A presentation about enhancing the Blackboard Learn Notification system presented at #BbTLC11.

1. Supercharging the Blackboard Learn Notification System: The Good, the Bad and the Notified

3. Users and notifications

4. Blackboard and notifications

5. Enhancing the notifications system

6. Demo

7. Technical overview

8. QuestionsAgenda

9. Introduction

10. Currentrole Applicationengineer / software consultant Managing the Blackboard environment 2nd line support Background Biochemistry Usability design Passionfortechnology and progress Who are we? Kenny Verbeke

11. Currentrole Software architect General building blockdevelopment Autoprovisioningbasedon SAP HR & SAP campus management Background Education: multimedia Siemens Belgium: telecom & digital TV Instant messaging & presence Who are we? Sven Gladines

12. Who do we workfor?

13. Where are we from?

14. 2 Blackboard environments Toledo (university and higher education) eloV (secondary schools) Blackboard Learn 9.0 sp2 Course Delivery Community Engagement Content Management Self-hosted Linux/Oracle How do we useBlackboard?

15. Toledo 130.000 users 21.000 active courses and organizations 13 institutions 13 brandings eloV 60.000 users 9.000 active courses and organisations 128 schools 1 branding How do we useBlackboard?

16. Users and notifications

17. A notification is a message that informs you of the existence of an event Many events can trigger a notification Many different kinds of notifications (e-mail, message, sms, pop-up, …) What are notifications?

18. Websites Check manually Email/Newsletter RSS (‘05-’06) Personalized RSS Facebook/Twitter/… Stream of notifications (not all as important) Emailed notifications for certain types of events Evolution of notifications

19. Conclusions Increasing number of notifications Users select the notifications they want / need Email is not always as efficient (depends on use) Not all users are the same Let the user choose how he wants to be notified Evolution of notifications

20. Bb and notifications

21. Bb Learn and notifications Mail ! Default Blackboard notification system Users

22. Announcements Menu item Modules Notification dashboard Email Bb Learn and notifications Inside Blackboard External

23. Bb Learn and notifications

24. Bb Learn and notifications

25. Bb Learn and notifications

26. Bb Learn and notifications

27. Bb Learn and notifications Email Dashboard

28. 1% of our users use personalized notifications 99% of our users do not receive any email notifications * 2.500.000 pageviews per day system wide 425.000pageviews per day for My Toledo (default) tab 8.000pageviews per day for What’s new tab 240pageviews per day for Notification dashboard Students complain about email overuse Survey: students want mobile access to notifications more than mobile access to the entire LMS * Announcements emails not included A few facts about BB notifications

29. Enhancing the notification system

31. No chronological information

33. Moved to separate page/module

34. Deactivated the moduleProblems with notifications for disabled users (row_status=2) Only accessible inside Blackboard Blackboard'sWhat'snew?

35. What’s new in the What’s new?

36. Supercharging Other… External webpage Twitter RSS Mail Other Default Blackboard notification system Bulletin board Users

37. Meet the Toledo’s - What’s Recent

38. Meet the Toledo’s - What’s Recent

40. Extra information:

41. Title

42. Source

43. Time

44. Author

45. Built withBlackboardAPI’s

46. Customnotifications (bulletin board, …)Current features: General

48. RSS subscription to personalnotifications

50. Unique individualurl (forrss and webpage)

51. Privacy (supportedbyoureducationalpolicy)Current features

53. Star important

54. Dismiss

55. Filter and sort

56. By type, source, status, …Twitterintegration(Direct messages) Discussion boards Future features

57. Futureversion

58. “This opens up Blackboard”. “Finally, I canseewhat is happening in a quickway” “ThismakesBlackboard a lot more transparent” “At last!” Feedback

59. Beta testing in different phases Phase 1: internal Phase 2: 50 users Phase 3: ??? Phase 4: release Finetuning Interface Grouping notifications Beta testing

60. RSS

62. E-mail

63. text-to-speech (TTS)Complementary to Toledo What’s Recent Remarks

64. Demo

65. TechnicalOverview

66. Extensibility Security Privacy Confidentiality Focus

67. Technical overview: On demand RSS XML HTML (external) JSON HTML (internal) External Internal Web Service (REST) Registery Blackboard Notifications Discussion Boards Bulletin Boards Other

68. Technical overview: Push Twitter Servers External Internal Twitter Building block Registery Consumer registery Job

69. Notificationscanonlyberetrievedfrom the outside via a personal, non-guessable, non-spoofable, non-interceptable & revocable URL Beyond the walled garden

70. Applicationwillgenerate the personal URL onrequest (when user is logged in) Randomlygeneratedparts Digitallysigned URL is stored, onlythat URL is accepted User caninvalidate the URL byhaving the applicationgenerate a newURL Beyond the walled garden

71. See you in Las Vegas? Please vote for us ;-)

72. Questions?Kenny.verbeke@icts.kuleuven.besven.gladines@icts.kuleuven.be