ElluminateLive module

Introduction

Attention Elluminate Users!

Elluminate Inc. has announced an integration with Moodle this past week at EDUCAUSE 2006 in Dallas Texas. With this integration an instructor or admin can now add an Elluminate Live! meeting activity within their Moodle course from the 'Add an activity' drop-down list. All meeting setup is done within Moodle rather than the Elluminate management portal. There are options for grading and for accessing pre-recorded meetings. Participant sign-on is passed from Moodle to Elluminate when they enter a meeting (single sign-on). A brief description of the integration is shown below. This module has been contributed by members of the Moodle Partners program. Support for this module will be available in the US through Remote-Learner.net and in Canada through Open Knowledge Technologies. Elluminate users and interested parties should contact their Elluminate representative for installation and support details.

Module Features

• Communicates with an Elluminate Live! server using SOAP web services.
• Allows an admin / teacher to schedule an Elluminate meeting with a Moodle activity.
• Moodle manages user accounts automatically on the Elluminate server so users accessing a meeting from Moodle do not require a second sign-on.
• When setting up a meeting the course creator can specify a description, time and date and whether the meeting should be recorded. A Teacher can also assign a Grade value for attendance and specify whether this will be a private meeting.
  • The admin/teacher has the option of updating the automatic attendance that is set when a user clicks on the join meeting link. A user could, in theory, click an activity link and be marked as attended so a teacher can update that status after the meeting if it's incorrect.
• Meeting moderators (and participants if the meeting is private) are managed within Moodle.
  • In the future when Moodle has Roles added this feature will evolve to allow student mentors for example to be added as a meeting moderator.
• Integrates with the Moodle calendar creating course or user events depending on whether a meeting is public or private
• All standard Reports and Logs are available within Moodle's 'Activity report' screens for admin/teacher.
• There is an Elluminate Live! 'block' that displays Recent recordings available to participants who missed an event.

Elluminate Live! features

• Creates Elluminate user accounts.
• Handles assigning of moderators and participants.
• Seat reservation and checking for available seats over a specific period of time.
• Meeting boundary times can be configure by an administrator user to allow teachers to set their own meeting boundary times or leave them at a system-wide default value.
• Recordings for meetings are (including multiple recordings) supported and also deleting recordings from within Moodle.
• Uses a specific Moodle adapter to handle Moodle-related access to the ELM Manager.

Plans for the future

• Incorporate code which allows for meeting event reminders to be supported. This would be a Moodle message or e-mail sent at a specified amount of time before the meeting from within Moodle to users who are participating in a meeting to remind them about it.
• Handle management of the Elluminate Live! user accounts from within Moodle.

Installation

For the discussion below we will assume that a Moodle install exists at http://www.mysite.net/ and the code is located in a directory on the server called /home/mysite/public_html/

• If you download the code from the links below (block and module separately) you should unpack each archive file into their respective directories:
  • Unpack the block into /home/mysite/public_html/blocks
  • Unpack the module into /home/mysite/public_html/mod
    • NOTE: If you're using a theme that displays it's own icons, you have to copy the Elluminate Live! activity module icon into your theme's directory. If you were using the Chameleon theme with Moodle 1.6 or above, you would need to create a directory

      /home/mysite/public_html/theme/chameleon/pix/mod/elluminatelive/

      and copy the

      /home/mysite/public_html/mod/elluminatelive/icon.gif

      file into this new directory.
• Visit the administration page of your site to install these new components
  • http://www.mysite.net/admin/
• Go to the Admin modules configuration page to change the settings for the Elluminate Live! activity module
  • Pre Moodle 1.7: Be logged in as an administrator and, from the main site index page, click on the Configuration link in the Admin menu, then click on Modules to go to the activity module configuration page
  • Moodle 1.7 and higher: Be logged in as an administrator and, from the main site index page, click on the Modules link in the Site Administration menu and then Activities below that to go to the activity modules configuration page
• Enter the server information to connect to your Elluminate Live! manager and use the Test connection button to verify that you can connect
• You should now be able to add Elluminate Live! activities into the course on your site. Congratulations!

See also

• Using Moodle New Elluminate Live Module forum discussion
• Currently this module is two separate parts (the block and module code) in the Moodle Contrib CVS area. Use the following links to download the latest versions of these parts:
  • block
  • module