Moodle in English: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

Hi,

We need to integrate 1000+ AICC enabled courses from a third-party college into our Moodle 3.4 platform. Can we achieve this by external tool plugin only or do we have to use APIs? Also, is it possible to integrate all those courses in bulk in one go or do we have to do it manually one by one using shared and secret keys for each course? Which one is a better option requiring no coding or access to the server? And, yes the third party college requires student logs, results, activity, etc.

We want any students coming to our Moodle site feel like they are accessing third party college courses as ours.

Thanks

(Edited by Mary Cooch to make title more meaningful- original submission Saturday, 10 February 2018, 10:36 AM)

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Saturday, 10 February 2018, 7:20 PM

Also, in order to integrate 1000 AICC courses, would we need the launch url and shared secret key from the third party college once or 1000 times for 1000 courses?

And, any students doing those college AICC courses from our Moodle site will have their activity logs, results, etc recorded on our side or the college side? I think the college side (not using Moodle) as they r actually doing their courses, right?

And, will the AICC courses be shown in iFRAME on our Moodle site?

Thanks muchly.

(Edited by Mary Cooch - to make title more meaningful original submission Saturday, 10 February 2018, 11:26 AM)

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Mary Cooch - Saturday, 10 February 2018, 7:59 PM

Hello rklearn. I'm sorry I don't have the knowledge to help with this issue but this is just to let you know I changed the title of your forum posts to make them more descriptive. ( I do understand that you are making 'catchy' titles to try to encourage people to read them but in fact this is not in line with our Site policy here which says you should 'choose an informative subject line'. Thanks

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Sunday, 11 February 2018, 11:33 AM

Thanks Mary. But this is in fact in reality most difficult question in the history of Moodle. Not even Moodle partners can help so who can?

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Dan Marsden - Sunday, 11 February 2018, 12:25 PM

Moodle partners can definitely help - feel free to ask your clients to get in touch with me directly and I can provide details on our rates and help them with this. It's not the most difficult question - I remember doing bulk imports of SCORM packages back in Moodle 1.5 with "Mell" Microsoft Elearning Packages. You will need have a good knowledge of AICC/SCORM and will need to write a script to manage the import.

Your inability to take our repeated requests to follow the forum guidelines isn't doing you any favours.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Mary Evans - Monday, 12 February 2018, 10:06 AM

Hi!

Just so that I understand the situation you are in, am I to assume that the Third Party are a separate entity, in that they run their own courses, and that you want to capitalise on their success with these courses, by integrating them into your rkLearn Moodle 3.4 platform to give access to students around the world? I only ask because it sounds like a great venture you are embarking on.

If this is so then, from what I understand you have access to 1000+ AICC enabled courses that you need to make available. I assume you want to track completion within your LMS for each of these activities - this means you will need to have 1000+ SCORM activities in your site connected to those AICC enabled courses.

The easiest way, I think, to set this up would be to do some form of bulk import. There is no easy "core" way to do this, you would need to do it manually or write a script to do it. Unfortunatly you cannot use the external tool plugin to connect to AICC content and there are no other API's that will let you do this in an easy way.

Hope this helps...

Cheers

Mary

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Tuesday, 13 February 2018, 7:06 AM

Thanks Mary. You got it absolutely right!

But what if the third-party college does not want to export their AICC courses and let us import into our portal. All they are saying is if we can do something by which we can just setup access to their AICC course from our portal but as you say this is not possible or is difficult, I am kind of depressed. So, should I tell them that I need to import all your AICC courses into our portal? Doesn't that actually mean that we are getting all their content and manually putting that into our portal? So, that's not really an integration but just migration. True? Thanks so much.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Dan Marsden - Tuesday, 13 February 2018, 7:53 AM

if they are referring to AICC HACP, this is where the content still sits on their servers and the AICC package you will set up is a bit like LTI where Moodle is used as the launching platform but the content is still hosted on the external platform - the external system keeps track of the use but also posts back reports to your system.

AICC HACP support in Moodle is disabled by default - you will need to enable it under admin > plugins > scorm - it also requires that your Moodle server is publicly accessible (not hidden behind an intranet) and that it can make outgoing http connections. This is because the external system makes direct http requests to your server that do not go via the users session.

you will still need to set up 1000+ instances of the SCORM/AICC package to connect to each aicc enabled course - For AICC HACP they would usually supply you with a zip package for each aicc enabled course with a config file that points to their server which you would upload in the same way you upload a scorm package to the scorm plugin, but there is a simpler method called "direct aicc url" that moodle supports. You can read more about this on my blog post here: https://danmarsden.com/blog/2012/11/01/managing-scorm-content-in-moodle-2/

Their external system will need to Support AICC HACP for this to work. (Not all AICC enabled systems will support AICC HACP and will in fact just supply a Zip file that contains the full course like a normal SCORM package)

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Tuesday, 13 February 2018, 9:21 AM

Thanks Dan. Much appreciated. And, I apologise for my previous post, I will be careful.

So, things I need to do (please confirm if that's what you mean) by putting your comments beside each point (if you don't mind):

I should ask my hosting provider to make the server publicly available? Is that doable? You think they would agree?
Confirm with the hosting provide if it can make outgoing http connections.
When you say that the third party college will need to supply a zip package for each aicc enabled course with a config file that points to their server.... (does that still mean that the content remains in their platform as that is a non-negotiable condition with them - they do not want us to have their content physically on our platform).
And, if i go with a simpler method, does the third party college provides me the direct AICC URL or do I generate it and how?
What if their system does not support AICC HACP? that means the direct AICC URL is not an option? Should I ask their IT dept to confirm if their platform supports AICC HACP or can I check that if they ask me?
When you say setup 1000+ instances of AICC/SCORM package - do you mean 1000+ new course shells?

Apologies if I sound stupid but I am just trying to fully understand and not miss a thing.

Thanks so much and looking forward to your help.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Dan Marsden - Tuesday, 13 February 2018, 9:42 AM

Thanks.

I think Mary is right - once you have an example AICC course url/package this will become a lot clearer to you.

When I say publicly accessible - I mean via a website url (like moodle.org) that anyone in the world can access) - instead of an internal website that is only accessible by someone on the organisational network - many corporate/government moodle sites aren't publicly accessible and you have to be on the internal network or VPN to view the moodle site. The external third party AICC server will send an http request directly to the url of your moodle site to request information, instead of doing all the work through the users browser like a normal SCORM package does.

Moodle requires outgoing http access for RSS feeds to work - so if you have used the rss feed block on your site, and it populates/updates the content when cron runs then your web server will already be set to allow outgoing http access - other tools like plagiarism plugins in moodle also require the web server to allow outgoing http connections so they can post data to external systems etc.

the AICC HACP zip packages contain a single config file that provides the information required for Moodle to connect to the external system - the content still sits on the external site.

I don't know what knowledge the external party has on AICC HACP - I'd probably ask them if they have a csv file with a list of the courses and the aicc hacp url - if they only have the zips you'd need to add them that way or extract the files in the zip, open the config file and look at the url that is included in the config file.

think of AICC == SCORM - you can have a single course with multiple SCORM activities(and other activities like a feedback activity for your users to let you know how useful they found the courses, or a certificate activity to give them certificates for completing the packages), or you can use the single activity course format and have a single course for each AICC package. I'd guess the external courses are categorised in some way - you may be able to reproduce that category structure somehow by grouping the AICC packages into courses - In the MELL example I gave earlier I grouped the packages by product type and had an MS Word course with all the MS Word packages, a networking course with all the networking related content etc etc.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Tuesday, 13 February 2018, 12:26 PM

Great! Thanks, I will get back to you for more questions once this sinks in. Thanks

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 6:39 AM

Hi Dan, I sent you a private message due to the link that I am sending you due to privacy reasons. Thanks

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Dan Marsden - Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 6:45 AM

As mentioned as a response to that PM, unfortunately I am unable to provide private support for free. The only free support/help I can provide is via public community forums - anything that involves a private message requires an existing commercial agreement with Catalyst IT.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 6:53 AM

Thanks. Please see my latest message and we can now continue the conversation here as I wanted to share the url due to privacy reasons as it is from a third party.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Dan Marsden - Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 6:58 AM

Assessing external content or accessing external sites outside the community forums to help diagnose why something isn't working is not a service I provide for free - someone else in the community might offer help though?

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 6:59 AM

Hi Dan, I am not asking you for a formal assessment. I just asked you a general feedback. If you want i can post tht url here and then you can tell me if that is how the actual AICC direct url will look like and why it may or may not work and general reason? Please let me know if you are still not willing to advise for free? Thanks

Here's the url: https://portal.e-lfh.org.uk/AICC/InitialiseRelay?CONTENT_URL=/AICC_Content/SMC17_01_006

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Dan Marsden - Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 7:36 AM

url looks ok to me - not sure why it's not working for you though, someone else in the community may try setting up direct aicc url and trying that url on their system - make sure you are using the direct aicc url method as mentioned on my blog post and have aicc external hacp enabled on your site. If it doesn't work then take a look through the different things that I mentioned that must be setup/working for AICC HACP to work on your site. Good luck!

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 7:58 AM

Thanks Dan. I just set it up again in my test site and enabled AICC HACP but it gives the same error is it requires authorisation. Is it the same error for you or does it work for you? Thanks

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 8:16 AM

Please see my settings for AICC HACP and single activity SCORM settings/direct aicc url. Am I making a mistake or you reckon the link is just restricted by the third party provider? If that is the case, do I ask them to enable it? Thanks

Screenshots attached.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Dan Marsden - Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 8:36 AM

settings look ok to me - as you have guessed, you might need to talk with the provider to find out how they verify access.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Thursday, 15 February 2018, 6:30 AM

Hi Dan, thanks. You are right that link was restricted by the party. On another note, as you are a SCORM guru and probably the only expert, could I please ask if there is a similar process if we are integrating SCORM (and not AICC)? Is there a direct SCORM url? Thanks

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Dan Marsden - Thursday, 15 February 2018, 7:08 AM

There are a handful of other very knowledgeable SCORM devs in the community and several that have made contributions to the Moodle core code.

there are 2 blog posts of mine that cover the different ways of adding scorm content:
http://danmarsden.com/blog/2013/09/24/managing-scorm-content-in-moodle-2-6
http://danmarsden.com/blog/2012/11/01/managing-scorm-content-in-moodle-2/

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Thursday, 15 February 2018, 7:25 AM

Thanks. Very useful. However, the scorm packages are on a third party college platform and they need to remain there so how do we integrate it on our moodle platform via direct url - just like the way we do for AICC courses? The method you mention seems more complex than integrating AICC courses.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Dan Marsden - Thursday, 15 February 2018, 8:08 AM

If you read through those posts, hopefully it should become clear that SCORM uses Javascript to communicate between the package and the LMS, and modern web-browser block cross-domain communication so the packages and content must be hosted on the same domain as the LMS. AICC HACP provides a different method to get around this which is why the content can be hosted externally.

If the packages need to remain on the external system you may need to look at providing some form of single sign-on integration to allow them to complete the courses on the external site.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Thursday, 15 February 2018, 8:35 AM

Oh OK. Thanks so much. So, this makes it a bit tough then rather a lot complex. I thought it would be easier as the third-party college (this is a different college to the one who has AICC courses) in this case is using Moodle too. How straightforward is implementing a single sign on, I looked at the plugins and only this SAML2 SSO looked appropriate but they don't support enrolment feature (not sure if it matters). I also found out that plugin is maintained by your company or the company you work for - Catalyst. Gosh, I am stressed again!

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Dan Marsden - Thursday, 15 February 2018, 9:29 AM

you could try using MNET or LTI to connect the 2 moodle sites together... there should be plenty of docs/reading you can do on that though.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Thursday, 15 February 2018, 10:55 AM

Thanks Dan. I read about MNET and gosh that is too much work and it will require me to make changes at the third party moodle site too to make any connection whatsoever. I guess LTI should be the way to go for. You agree that out of the two, LTI is better? Thanks

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Marcus Green - Thursday, 15 February 2018, 7:38 PM

I recommend LTI over MNET.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Mary Evans - Tuesday, 13 February 2018, 8:11 AM

Dare I ask a question or two?

How familiar are you with these AICC courses?
Have you had an opportunity to test one or two on your Moodle platform?
If so did they work OK?
Are you having doubts of your ability to manage this project?

It's going to be big job, and will give you a headache as you will need to plan it well with the Third Party Collage, but I think it is doable, but also very costly. Things like this are not easy and hidden problems are bound to ensue.

There are people here in the background ready to help.

We are all volunteers, some of us are Moodle Core Developers, others like me who are semi-retired are just sympathetic to others needs, and so we try to help where we can.

Best of luck rkLearn,

Mary

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by MoodleKittyCat . - Tuesday, 13 February 2018, 9:25 AM

Thanks Mary.

I am familiar with AICC just the way I am with SCORM and TinCap. So, not that intensively familiar.
Not yet but I have asked them to provide me with a couple.
You may say that as I do not want to fall short of expectations in anyway whatsoever. When you say costly, do you mean costly to them or me?

I am ever so grateful for all your continued help in this now, on-going and future as only you all can save me.

Thanks so much Mary.

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Re: Integrating AICC courses from 3rd party

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Wednesday, 14 February 2018, 3:52 PM

Hi

Have you found answer to your question https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=363132#p1464351 ?

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