Northwestern U's Open Source Bridge between Blackboard and Xythos
Northwestern University has developed an open source File Bridge Extension to facilitate content exchange between Blackboard and Xythos applications.
The extension enables instructors and students using the Blackboard course management system to access content stored in their Xythos accounts quickly from within Blackboard, without requiring a separate login. This facilitates collaboration and content sharing. The new software extension has special appeal to those users with
archival content in the Xythos system, or who distribute content to multiple course sites. Instructors using Blackboard can now more easily distribute resources held within Xythos to their Blackboard courses, including distribution to multiple course sites within the Blackboard system--without creating multiple copies across the Blackboard course sites.
"File Bridge has become a valuable tool for our faculty and students' work with Blackboard," says Brian Nielsen, Northwestern University Information Technology (NUIT) project manager for faculty initiatives. "It allows us to give our students easier collaboration options within their course sites, it supports an active learning model that we are working to promote, and our faculty like the ease with which they are able to share their own electronic offprint collections."
The File Extension Bridge software is available for download freely by colleges and universities.