In today's world of digital instructional materials, districts and schools are turning to Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Canvas or Schoology to bring digital content to their students. These systems allow teachers to create custom content, and they can also import entire courses from publishers like CompuScholar. Read on to see how you might take advantage of this free integration option.
INTEGRATION OVERVIEW
IMS Global is a non-profit organization that publishes interoperability standards for educational systems. To import course into a LMS like Canvas or Schoology, we use the common cartridge and LTI standards.
- Common Cartridge is used to do the initial import the course structure and links into the LMS.
- LTI is used to access publisher content every time a student clicks on a resource link.
Any LMS that supports these IMS Global standards can take advantage of this integration. CompuScholar has successfully integrated with Canvas, Schoology, Blackboard, D2L, and other systems. One unfortunate holdout is Google Classrooms - Google has decided not to support the IMS Global interoperability standards to allow easy import and linking of content.
GETTING STARTED
If your school or district has an LMS and you'd like to perform a CompuScholar integration (either as an experiment or for production classrooms), please Contact Us to get started. We will provide two things for you:
- The common cartridge file(s) for the course(s) you want to integrate.
- The unique LTI keys assigned to your district to authenticate one-time links.
Once you have those items in hand, you can find configuration guidance and walk-through videos for popular systems on our Integrations page. Importing and configuring a master copy of each course normally takes 15 - 30 minutes.
ADVANTAGES OF SELF-HOSTING IN YOUR LMS
OK, why would you want to self-host publisher courses in your own LMS? There are several possible advantages:
- Your students may be more comfortable accessing all publisher content in one familiar, standardized environment.
- No student rosters or data are shared with CompuScholar!
- All grades are kept natively in your LMS gradebook; there is nothing to transfer out of CompuScholar's system.
- You can use your internal procedures for creating classes and rostering students, without relying on CompuScholar.
- You can take advantage of your LMS reporting, classroom management, and other favorite features.
ARE THERE ANY DISADVANTAGES?
Before leaping in feet-first, consider a few possible disadvantages of self-hosting in your LMS:
- Integration may involve your IT staff if teachers do not have enough permissions on the system to perform all configuration tasks.
- Classroom creation and rostering must be handled internally. This could be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on how easy your district has made the process!
- While CompuScholar can dynamically update lesson content, videos and other files, we can't update any quiz or test questions after importing the course into your LMS. You will be responsible for any needed quiz/test modifications over time. However, you have the full power of your LMS quiz engine at your fingertips.
- CompuScholar can't monitor your progress in your LMS. This means we can't be as proactive as normal about detecting and solving roadblocks, so we rely on you to communicate how well things are going.
For More Information
Check out our Nov/Dec, 2021 Professional Development Webinar - "Hosting Courses in Canvas, Schoology, and Other LMS" - for further discussion and a video demonstration of a Canvas and Schoology integrations. As always, please Contact Us if you have questions!