Daily Archives: December 7, 2017

Integrating Koseu / Tsugi into Google Classroom

TL;DR – The Demo

Tsugi and Google Classroom

For the past four years, I have been building software to implement my vision for the new technologies that will enable the Next Generation Digital Learning Environment/Ecosystem.

  • Tsugi – is software infrastructure, APIs, and code libraries that allow interactive learning tools to be built, hosted and integrated into Learning Management Systems like Sakai, Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, Desire2Learn, edX, or Coursera. Without requiring the programmer to read and understand the complex documentation that describes the low level details of these integrations.

  • Koseu is a LMS/Course platform that is aimed at supporting course content on the web. Koseu in a sense is a way for every teacher to build and publish a “MOOC of my Own” while at the same time making that learning content easily integrated into LMS systems. My Python for Everybody web site (www.py4e.com) is a good example of a well developed Koseu-based web site.

Up to this point, Tsugi has focused on the standards like such as IMS Learning Tools Interoperability, IMS Common Cartridge, and IMS Content Item that are used to integrate content and tools into traditional LMS systems.

But increasingly, Google Classroom is being used in K12 and beyond as the “LMS” of choice since so many organizations already use Google Suite for their single sign on, document editing, forms, etc. It is a simple matter to just start using Google Classroom – and Google Classroom is very well connected to the rest of the Google Suite.

So we have added initial support for Google Classroom integration to Tsugi/Koseu. The Google Classroom API patterns are very different than IMS LTI and Content Item Message. Google Classroom uses an OAuth 2.0 and single sign-on (SSO) pattern instead. This pattern requires more initial coordination, but has some nice features that allow the end-user to be involved in their own privacy decisions.

With this support, a Tsugi tool can send grades to the Learning system regardless of where the tool was launched using LTI or with Google Classroom using the exact same lines of code and exact same code libraries.

If we are truly going to make a Next Generation Digital Learning Ecosystem, systems like Tsugi and Koseu need to look beyond the traditional LMS market and to emerging platforms like Google Classroom.