Setting up flexible snapshot processes based in role-based access control

by Cathy Colless, University of York

Try to keep awake now... This was actually one of the best sessions I went to. They were talking about how they'd integrated their VLE with their student management system (which is SITS) and how they'd subsequently redone the integration so that they could handle enrolments onto sites that didn't map directly to a module - our co-taught modules, organisations etc.

They'd taken an interesting approach - for each module in SITS they created a dummy user in the VLE. Instructors could then enrol these dummy users onto their sites, and the integration checks for enrolments of these users, and then maps these to the modules in SITS and enrols the real users onto the Blackboard sites. So for example, if you have the same module taught at two levels, you'd enrol the dummy user for both MAVs onto the BB site, which would then mean that all students on either module would be enrolled on the BB site.

They'd then extended this approach to pull out other attributes they have information about on any university systems, meaning that you could enrol all Biology students, or first year Maths students, or HWB admin staff etc.

I'm not sure we'd use exactly this approach, but it shows it is possible to set up automatica enrolment for sites which don't map directly to a MAV, and it's probably something we should think about.