senkyoshi

Senkyoshi Converter

Senkyoshi converts exported Blackboard packages into Canvas .imscc packages. It also allows you to upload those converted packages to a Canvas instance.

Feature Comparison

Senkyoshi converts Blackboard course exports as well as Instructure's converter with several improvements detailed in the table below:

Feature	Instructure Blackboard Converter	Senkyoshi
Announcements	Partial Conversion, links embedded or otherwise are not converted/broken.	Converts all announcements including all links.
Assignments	All assignments lumped into one big group. No separations from quizzes, surveys, and assignments, some broken links in content.	Separates the assignments into a few categories based on Blackboard structure: Tests, Assignments, Surveys, Practicums, and Quizzes. A few courses have broken links to files that did not exist in the Blackboard course file. All links in content work appropriately.
Discussions	Basic conversion supported, some discussions missing.	All discussions, including Blackboard Seminar Discussions, are imported with topic content.
Pages	Basic conversion supported, some pages missing or content links broken.	Creates pages for most all module items and separates them per assignment and lesson page from Blackboard structure. Creates additional pages for Blackboard attachments that have content descriptions.
Files	Basic support, flattened file directories into a single top level with all files.	Keeps folder/file structure from Blackboard when importing to Canvas Files.
Quizzes	Basic support, unable to convert quiz answers in certain formats and converts an incorrect number of quizzes from the quiz banks.	Converts the correct amount of quizzes and is able to determine all the correct answers for each quiz. Changes Blackboard formats that Canvas doesn't support into correct formats.
Modules	Basic support, modules created at a single level and category.	Converts Blackboard Lesson Category structure into Canvas Modules with indented structure for sub-content.
Pre-requisites	No support for Blackboard Adaptive Release.	Converts Blackboard Adaptive Release content into Canvas Pre-Requisite requirements to view certain class material. Follows same format that was used in Blackboard.
SCORM	No support for SCORM content.	(Optional) Uploads SCORM packages to a SCORM management system tool in Canvas as well as place them into Canvas Files. Will find any SCORM packages that exist in a Blackboard course export.

Installation

Canvas

See Senkyoshi Canvas Plugin if you want to enable this in your canvas app.

CLI

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem "senkyoshi"
gem "canvas_cc", git: "https://github.com/atomicjolt/canvas_cc.git"

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install senkyoshi

Create a Rakefile and add:

require "senkyoshi/tasks"
Senkyoshi::Tasks.install_tasks

Create a senkyoshi.yml and add credentials:

# Generally looks like https://< mycanvas_instance >/api
:canvas_url: <canvas instance api url>

# Canvas tokens can be generated at <my_canvas_url>/profile/settings provided
# that the user has the required privileges
:canvas_token: <canvas token>

# The account or sub-account ID. This can be :self, :default, or an ID
:account_id: <id>

# URL of SCORM manager. This could be the Adhesion app
# [https://github.com/atomicjolt/adhesion]
:scorm_url: <scorm manager url>

# This should be the endpoint to launch a given SCORM course. In the case of
# Adhesion, this will look like https://<adhesion url>/scorm_course
:scorm_launch_url: <scorm launch url>

# This should be the oauth_consumer_key for scorm. In the case of
# Adhesion, it would just be `scorm`.
:scorm_oauth_consumer_key: <scorm oauth consumer key>

# This is the shared id for the jwt aud. In the case of Adhesion it
# will be `adhesion`.
:scorm_shared_id: <scorm shared id>

# This is the secret used to create a jwt to communicate with the SCORM manager.
:scorm_shared_auth: <scorm manager token>

# The number of seconds before uploads timeout. Defaults to 1800 (30 minutes)
:request_timeout: <request timeout seconds>

CLI Usage

Senkyoshi rake tasks can be used to batch convert Blackboard Courses to Canvas Courses and optionally upload them to a Canvas instance.

It expects all Blackboard courses to be converted to be in a folder called sources, and outputs to a folder

Run the rake task to convert from .zip to .imscc:

rake senkyoshi:imscc

This will take all your files in your source folder and convert them to your outputs folder.

Run converting files in parallel:

time rake senkyoshi:imscc -m # The `time` command is optional.

Delete entire outputs folder:

rake clean

Upload to Canvas to process:

rake senkyoshi:upload

Development

After checking out the repo, run bundle install to install dependencies. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/atomicjolt/senkyoshi. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the AGPL-3.0 License.