General questions
I don't see Course Publisher on the navbar. How do I launch the tool?
From the Admin Tools menu, under Organization Related, click Course Publisher.
Note: The Publish tool must be turned on in Organization Tools and the course publisher role must have the Publish Course permission.
Can my partners integrate with Brightspace if their LMS is behind a firewall?
No. By design, the HTTP AICC Communication Protocol (HACP) requires that an LMS communicate over the HTTP protocol. However, you can create firewall rules to allow HACP traffic.
Can I publish courses for free?
For Core and Legacy Brightspace customers, Course Publisher is a freely available tool. However, users that enter your learning environment through Course Publisher are counted towards your Brightspace user count. D2L highly recommends contacting your D2L Account Manager to understand the impact on your contract.
Can I try this out on my test environment?
Yes. You can try connecting production to test through Course Publisher to see the workflow.
Do you integrate with other LMS' not listed here?
D2L can integrate with any LMS that is LTI 1.3 compliant or accepts AICC packages. You can check for LTI 1.3 compliance of any LMS on the IMS Global website.
Courses
I updated content in a course that is currently deployed at a partner's destination LMS. Do I need to re-deploy a new course package or send new LTI links to the partner?
No. Course providers can update courses in real-time, without having to re-deploy course packages or LTI links to partners.
What types of courses can you use to publish a course package in the host LMS?
You can only publish a course package from courses created with Brightspace’s course creation tools. However, those courses can contain anything a current course can contain – quizzes, scorm objects, assignments, groups etc.
Am I sharing my course content with my partners by giving them an AICC course package? Can they get access to my content outside the course?
No. The benefit of using the Course Publisher tool to publish an AICC course package is that the content is still hosted within your Brightspace instance. The content is not contained in the package, only the necessary information to access your hosted content and allow users in the destination LMS to search your course.
Do course packages support AICC 3.5 and 2.2?
No, course packages exclusively support AICC 4.0.
Can I send the same course to multiple partners?
Yes, but D2L does not recommend sending the same course package to multiple partners. To effectively manage the distribution of course packages, you can publish multiple course packages from the same course. When naming each package, create a unique recipient name that identifies the intended recipient's organization. If you deploy the same course package to multiple recipients, you cannot differentiate traffic from other recipients and access control for the course package applies to all recipients.
Note: The course publisher logs offer the ability to see where launches are coming from per course (by recipient). This allows you to determine if external learners are coming from elsewhere.
Users
Do external learners need to log in to Brightspace to access the learning content I provide them?
No, all course packages are accessed from the destination LMS through LTI or AICC depending on the workflow. To provide the best user experience for the learner, Course Publisher automatically provisions the necessary accounts required by Brightspace, based on the information provided by the authentication integration.
How is the Brightspace username constructed in the host LMS?
The first time an external learner in the destination LMS launches a course package, a Brightspace user is created in the host LMS. The username assigned is a concatenation of "recipient name" (used to publish the course package), underscore, and the LTI userID or username for AICC are transmitted by the destination LMS. For example, if the host LMS publishes a course package for "[companyname], Inc", and the external learner accessing the course in the destination LMS has the username "John Smith," a Brightspace username of "[companyname_Inc_jsmithLTIGUID" for LTI (or “[companyname]_jsmith” for AICC) is created in the host LMS. The unique LTI ID is not a recognizable ID right now. The best way to find a user is with their email address. D2L is investigating a more efficient solution.
What learner role is used for external users accessing a course package?
To enroll new external learners into courses in the host LMS, Course Publisher uses the learner role defined in the d2l.System.Enrollment.LearnerRole configuration variable. This configuration variable is also used by other tools such as Discover, so it may already be set. This is set by course, so you can have different roles for different courses if desired.
Can external users access course packages on a mobile device?
Yes, the user experience and reporting is the same from the web, tablet, or mobile device.
If an external learner in the destination LMS is taking multiple courses published from the same host LMS, are multiple users created in the host LMS for that one external learner?
No, assuming you used the same recipient name each time an AICC package was published. The username in the host LMS is formed as "recipient name_LMSusername". Therefore, all course packages with the same recipient name that are deployed on the same destination LMS use the same Brightspace username when enrolling a user into the courses.
What happens if multiple destination LMS' have an external learner with the same username? Will the host LMS think they are the same person and merge their user records?
Not if you correctly use unique recipient names when publishing your AICC course packages. For example, if jsmith exists in two destination LMS' and you use unique recipient names for those destination LMS', you would have users in the host LMS named "recipient name A_jsmith" and "recipient name B_jsmith." For LTI courses, the unique LTI ID is unique.
Reporting
If an external learner navigates to a course directly on the host LMS, is their activity sent back to the host LMS?
No. To communicate activity to a destination LMS, content must be launched from within the destination LMS. If an external user accesses the course directly from a URL, the activity is still reported to the course.
After launching a course package from a destination LMS, what activity is reported to the destination LMS? What activity is reported to the host LMS?
Course completion and grades are reported to the destination and host LMS'. However, this activity is only reported to the destination LMS if the learner launches the course from the destination LMS. The AICC standard does not allow transmission of course progress.
Can I see where external user traffic is coming from?
Yes, the Course Package tool allows the course publisher to monitor course activity and revoke access to specific AICC course packages as required.
What information is passed back and forth between the host LMS and destination LMS?
AICC:
- Inputs: Username, User ID, Launch URL
- Outputs: Completion, Final Grade
LTI:
Note: Although there is more information that can be passed from LTI links, the following functional information is specific to Course Publisher workflows:
- Inputs: Authentication/Launch parameters Username, User ID, EmailOptional (For Brightspace to Brightspace publishing): Org Defined ID.
- Outputs: Grade and completion is sent back when final grade in the course is set, even if the user closed the course
Troubleshooting
I get an error when launching the Brightspace course link
In the LTI configuration information, ensure that all fields are input correctly and there are no trailing spaces or slashes.
The learner cannot see their User Progress
Your course might have sections and the learner is not in a section. Ensure that the learner is enrolled into a section and that the section is set in the future to auto-enroll new learners.
The learner received a course completion as soon as they launched a course
A course package sends completion as soon as it is launched by a learner; the grade does get passed until later.
I deleted a user account in the publisher LMS, but the enrollment for the course still counted the user
When a user launches a course via LTI into a published course, and the user account is then deleted (in the publisher LMS), the course enrollments still counts that user. You cannot delete a user account from Course Publisher; this is for accounting purposes.