Please note: The information provided here is intended only to assist with some of the common ways our product can be integrated in this system. Our Help Site is not a comprehensive guide to use of the Blackboard LMS, and our team can only assist with Credo integration; we are unable to provide support for any other aspect of Blackboard's functionality. Screenshots are provided for illustrative purposes but may not exactly match your own system, particularly since navigation elements can vary depending on your version of the platform.
Blackboard's documentation on LTI setup can be found here.
For LTI integration, your Blackboard instance will need to be release 9.1 or later.
Before implementing LTI links (launch URLs) in individual courses, Credo should be added to your LMS environment as an LTI Tool Provider / External Learning Tool Provider. This is a one-time step and requires administrator access.
Once the tool provider has been set up, course instructors can add LTI links to their courses without needing special admin permissions.
Step 1: Click on the System Administration in the top right corner. Once in the Administrator Panel, click on the "LTI Tool Providers" link under the "Integrations" header.
Note that in some older versions of Blackboard, there is a section called "Building Blocks" rather than "Integrations." In this case, first click the link labelled "Building Blocks."
Then, click on the option for "LTI Tool Providers."
Step 2: Click on Manage Global Properties and ensure that your settings are as follows:
Enabled in courses: Yes
Enabled in organizations: Yes
Creation of tool provider links: This can be configured according to your institution's preference. You will need to make sure that the Credo tool provider is approved in the next step.
Allow configured tool providers to post grades: Yes (this is important if you want the Credo grades to automatically integrate with your Blackboard gradebook)
Step 3: Go back to the LTI Tool Provider section and click on Register Provider Domain. Under the Provider Domain Status section, fill in the fields as follows:
Provider domain: This is the domain used by all of your Credo LTI links (also called launch URLS or tool URLs in Blackboard). Use the domain provided to you by Credo on your InfoLit (formerly Instruct) admin dashboard (on the "How to Use" tab).
Provider Domain Status: Approved
Step 4: Under the Default configuration section, fill in the fields as follows:
Default configuration: Set globally
Tool provider key: A tool provider key for your LMS environment will be provided to you by Credo and is listed on the How to Use tab of your InfoLit (formerly Instruct) admin dashboard.
Tool provider secret: This is also unique to your LMS environment and can be found listed on the How to Use tab along with the provider key.
If you cannot locate your key and secret, contact our support team at support@credoreference.com for assistance.
Step 5: Under the Institution Policies section, here are the settings required:
Send User Data: Select "Send user data only over SSL" or "Send user data over any connection" according to your preference.
User fields to send: Role in course, name, email address
Show user acknowledgement message: No
These settings control what information your Blackboard environment sends to Credo's platform during an LTI Launch. If you choose not to send user data to Credo or to restrict which user fields are sent, the LTI integration will still launch.
Information such as name and email address are used in Credo's assessment reporting/analytics to provide individual-level data. We recommend checking all of the options if you wish to make use of Credo's reporting/analytics, but if you wish to anonymize the student data stored in our system, you can un-check the settings for user name and user email.
Once you've set up these fields, click Submit.
The final tool should look like this:
Once this step is complete, you can now add LTI links to InfoLit content in your course, as described here: Adding an LTI Link to a course.
Blackboard also has a "Placements" functionality that allows you to configure individual LTI links here in the system admin settings. Then course instructors can select which links they want to use from the "Build Content" menu in their courses. For more information see Blackboard's documentation here. Credo support is also happy to advise on whether this method of integration will suit your InfoLit implementation; contact us at support@credoreference.com for assistance.