Coursera - Catalog Synchronization

The Learning Management System (LMS) course catalog is synchronized on a daily basis. New courses and course updates are communicated from Coursera to the Learning Management System using oAuth 2.0 as the authentication protocol. Coursera courses are available within 24 hours of enabling the integration, and are classified as online content in the Learning Management System.

Content delivered to the system via the Coursera integration is categorized as the online content training type. Because online content is updated via automatic synchronization, any manual changes made to online content metadata may be overridden in the Course Catalog and Course Console. For more information about how the online content training type behaves in the Course Catalog and Course Console, see the following:

Note: Only purchased courses are synchronized to the Learning Management System catalog.

Note: All courses are automatically defined as available for mobile consumption and can be used on the Cornerstone Learn app.

PERMISSION NAME PERMISSION DESCRIPTION CATEGORY
Course Catalog - Update

Grants ability to manage and edit training items listed in the Course Catalog and also grants access to the Course Console, where training can also be managed and edited. This permission also grants access to the Popular Requests and Highest Rated widgets on the Learning Admin Console (in conjunction with the Learning Admin Console - View permission). This permission also allows administrators to reversion online courses via the Course Console page. This permission also allows administrators to access an Edit Training option for training items included as objectives in Development plans.

This permission can be constrained by OU, User's OU, Training Type, Training Item, Provider, ILT Provider, User's ILT Provider, User, User Self and Subordinates, and User's LO Availability. This is an administrator permission.

Note: Adding an OU constraint and a provider constraint to this permission results in an "AND" statement.

Learning - Administration

Training Data

The Cornerstone OnDemand and Coursera for Business integration can communicate the following metadata fields to the Learning Management System catalog:

Field

Description
ID

The unique ID of the course
Title The course title
URL The course URL (used to redirect users to the provider’s course)
IsActive Specifies whether the course is available in the Coursera catalog. When a course is no longer available, it is defined as inactive in the Learning Management System catalog
Description

The description of the course
Thumbnail The course thumbnail image
Languages The list of available languages for the course
LastModifiedUTC The time of the last modification made to a course (UTC)
Duration The course duration
Subjects The list of subjects, mapped to the Learning Management System subject taxonomy

Subjects Mapping

Coursera’s subjects are mapped to Cornerstone’s Subject Taxonomy. See the table below for the list of subjects communicated to the Learning Management System catalog as part of the integration.

Subject

Coursera Domains
Business Skills Business
Technology Computer-science, Data-science, Information-technology, Physical-science-and-engineering
Continuing Education & Certifications Language-learning, Social-sciences, Math-and-logic
Health & Wellness Life-sciences
Personal Development Personal-development
Creative Arts-and-humanities

View Courses Loaded to the Course Catalog

To view courses which have been loaded to the Course Catalog using the integration:

  1. Navigate to Admin > Tools > Learning > Catalog Management and click the Course Catalog link.
  2. Click the Refine your search link on the Course Catalog search page.
  3. Click the Provider filter and choose the Coursera provider as the filter.
  4. Click the Search button. The courses that are returned in the search are courses that were loaded via the integration.

Learner Progress Data

When a learner completes a training item, their training completion is automatically recorded on their Learning Management System transcript. Training progress data is communicated by the User Progress API, protected by the oAuth 2.0 protocol.

The following data is communicated to Coursera when learners launch Coursera courses:

Parameter

Description
userGuid The user’s identifier in the Learning Management System
sessionToken The current session token that is used to authenticate the call to the Learning Management System when Basic Access Authentication is used
callbackUrl The Progress API callback path
subdomain Cornerstone’s portal name. Example: company.csod.com
registrationNumber The current user registration number

The following data is communicated back from Coursera:

JSON Value

Description
userGuid The userGuid the Learning Management System communicated when launching the course
courseId The unique ID of the course
status Shows whether the course is in a status of In Progress or Completed
userScore Shows the course score between 0 and 100
totalTime The total time the user spent viewing the course (HHHH:MM:SS)
timesAccessed The number of times accessed (total). Minimum value: 1
completionDate The date and time the course was completed
lastTimeAccessed The last date and time the user accessed the course
successStatus Indicates whether the user passed or failed the course
bookmark The last location the user reached in the content file
suspendData Additional user experience data
progress The percentage of a course the user completed (integer between 0 and 100)
registrationDate The date and time the user was registered for the course

Online content metadata can be edited via the Course Catalog. The following fields may be overridden when Coursera sends course updates:

  • Course Title
  • Course Description
  • Duration
  • Available Languages
  • Thumbnail
  • Subjects (Only Coursera subjects are overridden. Subjects added by the administrator are not affected)

Considerations

  • Only courses launched from the Learning Management System can be tracked by the integration.
  • Custom fields are defined with an empty value for Coursera courses.
  • A notification appears at the top of Coursera courses on the Course Console page, alerting the administrator that it is external content which may be updated via automatic synchronization, and manual changes may be overridden.
  • The Active button is disabled for Coursera courses and can be only edited by Coursera via catalog synchronization
  • This integration supports SMAL SSO implementation (IDP). No additional integration is required to enable the Cornerstone and Coursera for Business integration, because the following process is implemented:
    • Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) metadata is exchanged and set up in advance to establish the trust relationship between the Learning Management System and Coursera.
    • The learner launches the course from their Learning Management System portal.
    • The learner is then redirected to either the course URL or the Learning Management System’s outbound SSO endpoint.