Can I ask what institutions are using for Student Information and Course Information Management Systems. One big name seems to be SCT Banner, but I am sure there are others. Are there any open source developments? Have you any experience with Moodle integration. Any insights appreciated 
Are you looking at Higher Ed systems only?
basically, yes!
We're using Banner here, and the lack of Banner integration is probably the biggest obstacle to wider adoption of Moodle on our campus. My program uses Moodle, of course, and there are several other Moodle installations on campus, however those who teach very large classes would understandably prefer a tighter integration with Banner (for populating courses and grade submission, e.g.).
Has anybody looked at integration with Banner? Is there even any way to access the data that Banner holds - a developer's API or whatever?
I looked at it very briefly. Apparently there is some sort of developer API that lets you generate custom reports. I haven't revisited it because our classes tend to have only 20 or so students, and most of them take classes from us every semester. It'd be a different story if we had to enroll and grade 1,000 students (a common situation for freshman courses on this campus).
Hi Howard, at Cal State Humboldt we integrate with Banner via LDAP, for user authentication, course set-up, and enrollment. Our Banner admin (Peter Johnson) has written PCLSQL scripts for Banner that export the data to our LDAP cluster (which also manages course specific access for a number of on-campus labs, email, web access, etc).
We don't have a push back for grades yet, we are working along those lines. We'd be happy to talk with/partner with other Banner schools to share code and implementation strategies.
We don't have a push back for grades yet, we are working along those lines. We'd be happy to talk with/partner with other Banner schools to share code and implementation strategies.
That's good to hear, Michael. If I get queries from higher up in the UIUC food chain, can I point them at you?
As I said, it's not a show-stopper for my job since we only have about 20 students per class, but it's been mentioned when I've tried to promote Moodle as solution for larger programs on campus.
As I said, it's not a show-stopper for my job since we only have about 20 students per class, but it's been mentioned when I've tried to promote Moodle as solution for larger programs on campus.
Michael,
Mark one person down as interested in discussing and possibly partnering on Banner implementation strategies and possibly scripts and code. I'm the LMS guy in IT for Lane Community College, where we've recently decided to switch from WebCT to Moodle as our officially supported LMS. We're trying to get moving on the implementation as quickly as we can, with the goal of being up and running by Fall. (I think that Joe Escobar, who helped facilitate the process of selecting the LMS, may have talked with you already about some of this stuff already.)
We'll be using LDAP to authenticate both students and instructors, but our LDAP server is presently divorced from our Banner servers. We periodically update the student accounts so students can authenticate, but we don't have any information beyond the basic usernames and passwords in our LDAP data.
What we'd like to do is automate the processes of creating courses and adding registered students. We don't (yet) care about pushing back anything into Banner; the communication at this point would only be one way. I'm familiar with the workings of Banner only in the most theoretical terms, so I'm not sure of the best way to do any of this. But ultimately, here's what we'd like to set up:
- An automatic process for creating courses, probably from a nightly export. We haven't decided whether to create a course shell for every course that's in Banner, or to do it only with a manually defined subset. Our strategy there will depend on how much it taxes the database server. Based on current enrollments, we probably won't see anything above 5,000 active students per term (at least, probably not for a while).
- A similarly automatic process for updating student registration information.
I'm curious about the possibility of including registration data in our LDAP server. I've looked at the eduCourse object definitions, for example, but have balked at doing anything with them because I don't want to embark on adding new schema without knowing a bit more about what I'm doing. Also, I don't know if using LDAP is the most effective way to handle regisration data, or if it's better to simply script the import of a dump directly into Moodle.
I've seen a few of your postings on what you guys are doing at Humboldt, and they've been very helpful. I'd be happy to discuss all of this stuff here, where it might be helpful to others, and if we (at LCC) end up producing anything that would be helpful, I'd also be very happy to make it accessible to others.
I guess that's a short way of saying, "Yes, Michael, I'd like to pick your brain."
David Walton
Lane Community College
Mark one person down as interested in discussing and possibly partnering on Banner implementation strategies and possibly scripts and code. I'm the LMS guy in IT for Lane Community College, where we've recently decided to switch from WebCT to Moodle as our officially supported LMS. We're trying to get moving on the implementation as quickly as we can, with the goal of being up and running by Fall. (I think that Joe Escobar, who helped facilitate the process of selecting the LMS, may have talked with you already about some of this stuff already.)
We'll be using LDAP to authenticate both students and instructors, but our LDAP server is presently divorced from our Banner servers. We periodically update the student accounts so students can authenticate, but we don't have any information beyond the basic usernames and passwords in our LDAP data.
What we'd like to do is automate the processes of creating courses and adding registered students. We don't (yet) care about pushing back anything into Banner; the communication at this point would only be one way. I'm familiar with the workings of Banner only in the most theoretical terms, so I'm not sure of the best way to do any of this. But ultimately, here's what we'd like to set up:
- An automatic process for creating courses, probably from a nightly export. We haven't decided whether to create a course shell for every course that's in Banner, or to do it only with a manually defined subset. Our strategy there will depend on how much it taxes the database server. Based on current enrollments, we probably won't see anything above 5,000 active students per term (at least, probably not for a while).
- A similarly automatic process for updating student registration information.
I'm curious about the possibility of including registration data in our LDAP server. I've looked at the eduCourse object definitions, for example, but have balked at doing anything with them because I don't want to embark on adding new schema without knowing a bit more about what I'm doing. Also, I don't know if using LDAP is the most effective way to handle regisration data, or if it's better to simply script the import of a dump directly into Moodle.
I've seen a few of your postings on what you guys are doing at Humboldt, and they've been very helpful. I'd be happy to discuss all of this stuff here, where it might be helpful to others, and if we (at LCC) end up producing anything that would be helpful, I'd also be very happy to make it accessible to others.
I guess that's a short way of saying, "Yes, Michael, I'd like to pick your brain."
David Walton
Lane Community College
We're also looking at switching from Blackboard to Moodle, and researching ways to populate the LMS from data in Banner. We're still researching, but right now we're anticipating doing this import based on eduCourse information (once we've setup such information).
If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear from you.
Ken Newquist
Lafayette College
If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear from you.
Ken Newquist
Lafayette College
Hello all, here at Smith College we've been using Moodle for one semester so far (and it's been incredibly great), and we use LDAP for authentication and Banner for our SIS. Currently we have nightly student data uploads from Banner to the Moodle server as a .csv file, and then a script that I heavily modified puts that data into the Moodle database (student enrolling and removing from courses). What we'd like to do is integrate Banner and Moodle much tighter, like the people above were saying, for grades, enrolments, etc.
Since it's been a few months since people have posted to this thread, has anyone made any progress on this?
Happy new year!
Damon Blanchette
Since it's been a few months since people have posted to this thread, has anyone made any progress on this?
Happy new year!
Damon Blanchette
There are currently active discussions about Moodle integration with both a standard portal--uPortal is one--and the Banner SIS. The designs use Web Services so changes in a student's record would be immediately reflected in Moodle (e.g. course registration), and changes in Moodle would be available to Banner (e.g. grades). Stuart Sim of MoodleRooms is a new, experienced leader in this effort. It would be based on the forthcoming IMS Enterprise specification. There is an IMS meeting early February; a report should be available a few days later about plans. Stuart will be describing the MoodleRooms roadmap at the MoodleMoot Albuquerque February 16th. This follows discussions with uPortal and Sakai Board Meetings at the Sun Microsystems Education and Research Conference in San Francisco.
As these documents become available, Jon and I will see they are available to you. This becomes more important as Moodle is adopted as the enterprise learning system serving a substantial part of the students.
jim farmer
As these documents become available, Jon and I will see they are available to you. This becomes more important as Moodle is adopted as the enterprise learning system serving a substantial part of the students.
jim farmer
Jim F. and Michael P. (et al),
We are also very interested in hearing about the developments regarding portal development and SIS integration, as well as LDAP.
I hope those of you attending MoodleMoot Albuquerque will fill us in on all the details RE: the IMS meeting, MoodleRooms roadmap, uPortal, etc.
Peter Campbell
Montclair State University
We are also very interested in hearing about the developments regarding portal development and SIS integration, as well as LDAP.
I hope those of you attending MoodleMoot Albuquerque will fill us in on all the details RE: the IMS meeting, MoodleRooms roadmap, uPortal, etc.
Peter Campbell
Montclair State University
Yes, Peter we can do that. Stuart Sim is attending the Sun Education and Research Conference where this is a topic because of the Sun Center for Interoperability at Georgetown University. At the same time I will be attending the IMS Workshop and Quarterly meeting. This topic will also be discussed substantively at the PESC Workshop next week.
I will check with Kevin Kelly and Jon Allen to see if there is an opportunity for a roundtable on this topic as well. Incidentally, I believe one of the Blackboard staff will be joining us. They should have some additional information on their work.
As Kevin pointed out, we are now focused on student success regardless of what system is used, and welcomed their participation.
Thanks for letting us know of your interest.
jim
I will check with Kevin Kelly and Jon Allen to see if there is an opportunity for a roundtable on this topic as well. Incidentally, I believe one of the Blackboard staff will be joining us. They should have some additional information on their work.
As Kevin pointed out, we are now focused on student success regardless of what system is used, and welcomed their participation.
Thanks for letting us know of your interest.
jim
Good Afternoon,
Sorry for the late reply...this is a link for an open source SIS built on J2EE:
http://www.academicedgeonline.com/overview.html
I have met with the lead developer of the project. He has clients that use it and Moodle together, though we did not get into details about integration. It uses the GPL, and is a rather comprehesive set of SIS tools.
jon
Sorry for the late reply...this is a link for an open source SIS built on J2EE:
http://www.academicedgeonline.com/overview.html
I have met with the lead developer of the project. He has clients that use it and Moodle together, though we did not get into details about integration. It uses the GPL, and is a rather comprehesive set of SIS tools.
jon
Howard, I realize this is an older post and we may have discussed this in the past in other places but there is some work about to begin in integrating Datatel with Moodle for colleges here in the US using that system. This is another SIS like Banner, and will be very much like what Michael P. did at Humboldt with extensions planned over time. We have also integrated a number of smaller SIS systems for clients using the web services interface that Mike Churchward was instrumental in helping develop. The web services approach was also used with the recent Elluminate integration and it seems that most vendors on jumping on the bandwagon now by adding features to their SDK's where available. On the secondary school side of things we have done an integration with Apple (now Pearson) PowerSchool and Moodle - again much like the Banner integration - and hope to extend that a bit this year once we find out what Pearson has up its sleeve. Finally, within the PHP universe we are currently doing a significant development for Sloan-C using the Drupal CMS environment. This very mature portal is fast emerging as a platform for building frameworks between systems, and I might add has a robust user community (like Moodle) that knows how to get things done.
Can you explain the integration between Power School and Moodle?
What has been accomplished thus far?
Thanks
What has been accomplished thus far?
Thanks
Hi,
Yes we have been using School Management System and Moodle fromlast 2 years. We have managed to import all user specific data and fields such as courses to user account login details.
We are thinking to Integrate our Moodle Website very soon to the School Management System, Windows Live Account and Active Directory as well!
Regards,
Ashutosh