General developer forum

Not yet, but we are in active development. We're planning to develop a tool that will take a BB archive, present the user with a default transformation, give them the opportunity to customize the transfer, then populate their course directly. We're in the early stages, but plan to have a working product by the end of the summer.

OK.. forward progress!

Now that finals are over, the students working with me have a lot more time. We met this morning and hashed out an architecture for the converter.

The prototype / beta will be a desktop app written in Java with a Swing interface... not our standard but it's what she's comfortable with and we can go from there (you can wrap PHP around Java classes, so once the back-end logic is done we can put a PHP interface on it).

The Blackboard archive is a beast.There are over 200 XML files for a moderately complex class. The XML gets really ugly in a couple of places as well. There's a funky mix of Blackboard tags and IMS tags.

We've decided to go with an XSLT translation scheme. As both the Blackboard archive and the Moodle backup are going to be moving targets, it will be easier to maintain XSLT's than hard-coded Java. We're going to need a library of XSLT files that we can use to translate each content type.

Anyone know XSLT and want to help with this part?

The system design is as follows

1. User uploads Blackboard archive
2. User chooses Moodle Course type - topic, weekly, social
3. System parses IMS manifest
4. System displays BB course organization tree with input to assign content to topics / weeks
5. User assigns topic / week numbers to each content item
6. System generates translation plan - each item grouped by topic / week. Creates list of identifierrefs
7. Translation plan is passed to the translator
8. Translator
- Generates Moodle course descriptor XML
- For each element of the plan
- Indentify the content type by parsing 1st element
- Load appropriate XSLT for that content type
- Apply XSLT
- Add transformed XML to Moodle course XML
- Close Moodle XML
- Take all data files and add to course_files
- Create zip archive
9. User is presented with interface to download Moodle backup archive.

Comments? Thoughts?

I am not sure if this is the correct forum/thread for this but it seemed like the most appropriate one I could find.

I had to import into Moodle several multiple choice quizzes exported from Blackboard. [Blackboard 5.5
package format (IMS 1.1 compatible)]. It wasn't clear to me how to do this and latest status of Moodle's import abilities regarding Blackboard quizzes. So I converted the Blackboard-generated XML files to the plaintext GIFT format using XSLT and then imported them into Moodle. Here is the workaround I used.

We're getting close now... I'm going to attempt to attach our current Java app here.

It requires Java 1.5 (beta) from Sun and it's ugly.. but it's starting to work. Part of the problem is that Blackboards data is not consistent between the IMS manifest and the internal data resources. So we're going to have to do a lot more low level parsing.

The current XSLT's convert the links and the announcements. We'll be adding XSLT's over the next few weeks and working on a better interface. But the proof of concept is there.

We're targeting BB 6.1 for right now. Adding additional versions or platforms will eventually be a matter of adding more XSLT's

To run...

Go into the ExportFile_Leeclass folder
From the command line type

java MyDomParser imsmanifest.xml manifest

That will pop up a window with the manifest rendered. You can then type the topic or week number in the second column. Hit convert and it will display the Moodle structure on the right.

When you export, it will create a moodle.xml file and the resource files.

I'm looking for interface ideas and useability suggestions.

J

Luther College is a modestly-sized (2,500 FTE students) mid-western USA private college using Blackboard 5.5 for about 3-1/2 years. For the past 1-1/2 years we've been looking seriously at the open source community of CMS and have selected Moodle as the leading contender. A major critical success factor for this project is the ability to accurately convert Blackboard course data to Moodle, allowing for instructors to bring their desired courses along with them on the conversion road. We have spent great amounts of time researching and reading these forum posts and have determined to initiate a formal course data conversion project in collaboration with Linuxbox, a leading provider of outsourcing services targeted at the higher education marketplace.

The logistical approach we have chosen is fairly simple:

• Courses converted upon request of instructor by CMS administrative personnel
• Not all Blackboard course data will be converted (for example, forum topics will, but forum threads will not)
• There will be an understanding between the instructor and CMS administrative personnel that some additional work may be required of the instructor in order to place their course material in locations as desired.

The technical approach we have chosen was inspired by Jason Cole of San Francisco State University and details as follows:

• Blackboard exports in IMS 1.1 XML format will be processed by one XSLT 1.0 file which will output a Moodle XML backup file. A wrapper script will initiate the xml conversion and gather the course documents into a zip file. Restoring of the converted course to Moodle will complete the conversion.
• Standard institution-specific information will be contained within the configuration of the Moodle into which the course is being imported.
• Rather than the JAVA wrap used by Jason and his staff, we have chosen a PHP wraparound which uses the Sablotron XSLT processor to better integrate into Moodle should this code ever be placed into CVS.

The current status of this project is exploration/proof-of-concept. We have successfully converted basic Blackboard course information as well as course documents and forum topics using the XSLT methods described above. We have prepared a requirements definition and detailed design specification showing what will be done with what piece of information and are ready to engage the enemy.

We invite input and collaboration from all who are interested in this approach with a humble realization that this type of effort has been attempted numerous times with mixed results. For our part, we make the following commitment:

• We will communicate frequently with this forum and also make formal updates on the progress being achieved in this endeavor at intervals not to exceed every two weeks.
• Alongside that, we will make the most current operational version of this conversion program available at intervals not to exceed every two weeks.

The current version of the program can be found at our Moodle test site (logon as "guest":

http://testmoodle.luther.edu/moodle/course/view.php?id=23&edit=off

<>It is fully-functional within the constraints mentioned above and requires no other software to test.
Regards