Version 2 of bFree, the Blackboard Course Extractor

The popular bFree application has been revised to extract far more material from a Blackboard course archive, and to make your exploration and use of that material easier.

The program now extracts Announcements; Discussion Board entries, archives, and attachments; and Digital Drop Box and group File Exchange uploads. It continues to extract wiki entries and attachments, Staff Information and attachments, and Content Area pages, including folders, descriptions, links, and attached files of all kinds. Tests, Gradebook, Surveys, Assignments, and Pools are among the content items not yet supported.

bFree will quickly create an independent web site for a course.
The site can be placed on a web server or CD, or even loaded into Sakai. The web site mimics the structure of the original Blackboard course.

The interface now displays previews along with the course outline, and provides a larger area for previews. All texts, titles, names, and descriptions can be searched to locate materials of interest.

All the features of bFree are documented within bFree itself.

bFree is available, free of charge, at:

http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/

A document detailing version changes is here:

http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/bFreeChanges.rtf

If you’ve discovered these before your uses have, you’re well ahead of the game.

I agree that the move to Sakai/Moodle certainly would have a number of bumps in the road – but if you’re effectively pulling content out of WebCT into some neutral format, getting into another platform is really more of a rebuild issue.

And for both you and Scott – I think it would be very beneficial to enumerate the issues migrating from Vista 3 to Vista 4, because those issues almost certainly will be magnified moving from WebCT to other vendors’ offerings.

I’m not sure of the specifics as to how Respondus does the whole HTTP Client thing, but I’ve done something similar for gathering survey results using the Apache HTTP Client: http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/httpclient/

I was talking with a colleague this morning and he suggested a conversion tool from WebCT/Bb would be a good addition to the Sakai or Moodle projects. If you’re interested in working on something along these lines I’d be down for helping out.

While reading the post, I started to wonder how one could go about using the existing SDK to move an entire course: content, discussions, assessments, etc. It would be a bit of work, but it might be a fun project. Using the webservices, you can grab: mail, calendar, assessments, grades, and files. I know there are alpha versions of announcements and discussions available on the WebCT Developers Network. For files you also have WebDAV available. With the Powersight Kit you have a few supported views that you could use for user info, grades, tracking data, etc. – more if explore beyond the supported views I’m sure. As for the learning modules, Respondus has some features that aren’t provided by the SDK – it would appear they use an HTTP client to pseudo-login and for example, download survey results. So along those lines, here’s a quick capture of what occurs when you click on the export icon beside a learning module and walk through the export process:

GET /webct/urw/lc45983238.tp47594553/displayFileBrowser.dowebct?folderID=47594553&type=Folder&multi=false&filter=none&writeAccessRequiredToSelect=true&applet=true&userOs=Win32&firstTimeFileBrowse=true

GET /webct/urw/lc45983238.tp47594553/fmFileSelectTreeView.dowebct?target=POPUP_EXPLORER_RIGHT&folderID=47594553

GET /webct/urw/lc45983238.tp47594553/browse.dowebct?userId=myusername&folderID=47594553&type=Folder&multi=false&filter=none&writeAccessRequiredToSelect=true&applet=true&userOs=Win32&firstTimeFileBrowse=true

GET /webct/urw/lc45983238.tp47594553/fmTreeView.dowebct?target=POPUP_EXPLORER_RIGHT&selectFolder=0_47594553&U=1176852512267

POST /webct/urw/lc45983238.tp47594553/cisLMExport.dowebct componentType=TOC_TYPE&returnURL=/pickMeLearningModuleComponent.dowebct?componentType=TOC_TYPE&userId=myusername&toolFrameType=rightToolframeset&userId=myusername&forward=/webct/pickMeLearningModuleComponent.dowebct?componentType=TOC_TYPE&regenFrame=done&oneElementId=47599071&viewType=exportOne&targetFolderId=47594553&backLink=https://hostname.com/webct/urw/lc45983238.tp47594553/toolfs.dowebct?forward=/webct/pickMeLearningModuleComponent.dowebct?componentType=TOC_TYPE&exportFileName=MYEXPORTEDMODULE&organizers=

POST /webct/urw/lc45983238.tp47594553//cisExportSummary.dowebct progressBarResult=1176852310263&progressBarSuccess=true&returnURL=/cisExportSummary.dowebct

So maybe manipulating the HTTP requests is the way to make this work – no guarantees that upgrades won’t break it, but it’s a quick and dirty way to get things done. I’ve done something similar for downloading survey results out of several sections.

Chris Vento leaving the company was a definite loss. Last summer he announced that for Vista 4, toolpack 2, they’d support the IMS tool interoperability standard. I’ve not kept track of that since, but it sounds like they’ve backed away from that commitment.

Nevertheless, I’m under the impression that if you make section backups in WebCT Vista, that other LMS such as Angel or D2L can take that content and unpack into their own products. Isn’t that functionality there now?

I know on our campus we do not allow instructors to make section backups at present for fear of taxing system resources too much. I’m curious to know how the content migrates from Vista 3 to Vista 4 and I’ve not yet seen that.

But I did just re-verify, that you can go to a Web folder for your course, in IE not Firefox, select all the files and then download to your local hard disk. That’s a piece of cake.

Lanny