Additional features for Coursera - LMS integration

Table of content

1. Granular grade Sync
2. Grade Sync Without SSO (Roster Grade Sync)
3. Multiple LMS shells 
4. Incremental Grade Sync
5. Multiple LMS shells (light mode) 

The LMS integration over LTI includes the grade sync feature. Currently, GG4L offers 3 options of grade sync:

• Final Grade sync (the final grade for the Coursera course will be published in the LMS grade book);
• Granular grade sync:
  1. Option A (the grades for the chosen course assignments will be transferred to the LMS grade book);
  2. Option B (the grades for each gradable assignment of the course will be published in the LMS grade book, but not the final grade).

If you would like to learn more about the grade sync options, please refer to this article.

2. Grade Sync Without SSO (Roster Grade Sync)

The LTI integration includes the requirement for all the users to perform SSO from the LMS to the Coursera courses (using the published deep link) at least once. During the SSO, GG4L receives the parameters required for the grade sync.

The feature of grade sync without SSO allows GG4L to pull the required parameters for all the students who are enrolled in the LMS course shell, even if at least 1 user (instructor or student) has completed SSO.

3. Multiple LMS shells

The feature of Multiple LMS shells will be in use for the organizations that plan to publish the same course of one Coursera program in multiple LMS course shells. 

Please, let GG4l Customer Support know whether you would like to have this feature activated during the onboarding process. If you have the integration already set up and would like to take advantage of this feature, please reach out to GG4L Customer Support at support@gg4l.com

4. Incremental sync

For the customers who have Coursera-LMS Integration via GG4L, we can activate the Incremental Grade Sync function. It will change the way how the grades are sent to the LMS. If Incremental Grade Sync is activated, only new and updated grades will be exported to the LMS grade book. Otherwise, all the existing grades are exported to the LMS grade book every 24 hours. 

5.  Multiple LMS shells (light mode) 

The flow of this feature is the following:

• our system receives LTI parameters for all LMS course shells where a line item (a link to the Coursera course) is published;
• then, it starts sending the student's grade to all LMS course shells where this line item is published (if a student is absent in the course shell, we receive a 400 error from your LMS, if a student is present, we receive a 200 status);
• if the system receives a 400 status, it keeps sending grades until it finds the course shell where the student is present and receives a 200 status;
• once the 200 status is received, the system stops sending that specific grade and moves on to another grade and student.

Such a flow is applied in order to optimize the syncing process when the organization has a heavy load of data. We could potentially change the flow a bit so that it does not stop sending grades even after receiving a 200 status which will ensure that if a student is present in more than one course shell, they receive a grade in all of the course shells. However, in this case, we would need to closely monitor the sync process for a few days. This is to ensure that the data load does not increase significantly. If we notice a considerable increase, we may need to adjust the sync schedule to occur every two to three days to prevent data overload and maintain optimal system performance.