Coursera Integration Q&A

In this article, you will find answers to the most frequently asked questions about the LTI integration with Coursera

Content List

1. List of the supported LMSes for the LTI integration
2. What is SSO?
3. When, why, and how should columns/assignments appear in the gradebook if Granular Grade sync Option B is chosen?
4. Why do I receive email notifications from LMS about my graded assignment if I already have a grade? 
5. When choosing Option A for grade sync the student is redirected to the assignment, can they access the whole content of the course with this option? How can I get them redirected to the Coursera homepage?
6. Does the student need to click each of the published assignment links if they belong to the same Coursera course? (Option A) 
7. Can we use different Grade Sync options in different LMS course shells?
8. Why do test students use our licenses and how to renew them?
9. Does a newly added course to a previously added program update automatically in the LMS?
10. What if one of the students doesn’t appear in the Coursera learning program lists?
11. How do students access Coursera? Can they log in directly from the Coursera site?

List of the supported LMSes for the LTI integration:

1. Moodle
2. Blackboard
3. Canvas
4. D2L
5. Google Classroom
6. Schoology
7. Buzz

What is SSO?

LTI SSO is the technology that provides easy access for all the users from your LMS to the Coursera platform and its courses. If the students are redirected to Coursera using SSO from their LMS. The user can create a connection for their current Coursera account or create a new one associated with their LMS email during the first SSO (it will be created using the user’s account data from the LMS). This way the user’s accounts in the LMS and Coursera are connected.

Basically, with the LTI SSO, all the users who have the access to respective courses in your LMS will be able to take a license to the Learning Program and enroll in Coursera courses with just one button, clicking the link to the Coursera course published in your LMS.

When, why, and how should columns/assignments appear in the gradebook if Granular Grade sync Option B is chosen?

The columns for option B are normally published in your LMS grade book after at least one person completes SSO from that course and we run sync on our end. The automatic sync happens once a day so there might be a delay between passing SSO and columns in the grade book being published.

As for the columns with a course name created in the grade book, this is an expected behavior for the integration. According to (your LMS) logic, the course you publish automatically creates a gradebook entry and other grade book columns that are published automatically as a result of our system pushing them in order to pass back the grades.

Why do I receive email notifications from LMS about my graded assignment if I already have a grade? 

The reason it happens is that GG4L syncs the data from Coursera to your LMS every day, meaning the same grade is sent to your grade book daily. 

In order for you to stop receiving these notifications we can offer two options:

• If you have used your work email for grade sync testing, please unenroll the test user (with your email) from the LMS course shell, and then you will stop receiving notifications;
• If the students are complaining about receiving multiple email notifications about their grades, we can enable the "Incremental grade sync" functionality for your university. This implies sending only new and updated grades to the LMS grade book (meaning that even if the sync happens every day, you receive notifications only for the new grades).

(Option A) When choosing Option A for grade sync the student is redirected to the assignment, can they access the whole content of the course with this option? How can I get them redirected to the Coursera homepage?

Sure students can navigate to other parts of the course since option A implies getting redirected to specific assignments published in the LMS but does not restrict them from accessing the whole course once they are in Coursera. It also implies publishing links to specific gradable items in your LMS and getting redirected directly to them.

It is possible, however, to change the grade sync option to Option B, which implies publishing a link to the whole course, getting redirected to the homepage of that course, and returning grades for all gradable items within that course to your LMS. Another option that allows your students to be redirected to Coursera's homepage is the Final Grade Sync Option, where you do not receive the grades for any assignments, but receive a final grade for the course instead.

Please note that in case you want to change the option, you will have to reconfigure the external tool, republish the links to the courses and ask students to pass SSO again, which in general takes up to one week. If you would like to change the grade sync option, please let reach out to us at support@gg4l.com and GG4L Support Agent will help you do the transition. 

Please, refer to the following article to learn more about the Grade sync Options to LMS from Coursera.

Does the student need to click each of the published assignment links if they belong to the same Coursera course? (Option A)

Since Option A for Granular Grade Sync implies publishing a link to each gradable assignment, clicking the published links is crucial for creating a connection between the Coursera course assignment and the respective assignment in the LMS. That is why, in order to ensure grade sync for published assignments - the students have to click each published link. However, we can enable the feature of “Grade sync without SSO” for your integration. This means, that only one person from the course (either a student or an instructor) will have to click all the published links in the LMS to create a connection between the LMS and Coursera. The rest of the students will only have to click one of the links in the LMS, in order to enroll in the Coursera program (regardless of whether they already have an account or not) and automatically take a license for that program. The student can complete the rest of the assignments without going back to LMS to complete SSO. The assignments' grades will be passed to the LMS grade book within 72 hours after completion.

Can we use different Grade Sync options in different LMS course shells?

Unfortunately, having two Grade Sync options per one LMS instance is technically impossible due to the LTI specifications restrictions. The thing is, it allows the creation of only one external tool under one domain, meaning that even if 2 external tools are created, the grade sync would work only for one of them and the other will remain inactive. 

Why do test students use our licenses and how to renew them? 

Within the integration, the licenses are automatically given to every user who passes SSO and gets enrolled into a Coursera course (be it a real or a test student). However, once the user is removed from the program the license is renewed. This can be done by the person from your institution with an admin account for your Coursera instance can remove the test user from the program after the test stage is completed successfully. After it is done, the license can be used by a real student. 

Here are the steps on how to remove the students:

1. log in to your Organization Admin account;
2. Find the necessary Learning Program;
3. Navigate to the “Manage Learners” tab and scroll down to the list of learners;
4. Check the user you want to remove and click “Remove Learners”.

Does a newly added course to a previously added program update automatically in the LMS? 

If the program has already been activated in our system to be available for publishing in your LMS, and some new course(s) are added to the given program later, during the next daily synchronization the course(s) will be available in the LMS automatically. This means, the course(s) will be available and the instructor or administrators can publish them in LMS within 24 hours after they were added to the Coursera Learning Program. If the course(s) are needed urgently, please reach out to us at support@gg4l.com and we will manually force course update.

Why one of the students doesn’t appear in the Coursera learning program lists?

The main reason is that the students have not been enrolled in the respective Coursera course published in the LMS course shell, hence SSO was not completed. Below are the instructions to take into account for them to enroll in the course in the proper way.  

1. First, you have to access the link created in your subject by your teacher. This link will redirect you to the Coursera page to formalize your registration with your Uni email account (ex. first_lastname@myuni.com) and your usual password. 
2. Check that you have written your email account correctly, without any additional symbols or letters, as this will ensure proper redirection and access to Coursera.
   
3. In case you access with a MAC/Apple computer, keep in mind to use the Chrome browser, other browsers might give you problems. 
4. Browser permissions to open pop-ups or redirects: Give permissions to the browser from the browser bar where the blocked page symbol appears. 

Once registered you have to join the Uni’s Coursera program, a screen will appear with the option. Later you can search for your course in the catalog to enroll or access it again from the link created in your subject to access it more directly.

How do students access Coursera? Can they log in directly from the Coursera site?

The students have to access Coursera from the published in the LMS deep link. The SSO from the LMS is an obligatory step. The students' LMS and Coursera accounts will not be connected if Coursera is accessed directly.

Here are the articles you can refer to:

How to access Coursera Course from Moodle LMS

How to access Coursera Course from Blackboard Learn

How to access Coursera Course from Canvas LMS

How to access Coursera Course from Desire2Learn LMS

Added a new Learning Program on Coursera and it is not available in the LMS for publishing. How do I make it available?

Newly added Coursera Learning Programs do not appear in the LMS content selection automatically. If you add new Learning Programs to Coursera, please send GG4L Customer Support (support@gg4l.com) the name(s) of the newly added program(s) and the GG4L Support Agent will activate it for your LMS integration.

We suggest using the subject: Activate New Coursera Programs

Why is Coursera course content displayed differently in choose content window?

The documentation might slightly differ from what you are seeing in the Publish Content window.

Documentation:

Possible view:

Answer: Indeed, the way how the deep linking content is displayed is based on the quantity of content that is present in your Coursera instance. 

If you have only one (test) program activated for LMS integration, you will not need to choose it. If you have 2 and more Learning Programs, the first step will be to choose the Program. 

the program has only 4 courses, the form can display them all in one window.

How to limit access to LTI (content publishing) in Moodle

Currently, Moodle doesn’t have the functionality to set limits on LTI access for a specific role or group of users. There are 2 ways how access to the LTI (for publishing Coursera courses) can be limited.

1. The first workaround for restricting access to a few faculty members is to create a tool within a specific Moodle course shell by clicking the "Plus" icon when adding an activity as shown in the screenshot.
   
   If a tool is created this way, it can be visible to the faculty members that are enrolled in that course.

2. The second way would require the constant involvement of the Moodle Admin every time the faculty members would like to publish a course. So in case the tool is set up on the organization level, an admin can change the option in "Tool configuration usage" from "Do not show; use only when a matching tool URL is entered" to "Show as a preconfigured tool when adding an external tool" every time there is a request from faculty to publish Coursera content links in different Moodle course shells. And then, once the content is published - change "Tool configuration usage" back to the first option.

    

   

   Unfortunately, these are the limitations on Moodle's side that are not under our control to overcome at this moment. Please, feel free to contact us at support@gg4l.com if there are any questions regarding this.