Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Content Management
Keep Up or Fall Behind
7/1/2007
Administrators were able to distribute common handouts. The handbook for the course was distributed that way.” Next came the really innovative part: delivering Xythos-based materials through the course management component of Blackboard Academic Suite, which Northwestern had been using since 1998. Nielsen explains that his group used Blackboard’s Building Blocks, or application programming interfaces (APIs), to pass on a credential for Blackboard, to Xythos. This allows a student to jump from one application to the other without another login. Course administrators upload multiple files and directories into Xythos in a single operation, and students can access the content through Blackboard.CMS Self-Assessment
Many school websites target those who attend the school or work for it—groups already familiar with the organization. Yet, today’s website should be designed and written for the external visitor, who, in many cases, may be a prospective student. Is your website audience-centric?
Northwestern built this interface on its own, Nielsen says. Then, “Blackboard ultimately adopted Xythos as part of its system. We don’t need Blackboard’s content system, which saves us considerable money. With our innovations, we can develop course handouts for multiple versions and multiple sessions. We have used it in other Blackboard classes: undergraduate engineering and calculus have been wins for us.”
Using Blackboard’s APIs, he says, Northwestern has enabled access to content resident in Xythos, through a single link. “There is no precedent for this. The information now is available in any Blackboard course. We’ve documented how it works, but we haven’t pushed it heavily. Instructors love it. They can create a folder full of readings and create a single link to that folder. The material can be in any format, including HTML.” To enhance security, a time-stamped link allows access only for a very short period—a period of usage even briefer than the time frame built into the Xythos system.
Requests to use the Blackboard-based content delivery system have come pouring in from various departments, Nielsen says. Administrative units, for example, ask for file-sharing capability that goes beyond sharing by copying files to a hard drive. Undergraduate advisers find the system exceptionally useful for sharing documents, and science lab faculty “rave about it because it allows collaboration with outside colleagues in a secure way,” reports Nielsen. “E-mail is not reliable for large files, and as for FTP, not every end user can set it up, and there are firewalls.”
Right now, says Nielsen, he hasn’t measured the cost savings of the system, but admits that “demand exceeds supply.” To truncate the learning curve, the Academic Technologies group offers faculty extensive training and demonstrations of Xythos’ capabilities, which he believes are “not immediately apparent to most users.” Among the hidden gems: the ability to edit and manage files collaboratively on remote web servers, versioning, and document sharing with users who don’t have access to Xythos.
Recommended Reading
- Get Users on Board
- Greening IT
- It's a Zinch
- Meeting up Virtually
- Online Tutorials to the Rescue
Now's the time to use online tutorials to streamline professional development and help desk management.
- Retention Rx
