple sites in a seamless fashion. Applying the integration tools developed by this project to QUT’s Blackboard will enable the expansion of the content offered to federated users. QUT currently serves the eGrad School content to 5 ATN universities. The number of sites accessing the eGrad School is expected to grow significantly with the introduction of the new integration. AAF Enabled Service Overview Further Information and Documentation The code repository is hosted at: http://projects.oscelot.org/gf/project/federatedaccess/ currently pre-production versions of the Blackboard 9+ Building block for defining autoprovisioning rules and the Java Servlet filter that works with ESOEProject.org and makes provisioning decisions based on the defined rules. The project's attribute proposal to the AAF requests that member organisations share, among other things an ENTITLEMENT field. After discussion with AAF staff this would best be represented through the eduPersonEntitlement attribute. For example the following string eduPersonEntitlement: urn:someuniversity.edu.au:XYZ123_11sem1 indicates the owner who is a student or staff person at someuniversity.edu.au has an interest (typically either a teacher or a student ) in the subject/unit/course XYZ123_11sem1. Having this entitlment data present in the member organisations shared attributes is integral to facilitating auto-provisioning in a teaching and learning capacity. Without it, the best that is possible is an unacceptably blunt auto-provisioning rule based on the users home organisation. What the Service Provides Benefits of using this service The Content Owner can contol the role and enrolments of federated users on the local Learning Management System. Substantially reduces technical and business process barriers that would otherwise prevent, or dramatically delay a Content Owner's effort to provide content to a federated audience. Reduced complexity and cost for business areas involved in support. Intended audience Using this Service Accessing the Service Requires attribtes to be made available by the AAF membership. Monthly and Final ReportsProgress report for June 2010 Progress report for July 2010
Progress report for August 2010
Progress report for September 2010 Progress report for February 2011 Progress report for March 2011 |
Blackboard integration (QUT) |
