Has anyone done any VLE / MLE / Sharepoint integration?

[Richard Bailey]

We are seeing a strong requirement for tight portal integration.

Perhaps this could be a good forum to discuss possibilities/ requirements.

I see the key educational portals to be:

Sharepoint
Moodle
Fronter

I guess the most basic level of integration would be the ability for users to provide links from the VLE to appropriate video in the MCS. At the moment unfortunately the MCS currently does not expose URLs allowing you to link into the VOD folder structure. This would also require the login page to pass the initially requested url through such that users without SSO and not logged in are parsed through to the required video asset after their credentials are requested.

The next level as I see it would be for modules for the various 3rd party portals to support the searching/ browsing/ and preview of video content from the WYSIWYG editor as the teacher creates the lesson plans. The student should then be able to watch the video back from the VLE interface.

The VLE's reporting engines should be able to leverage the MCS statistics in order to provide detailed analysis of which students have completed which courses.

Any thoughts...

Rich

[joe_h]

We are integrating our MCS with Moodle as well. Currently we are in our Beta test phase with plans to be in full production by start of next school year. We have a link in Moodle to the MCS requiring users to login for tracking purposes. We have also created links from Moodle pages direct to VOD content for content we don't need to track. Is anyone else using Moodle and integrating with MCS? I too would be interested in exploring approaches to searching/browsing/previewing.

[rmavro]

We are integrating our MCS with Moodle as well. Currently we are in our Beta test phase with plans to be in full production by start of next school year. We have a link in Moodle to the MCS requiring users to login for tracking purposes. We have also created links from Moodle pages direct to VOD content for content we don't need to track. Is anyone else using Moodle and integrating with MCS? I too would be interested in exploring approaches to searching/browsing/previewing.

There are a number of people now using MCS with Moodle, Blackboard, and similar Course Managment Systems (CMS).

Most teachers are used to pasting an Internet URL into their lessons, and with MCS we make it easy.  Because the system tracks users and provides conditional access (you can see something based on your login, but perhaps I cannot), you need this included with CMS too.  You can use the "MCS Selector" to do this.

Here is a link to a target video produced via the MCS Selector (the username is: demo and the password is: demo): 

http://www.ethernetv.com/mcsselector/default.aspx?gid=4d43535365617263684c6f6769632e566f44436f6e74656e744275636b6574102f4d6f766965732f4c696272617279204f6620436f6e6772657373&type=10&enctype=WM

Simply copy this URL into your CMS and you have direct video access to any online content, complete with authentication.

To create your own links from this demo system, use http://www.ethernetv.com/mcsselector and login with demo/demo


The MCS Selector is a VBrick Innovations custom product available for sale via your VBrick representitve.  It requires some custom support, and we'll be adding search tools and a different/better interface in the near future.

I should add that independent of "MCS", we are also building SharePoint video portal using SharePoint's own authentication system.  Details soon...

Hope this helps!