Caliper Metric Profiles

Caliper Metric Profiles provide a basic, consistent format for emitting and consuming learning events regardless of the Learning Management System or Educational Tool. These profiles leverage other IMS Global standards like LTI in order to mesh interoperable tools and interoperable event data to allow for the use of common tools across platforms with the added ability to analyze the usage of that tool for all students regardless of the environment that student originates from.

We also have documentation on the specific events sent by Blackboard Learn,

The metric profiles are realized in the form of JSON for Linked Data (JSON-LD) payloads containing a set of common objects, each with the ability to add application-specific extended data objects. The profile defines a context for the data and establishes the relationships between entities to define the event and all of its supporting data. The specification defines these payloads in such a way to allow for transport-compliant custom events like the Blackboard Learn-specific ForumEvent, allowing any event store to be able to accept and interpret these events, even if they are strictly defined in the specification itself.

The overarching goal of these profiles is to encapsulate events and context in a shared semantic model so there is consistency from event to event.

Caliper Outcome Profile

Blackboard Learn supports the following defined metric profiles:

Session
Assessment
Assignable
Grade

The specification defines a number of tool-specific profiles as well. An example of this is the MediaEvent, which Blackboard worked closely with Kaltura to implement in the context of the Kaltura LTI integration.

JSON Syntax

A Caliper event is essentially a large JSON document, built in a defined format, containing a specific set of data. The top level of this document contains 9 defined objects and two Linked Data elements to illustrate what data is expected.

Objects

Object	Description
@context	Defines the short-hand names used throughout the Caliper event.
type	Defines the type of event being sent.
actor	The entity performing the event.
action	What the actor actually did.
object	What the action was performed on.
target	An entity that represents a particular segment or location within the object.
generated	The result of the action.
eventTime	The ISO-compliant date and time that the event happened.
edApp	The application reporting the event.
group	The environment that the event took place in, e.g. a course. Can be nested.
membership	Information about the relationship between the actor and the group.
federatedSession	A unique identifier used to determine what system/tool is reporting data. If the event occurs within the context of an LTI Tool Launch, the actor’s tool consumer LtiSession may be referenced.
session	The user’s current session

Sample Caliper Event

{
  "sensor": "a118bba8-5378-4533-899b-8862ac59db03",
  "sendTime": "2020-12-24T17:38:16.580Z",
  "dataVersion": "http://purl.imsglobal.org/ctx/caliper/v1p1",
  "data": [
    {
      "@context": "http://purl.imsglobal.org/ctx/caliper/v1p1",
      "type": "SessionEvent",
      "id": "53d8542f-c4ff-4100-b2a4-1f8e035f0439",
      "actor": {
        "id": "https://caliper-mapping.cloudbb.blackboard.com/v1/sites/a118bba8-5378-4533-899b-8862ac59db03/users/ffc08009f0884c059192bac549e117b2",
        "type": "Person",
        "extensions": {
          "bb:user.id": "_1_1",
          "bb:user.externalId": "administrator"
        }
      },
      "action": "LoggedIn",
      "object": {
        "id": "https://caliper-mapping.cloudbb.blackboard.com/v1/sites/a118bba8-5378-4533-899b-8862ac59db03/applications/learn",
        "type": "SoftwareApplication",
        "extensions": {
          "bb:request.headers.agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/87.0.4280.88 Safari/537.36",
          "bb:request.headers.ipAddress": "186.28.208.123"
        }
      },
      "target": {
        "id": "https://caliper-mapping.cloudbb.blackboard.com/v1/sites/a118bba8-5378-4533-899b-8862ac59db03",
        "type": "DigitalResource",
        "creators": [],
        "learningObjectives": [],
        "keywords": []
      },
      "eventTime": "2020-12-24T17:38:09.076Z",
      "edApp": {
        "id": "https://caliper-mapping.cloudbb.blackboard.com/v1/sites/a118bba8-5378-4533-899b-8862ac59db03/applications/learn",
        "type": "SoftwareApplication",
        "extensions": {
          "bb:request.headers.agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/87.0.4280.88 Safari/537.36",
          "bb:request.headers.ipAddress": "186.28.208.123"
        }
      },
      "federatedSession": {
        "startedAtTime": "2020-12-24T17:38:09.076Z",
        "id": "https://caliper-mapping.cloudbb.blackboard.com/v1/sites/a118bba8-5378-4533-899b-8862ac59db03/sessions/0356052DAA966AA071787F54DBFEB1B1",
        "type": "LtiSession",
        "name": "0356052DAA966AA071787F54DBFEB1B1",
        "dateCreated": "2020-12-24T17:38:09.076Z",
        "extensions": {
          "bb:request.headers.agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/87.0.4280.88 Safari/537.36"
        },
        "user": {
          "id": "https://caliper-mapping.cloudbb.blackboard.com/v1/sites/a118bba8-5378-4533-899b-8862ac59db03/users/ffc08009f0884c059192bac549e117b2",
          "type": "Person",
          "extensions": {
            "bb:user.id": "_1_1",
            "bb:user.externalId": "administrator"
          }
        }
      },
      "extensions": {}
    }
  ]
}

Caliper Event Envelopes

As one might imagine, there can be a huge amount of events being triggered and reported at any given time, and so the Caliper specification includes the concept of an event envelope. This envelope contains three entities:

sensor - The sensor is the library creating and sending the events.
sendTime - This is the ISO-compliant date and time the envelope was sent.
data - an array containing one or more Caliper events.