Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

by Jamie Tinley -
Number of replies: 10

Hi there,

I'm hoping someone can help me here as a fellow admin.  Having managed Moodle for 15 years for 6 schools I have managed to ward off quite a few plans to move to other CMS that are just like moodle only better like Canvas, Blackboard, Schoology, etc but the onslaught continues. Now one dept has chosen to go with Pearson for History and Pearson is the 800 pound Gorilla for me.  Their sales person of course told the dept that Pearson integrates easily with Moodle but what they really meant was they can setup SSO for the students gmail accounts to sync with Pearson logins.  

After talking to their tech it sounds like they do have TCC Thin Common Storage but so far they said no Moodle person has ever been successful in making it integrate.  I can't find much information on google or Moodle of anyone else who has tried to integrate TCC. He said Moodle only supports 1.1 and that TCC will only work with 1.2 or 1.3  He is sending me the cartridge disassembled into all the folders where I have to build the course myself but I can look side by side with Pearson's.  Last time I checked Pearson was using a CMS that looked like moodle with a different front page.  I asked as much and if we could maybe use the plugin called LTI Provider by Juan Leyva here but he definitely was not wanting to share like that as they want to keep control at their own CMS.  

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Please understand my motivation is that when I do orientation and on-going support for Teachers, students, parents and staff at 6 schools consistency means less confusion and less support time. As we widen the circle of options for our users we exponentially increase their confusion.  So instead of training them on one CMS for grades, taking quizzes, handing in assignments, etc I have to say depending on the course you will go here here or here and directions for each of those different CMS differ and will be updating at times not under my control so please inform yourselves as the current directions may be out of date at any given time.  That does not work well.  and being one person who does all the training, installing, upgrading, testing of new plugins, etc I don't have time to support more than one CMS. Even if Pearson is as perfect as the salesperson describes needing no training it is so intuitive the circle of confusion will still rear it's ugly head as if your experience is the same as mine many users need walkthrough support for even simple tasks like restarting their computer. Plus having the curriculum under our own roof allows teacher to do what they do best: customize the learning to fit the ever changing needs of the particular learners they have at this moment in time.  

Thanks in advance - Jamie

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In reply to Jamie Tinley

Re: Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Am far from an expert at CC's ... just doing some 'legwork' and Googling ...

https://www.imsglobal.org/compliance/pearson-myworld-common-cartridges

am assuming 'history' is 'myworld'.

Above page list the Product Name and Registration number.

At the bottom of the above URL a turn down for "Thin Common Cartridge'

In the few investigated, appears they all have:

Thin CC Status: 
Thin CC v1.2 Certified
Thin CC Conformance Date: 
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Thin CC Type: 
Cartridges

On:

https://docs.moodle.org/34/en/IMS_Common_Cartridge_import_and_export

Troubleshooting tips

Occasionally you may have problems with packages from some other systems (Blackboard 9.1 is one example). In these cases try running the package through the IMS CC validator to check it for errors. The validator can also fix some of the errors.

There is a link 

http://validator.imsglobal.org/index.jsp?validate=manifest
That might help.

'spirit of sharing', Ken

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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

by Jamie Tinley -

Thanks Ken! That gives me a start.  I could see if Remote Learners are willing to make it work for me. I would like to keep my users in house and not have to force our users to go to two different platforms.  Pearson could of course make it work - whey they do for Canvas but not Moodle surprises me but maybe that's their way to gaining market share or something.  Thanks for your links and ideas.

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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

by Jamie Tinley -

Ken I see those IMS links from Pearson but most are for grades 1-5, not high school that I can see. Are there other links also for HS?  

Also, what does one do with the IMS CC? say if it were canvas.  I don't see much documentation and when I asked the Pearson rep which files to put in the block vs Mod folder he had no idea except to say the files were all dis-assembled and worse co-mingled topics all together in different folders so I would have to re-create chapters myself without any clear indication which item goes where (as they did not label it by chapter evidently) 

Thanks.

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In reply to Jamie Tinley

Re: Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

@Jamie ... maybe I didn't make myself clear enough ...

Yes, I found the Pearson page for social studies and thought I had made the comment that I saw no title like you said you had or looking for (collections?) 

Have also read that Pearson wsa shutting down their USA branch for content - funny, cause in Tx they have the contract for online testing.

Please see:

https://docs.moodle.org/34/en/IMS_Common_Cartridge_import_and_export

Don't have anything on Canvas to know first hand but from what I understood they had import as well as export ability.   This **might** get you started:

https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-12783-415241324

Here:

https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-10460-canvas-instructor-guide-table-of-contents

there is mention of Collaborations ... maybe I got 'collection' in correct.

That last link looks like everything one didn't want to know about Canvas. smile

What they might have given you is the contents of a TCC ... un-zipped.   Sorry, no Vulcan Mind Meld ability here!   So what do those files look like?

'spirit of sharing', Ken

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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

by Jamie Tinley -

Thanks Ken that one link really helped me see the process of importing on Canvas using TCC.  My idea is if I can import to Canvas and then Export from Canvas to Moodle then that might work. The rep sent me a powerpoint showing how the TCC works - basically it embeds links to their platform "Realize" and they read, annotate, test, discuss there. Grades ARE returned to Canvas ONLY if automated, not graded by hand which is fine. These items are NOT available with TCC:

●Discussion Boards
●Speak/Record features
●Essay Scorer activities
●Highlight/annotation persistence
●Teacher Build a Test
●Grade pass back for open test items
●Student work is not saved in a TCC
●Data/scores are not captured in Realize if a student accesses the content via a consumer LMS

I could easily put Discussion boards in Moodle. Essay scorer we have Rubric which would work and build their own test in Moodle not Realize. So the main items they would miss are speak/record which I could possible include with poodl but not if it was inside the Realize platform and hightlight annotate. All this is fine, bottomline, if they can at least start and end in moodle - meaning see the links, do what they do, then return to see their grade in Moodle I could live with that.  
So now I'm asking if he knows anyone with a Canvas or Blackboard account who would be willing to import a TCC from them and export it to me so I can test importing it into our Moodle.  If anyone out there has access to a Canvas or Blackboard account this would be appreciated. 
Thanks

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In reply to Jamie Tinley

Re: Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

by Jamie Tinley -

PLEASE VOTE! to support work on tracker issue click HERE 

MDL-60803!

I also would like support for TCC (Thin common Storage) 1.2 or 1.3.  Pearson has this solution for Canvas but not Moodle.  Admins like me who are trying to keep all their users under one LMS roof really need this feature or else my users have to log into several different LMS's which is very confusing for users who have for years just logged into Moodle.  LTI is not an option with Pearson so my only recourse is TCC 1.2 or 1.3.   Any votes and support for this feature would be greatly appreciated. Please vote!!!

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In reply to Jamie Tinley

Re: Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

by Stephen Bourget -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Unfortunately Moodle doesn't currently support IMS CC v1.2, 1.3 or TCC.  It only supports IMS CC v1.0 & 1.1.  The major difference between them is IMS CC v1.2 and 1.3 allows the publisher to link directly to their content using LTI.  (I went through this with Pearson earlier this year, when we adapted a Pearson product for our 10th grade science curriculum)

The "closest" integration I could come up with was creating a an LTI activity pointed at our ADFS  (SAML) server which would have the students log in, and then re-direct them to their course on the Pearson Realize platform.

I took a look at the Moodle restore code, but it looked like trying to restore and IMS CC was a rather complex process. (IMS CC v1.1 is converted to a Moodle 1.0 backup, which is then converted to a Moodle 2.0 backup and then finally is restored)

I filed MDL-60803, but I think it would take a bit of work from someone who understands the Moodle Backup / Restore API to add that level of support.

Hope that helps,

-Steve

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In reply to Stephen Bourget

Re: Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

by Jamie Tinley -

Thanks for clearing that up Steve. I should have reviewed my posts before launching into research testing 25 other LMS's in my search to find a way to import it at one LMS and export it to Moodle.   I found that Sakai was the only one that would produce an export file that would import into Moodle.  Canvas and blackboards free version coursesites imported with all LTI's but their exports both failed to import into Moodle 

Then I tried a paid vendor site called Scholar only to find out it was just an updated Moodle site with 3.4 and it imported everything great but none of the LTI's are signed so I have to add all 3200 of them.

I also noticed that I CAN go into adminer in mysql and find each LTI and add the secret and key there. I just don't know how to do a mass mysql insertion into my database but that's my current idea I'm working on.  Plus now I need to go back to my problem of upgrading my Moodle on centos topic I put off to solve this topic.

I would love to hear more about your solution ADFS  (SAML) server.  Would they still start at moodle and would grades still be pulled BACK to moodle?  That's what I'm mainly after is to start and end at our Moodle site.  quickly reading here I see ADFS relies on active directory which this school does not have.  Thanks Steve

Jamie

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In reply to Jamie Tinley

Re: Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

by Jamie Tinley -

For anyone else passing this way I ended up importing it into Scholar (moodle 3.4) and then exporting it to MBZ format and importing it back into my moodle.  To fix the LTI's and get them signed I used this cool code from a John at Saylor Academy (thanks John!) - go into adminer and paste this command where xxx and yyy are your particular password and key  and c is your course number as shown in your database

UPDATE mdl_lti set password = 'xxxxxxxx', resourcekey = 'yyyyy' WHERE course = c;

you can also export the entire table to add in your toolurl and then import it back in. 


LTI example

Attachment z mdl_lti.png
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In reply to Jamie Tinley

Re: Pearson TCC Thin Common Storage and Moodle integration

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Congrats!  Maybe others will become interested in what Pearson Realize has to offer now that they know ... with a work-around content can be used via LTI! ;)

'spirit of sharing', Ken


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