Bboogle Teams: Supporting Small
Group Communications through
Google Apps Integration with the
Blackboard Learn Platform
Jonathan Smith, Software Architect,
Northwestern University
Patricia Goldweic, Sr. Software Engineer,
Northwestern University
Project Members
•
Software Development
– Jonathan Smith (Software Architect)
– Patricia Goldweic (Senior Software Engineer)
• Blackboard Support
– James Altman (Manager, Faculty Support Services)
– Brian Nielsen (Project Manager, Faculty Initiatives)
Overview
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What is Bboogle?
What is Bboogle Teams?
Examples of Usage
Teams in the classroom
Demo
Teams concepts
Integration with Bb Learn and Synchronization with
Bb groups
• Teams tools
• Architecture
• Roadmap
What is Bboogle?
A Bb plugin that provides Google Apps Integration by
providing:
• Instructor tools to create links in Bb course sites to
Google Documents, Sites and Calendars
• Automatic adjustment of permissions in Google Apps
so that instructors and students can collaborate
• Integration with Google SSO so that no second logins
are required for Bb users
• (optional) Automated Google Apps user provisioning
What is Bboogle Teams?
• Bboogle Teams allows a class to be divided into
smaller groups (teams)
• Features:
– Each team gets its own Google Documents
Collection, Site and Calendar
– Provides instructors and students easy access to
each team’s content
– Automatically adjusts content permissions based on
team memberships
– Supports division of larger communities such as a
cohort of students in a specific program
Examples of Usage
• An engineering class where students work
together on a team project
• A history class where student teams work with
Google Docs and Sites using primary sources
• A journalism class where students collaborate on
a research project with practicing journalists
Teams in the classroom
• Teams may be fluid (students may move from
one group to another)
• May be time-constrained (e.g. a team’s project is
due at a specific date) or may have a start date in
the future
• Might be set up through a deliberate process, or
just random assignment
Teams Beyond a Classroom
• A collaborative site for a research project so as to
promote undergraduate involvement in research
• Longer lasting interest groups collaboration
around sub-disciplines and to support research
areas.
• A collaborative space for a cohort of students in a
specific academic program.
Teams Course Tool
Sample Team Site
Sample Team Site Template
Bboogle Teams Concepts
• A Bboogle Teams community may encompass a
course or academic program, a cohort, etc.
• A Bboogle Teams breakout partitions a
community into a set of disjoint teams, which can
be time-constrained.
• A Bboogle Teams team corresponds to a
particular group of people within a given
breakout.
• Each Bboogle Teams community and each
individual team is associated to a Google Apps
group.
Integration with Bb Learn and
Synchronization with Bb groups
• One or more Bb courses can be mapped to a
particular Bboogle Teams community
• Within a Bb course, a group set can be mapped
to a particular Bboogle Teams breakout
• A given Bb group set can be (re) synchronized
with its mapped breakout, thus updating the team
assignments according to the Bb group
assignments.
Bboogle Teams Tools
• A course tool provides instructors and students with
easy access to their teams’ content.
• A tool exposes the Blackboard groups integration. It
allows instructors to:
– Connect a Bb course to a Bboogle Teams community
– Map a Bb group set to a Bboogle Teams breakout
– Choose the Google Apps group names for each of the
teams mapped to the Bb groups in the set
– Choose a Google Site Template to be used for all teams
in the breakout
– (Re) Synchronize a given Bb group set with its mapped
breakout
Bboogle Teams Tools
• A course control panel tool (under construction)
provides an easy to use team assignments
viewer/editor
• Supports the creation/editing of teams, breakouts and
communities
• Allows the re-assignment of team members
(movements between teams, etc.)
• Allows the incorporation of external users to the
community (identified by a Google email address)
Bboogle Teams Architecture
How Bboogle Teams Extends Bboogle’s
Architecture
• Bboogle uses the Gint (Google Integration web service)
service to mediate all the Google-related requests
• Teams adds an additional, higher-level service to Bboogle
• The Teams service maintains its own database for
storage and interacts with Google Services via the Gint
service
• Examples of Teams service requests by the building
block:
– Verifying that the current user belongs to a certain team
– Ensuring that a course’s instructor owns the community
mapped to the course
– Synchronizing a Bb group set with its mapped breakout
Bboogle Teams Architecture: the Teams
web service
• Uses the Java persistence framework to store
relevant data structures:
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Users
Communities
Breakouts
Teams
Team assignments
• Is a RESTFUL web service which in turn uses the
Gint web service
Bboogle Teams Architecture: the
expanded Gint service
• Uses a relational database for storage coupled
with the Java persistence framework.
– Easy to hook up to different RDBMS systems
– Can use embedded or external database, including
Blackboard’s own
• Keeps track of request executions in a new table,
including logging information
• Is able to schedule execution of requests (as it
implements time-constrained breakouts)
Bboogle Roadmap
• Bboogle release that uses part of the expanded Gint
service (relational db-based) created for Teams
• Blackboard contributes to the open source project
with a release that simplifies installation
• Northwestern University continues piloting the Teams
tools + integration with Bb groups
• Bboogle Teams gets integrated into Bboogle building
block
• Later (possible) improvements:
– Support for primary/secondary Google domains
– Tool/user interface improvements
– Support for multiple first class Google domains
Bboogle Contacts
• Bboogle is hosted at the Oscelot projects site
http://projects.oscelot.org/gf/project/bboogle
• The Subversion repository can be found at
https://source.at.northwestern.edu/svn/os/bb-gint
• You can contact us for more details at:
– pgoldweic@northwestern.edu
– b-nielsen@northwestern.edu
Please provide feedback for this session by emailing
DevConFeedback@blackboard.com.
The title of this session is:
Bboogle Teams: Supporting Small Group
Communications through Google Apps Integration with
the Bb Learn Platform