LMS: Blackboard Integration Setup

There are two ways to register Visible Body LTI 1.3 as a tool in Blackboard.

You can now manage the placement of the newly added Visible Body tool. We recommend adding Visible Body LTI 1.3 Course Home directly into a course.

Visible Body (LTI 1.3) should be available in your course’s left hand navigation already. Your administrator may have named this tool something else. We recommend that your admin add our Course Home to all courses using Visible Body. This makes it easier to manage course content and gives students and instructors one-click access to the full Visible Body Suite app.

However, if they have not installed Courseware Home you can still manage your courses in the Assignment Library. Additionally, if your administrator has given you permission to add external tools to your course, you can follow below to add Course Home yourself.

To log in and link your courses:

1. Select Visible Body and you’ll be prompted to sign in using your Visible Body account email and password. You’ll only have to do this once in Blackboard.
2. Choose the Visible Body course you want to associate with your Blackboard course. If you don’t have one set up yet, you can create one.
3. Click Link Course. There will be a confirmation message asking if you are sure. Click OK.
4. Your course is now linked. From the Visible Body (LTI 1.3) homepage, by selecting Go To Courseware, this will take you and your students to the associated course in Courseware.

The Visible Body Assignment Library displays all published assignments within your linked course. Click on any assignment to open it and view its activities, you'll see a toggle next to each activity that allows you to mark it as graded or ungraded - this will determine whether or not the assignment populates your LMS gradebook. Select the checkbox next to the assignment to link it to your course.

To make edits or publish new assignments, simply click Manage Assignments, and you will be taken directly to your linked Courseware course.

To update your linked course, click the settings cog in the upper right corner.

To link an assignment, follow these steps:

1. In Content navigate to the “+” and select Content Market
2. Find Visible Body’s 1.3 Assignment Library and select it. If you haven’t signed in and linked your Visible Body course yet you will now be prompted to do so.
3. Back in the Assignment Library, check off the assignments and activities you want to link.
4. Select Link Assignment and a deep link to your assignment will appear in your course! These assignments will be automatically added to your gradebook, but will need to be edited to count as a graded assignment.

To complete institutional setup successfully, your administrator will need the secret and key supplied by Visible Body. If you don’t have a secret and key from a Visible Body representative, please request one.

Watch this video to begin setting up your Blackboard Courseware integration or follow the steps below.

1. Log in to your Blackboard admin account and navigate to the “System Admin” page and then the “Administrator Panel” page.
2. To add Courseware as a tool, navigate to “LTI Tool Providers” under the “Integrations” heading and select the “LTI Tool Providers” link.
3. On the “LTI Tool Providers” page, select “Register LTI 1.1 Provider” under the “LTI Tool Providers” heading text.
4. From the “Register Provider Domain” page, follow these steps:
   • Under “Provider Domain Status”, navigate to the “Provider Domain” text field and enter:courseware.visiblebody.com
   • Next, make sure “Provider Domain Status” is set to the “Approved” option.
   • In the “Secondary Hostnames” text field, entercourseware.visiblebody on one line, then select enter to begin a new line and enter visiblebody.com on the second line. Note: These entries must be on separate lines.
   • Navigate to the fields under the “Default Configuration” section. Set the “Default Configuration” option to Set Globally.
   • In the “Tool Provider Key” field, enter your institution's key that was given to you by Visible Body.
   • In the “Tool Provider Secret” field, enter your institution's secret that was given to you by Visible Body.
   • In the “Tool Provider Custom Parameters” text field, enter:blackboard_course_id=@X@course.pk_string@X@This custom parameter is used by Courseware to give a unique identifier to Blackboard courses for use in our system so that we can properly link a Blackboard course to a Courseware course.
   • Next, move on to the fields under the “Institution Policies” section. Set the “Send User Data” option to Send user data over any connection or Send user data only over SSL, depending on your preference.
   • Check off all boxes for the “User Fields to Send” option. These include “Role in Course”, “Name”, and “Email Address”. This allows us to bring over student information when they create their Courseware accounts.
   • Next, set the Allow Membership Service Access option to “Yes” if that is your preference.

   • Finally, at the bottom right corner of the web page, scroll all the way down and select the “Submit” button to register Courseware as an LTI Tool Provider. After submitting, you will be sent back to the LTI Tool Providers page.

To manage the placement of the Courseware LTI Tool, select the dropdown arrow next to the “courseware.visiblebody.com” tool. Select the dropdown arrow, and then select the “Manage Placements” button in the dropdown menu.

1. You are now on the Manage Placements page for the “Courseware”tool. To create a new placement for our tool, select Create Placement under the Manage Placements: courseware.visiblebody.comheading.
2. Under the Placement Information heading, enter a title in the Label text field to give a name for Courseware in the Content section of the course. (We suggest using “Visible Body Courseware”. The name used in the label field is what students will see when they access Courseware from the Blackboard course.)
3. In the "Handle" text field, enter CW.
4. Set the Availability option to Yes.
5. Set the Type option toCourse content tool only. Note: Do not select "Deep Linking content tool", "Course tool" or any other radio buttons in the Type options area.
6. You can decide if you’d like Courseware to launch in a new window or stay within Blackboard. If you would prefer it to launch from within Blackboard, be sure “Launch in New Window” is not checked off.

7. Next, go to the fields under the “Tool Provider Information” section. For the “Tool Provider URL” text field, enter:

   https://courseware.visiblebody.com/blackboard

8. “Tool Provider Key” and “Tool Provider Secret” should already be filled out with the key and secret you entered during the registration process.
9. Finally, at the bottom right corner of the web page, scroll all the way down and select the “Submit” button.

Courseware is now accessible in the institution's Blackboard instance and is ready to be added to instructors’ courses.

Once you are logged into your Blackboard instructor account, navigate to the Blackboard Course you would like to link to Courseware.

• Inside your Blackboard course, select “Content” from the left navigation menu.
  • If you don’t find Visible Body Courseware listed in the “Content” box, contact your institution’s IT administrator. Visible Body Courseware could also be built in another area on this left navigation menu, such as "Information".
• On the Course Content page, select "Build Content" >“Courseware”, then enter “Visible Body Courseware” in the name field. “Permit Users to View this Content” should be checked. Then select “Submit” to add Visible Body Courseware to your course.

In your Blackboard course, select “Courseware” from the Content area on the left.

• Sign in to link your Blackboard and Courseware accounts, or sign in with Google by entering your Google account information. You won't be asked to log into Courseware again when accessing it through Blackboard.
• Next, you'll be prompted in your Courseware account to link a course from Courseware with your Blackboard course. Just select your course from the dropdown, or if you want to create a new course, select "Create One" below.
• Look for the green confirmation message at the top of the screen to make sure your course has been linked successfully.
• Each time you visit Courseware through Blackboard, it will bring you right to your course.

Some items to note:

• Import Courseware grades into Blackboard more effectively with the CSV export function in the Gradebook. Now you can use the populated "Username" column to match up students before you import the grades.
• Blackboard Courseware integration is available for schools that have a group license and for courses in which students purchase their own subscription.
• You only need one secret and key for each instance of Blackboard. Most instructors at one campus can use the same secret and key to set up their courses. If your school has multiple campuses using different instances of Blackboard, you will need a secret and key for each.
• If you make a master Blackboard course and make copies for other semesters or other instructors, you need to link to a unique Courseware course. The course syncing is 1:1.

If you've accidentally linked the wrong Courseware course to your Blackboard course or vice versa, you can follow these steps to unlink your courses.

1. On the LMS Integration page, navigate to the Blackboard subsection. You will see the listing of courses that are linked.
2. Check off the radio button next to the pairing you want to unlink.
3. Select the “Unlink Course” button, and confirm you want to unlink these courses by selecting “OK” in the pop-up. You will see a green confirmation message at the top of the screen that these two courses are now unlinked. Note: you can only unlink one set of courses at a time.

Now that your courses are unlinked, you may link a new Courseware course to your Blackboard course

Now that your Blackboard and Courseware courses are linked, your students are ready to get signed into Courseware through Blackboard. See this article for more explicit steps you can share with students!

1. Simply prompt your students to log into their Blackboard course and select “Content” in the left-hand navigation bar.
2. They will then launch Courseware from the Content page.
3. Next, they’ll be prompted to create a new Courseware account or log in to their existing account.
4. They will be brought right to the Courseware course you linked.

NOTE: DO NOT use the "Invite People" link in your Courseware course to invite students to your course. This feature does not work with the Blackboard-Courseware integration.