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Skillabi: LMS and Common Cartridge Integration

Skillabi: LMS and Common Cartridge Integration

 

Created Date

May 31, 2023

Target PI

PI-4 - Research and Scoping

PI-5+ - Implement

Target Release

Jira Epic

Jira Epic

Document Status

Hold Draft Review Committed At RISK

Epic Owner

@Kara Foley

Stakeholder

 

Engineering Team(s) Involved

Skillabi

PART 1

Customer/User Job-to-be-Done or Problem

As a Skillabi User, I want a simple way to gather and upload my course and program curriculum content so that I can quickly implement and use Skillabi upon adoption.

Problem Statement: To make the best use of Skillabi, institutions are required to manually gather syllabi and additional course content across their departments and programs, and share that information for Lightcast to ingest. This can be a manual, lengthy process, requiring institutions to collaborate across faculty/admin to pull and organize materials.

 

Value to Customers & Users

LMS integration would enable for users:

  • Quick content transfer from LMS to Skillabi (Lightcast): Integrating with Learning Management Systems to facilitate direct transfer of syllabi from the LMS to Lightcast can significantly reduce institution time and resource requirements to implement Skillabi

  • Quick content transfer from Skillabi (Lightcast) back into the LMS: This would offer users who alter course/program content in Skillabi a seamless method for then modifying their content directly in their familiar systems. This would increase access and usability of Skillabi by enabling institutions to work within their familiar workflows.

Similarly, institutions can easily transmit course material data from their LMS into Skillabi by using the Common Cartridge file format. This file format translates course content into a format that is workable within Skillabi.

 

Value to Lightcast

  • Reduced account management and CDOT time manually collecting and organizing content sent from institutions

  • Quicker time for users to implement, where institutions do not need to go through the cumbersome and lengthy process of gathering individual syllabi documents

Greater adoption of Skillabi and use of the tool for an entire institution’s program catalog, due to reduced frustration and barriers to implement.

Target User Role/Client/Client Category

Target User: Institutions using Skillabi with multiple programs across their institution. Users with significant course content would find the greatest value with LMS integration.

We can learn from case studies of institutions like Indiana University who have found success using LMS-to-Skillabi file file transfer via Common Cartridge file format. IU hopes to expand their use by automating file transfers and increasing access via the LMS. Learn from Indiana’s experiences here with Skillifying at Scale

 

Delivery Mechanism

This is a research epic. For implementation, exploring integration via an LMS plugin.

 

Success Criteria & Metrics

Definition of Done (PI-4) - Come to a conclusion on whether to establish connections with LMS providers, and how to integrate.

  • Research technical feasibility and process for establishing integrations with Skillabi and the 3 most common LMS platforms:

    • Canvas – e.g., via LTI

    • Blackboard

    • D2L Brightspace

  • Additionally, research technical feasibility of integrating Common Cartridge alongside the LMS integration.

  • Answer key question through research

    • What is the approximate level of effort required to establish plugins/integrations that allow course content transfer between Lightcast/LMS?

    • What concerns do we have about the feasibility and implementation?

    • What constraints exist related to how this fits into our implementation process?

    • Which LMS platforms offer the most compatibility?

Dependencies: 

  • This builds upon previous research into Common Cartridge started by Skillabi engineering team. Use this as a reference and starting point (Jira ticket)

Success metrics:

Metrics are drawn from North Star model and inputs.

  • Depth: Encourage more program owners to go beyond scraping and choose to upload phase 2 curriculum materials 

    • Increase in % of Institutions Sending Phase 2 Curricular Materials [pulling #s from curricular skill tagging team]

  • Once building and integrating a solution… Efficiency: Significantly reduced time to implement.

    • 50% reduction in # of Days to Send Phase 2 Curricular Materials

    • 50% reduced in Avg. # Days to First Institution Login (past 90 days)

 

Aspects that are out of scope (of this phase)

Building integration model

 

PART 2

Solution Description

Early UX (wireframes or mockups)

 

 

Non-Functional Attributes & Usage Projections

na

 

Dependencies

na

 

Legal and Ethical Considerations

No legal or ethical concerns.

High-Level Rollout Strategies

To be determined at a later date.

Risks

  • Would need to consider process changes required for users within the Analyst platform

Open Questions

 


Complete with Engineering Teams

 

Effort Size Estimate

Estimated Costs

Direct Financial Costs

Are there direct costs that this feature entails? Dataset acquisition, server purchasing, software licenses, etc.?

 

Team Effort

Each team involved should give a general t-shirt size estimate of their work involved. As the epic proceeds, they can add a link to the Jira epic/issue associated with their portion of this work.

Team

Effort Estimate (T-shirt sizes)

Jira Link

Team

Effort Estimate (T-shirt sizes)

Jira Link