Calvert Hall College High School realizes
efficiencies with OneRoster and LTI integrations.

Calvert Hall College High School is a bustling all-boys Catholic school
in Baltimore that follows the Lasallian teaching tradition, bringing
together a diverse group of 1200 young men with the objective of
educating the whole student. Innovative instructors teach six to seven
periods a day in a lecture-seminar format, then dive into leadership
roles after school, from coaching football to the robotics squad.
“Time drives how much they can do and how much they can’t do,” said
Director of Technology Austin Ewachiw. As the school’s “IT guy,” he
understands how technology wins can pay off for faculty and, ultimately,
students. “Whenever we find tools that make things go a little easier,
a little faster, we will snatch them up in a heartbeat,” he said.

Simplifying to a Single-Click Process

A game-changer that allowed Calvert Hall to seamlessly tap into online
educational publishing offerings is the integration of OneRoster with Learning
Tools Interoperability in Blackbaud’s education management portfolio.
“What previously was a truly cumbersome process has been reduced to a
single click—how cool is that!” Ewachiw said.

LTI allows schools to establish a standard way of integrating third-party
learning applications, known as learning tools, with the ability to have secure,
single sign-on capabilities from a class page. OneRoster standardizes and
simplifies data transfer between learning tools. The nonprofit IMS Global
Learning Consortium manages OneRoster and LTI, both of which have been
integrated into Blackbaud’s education software.

Calvert Hall College High School became a Blackbaud customer more than
three decades ago. As the school purposefully narrowed its number of
technology partners in recent years, it adopted Blackbaud’s Total School
Solution for K–12 schools, including Blackbaud Student Information System™ and Blackbaud Learning Management System™.

Ewachiw learned about the power of OneRoster more recently as he explored
options his school had for using electronic textbooks. OneRoster’s
standardized set of application programming interfaces (APIs) enables the
rostering of student information into learning tools offered, including those
offered by McGraw Hill and other educational publishers that are certified for
the OneRoster standard.

At the classroom level, this means Calvert Hall teachers can plug students into an online textbook, workbook, or related media without having to manually upload rosters or input individual student names to make it happen. A task that may have taken a teacher—or the IT guy—an hour or two, now takes seconds and is accomplished by clicking a box. “It’s actually pretty brilliant when you see it in action,” Ewachiw said. “That’s when you realize the value of OneRoster.”

Removing Hurdles to Online Learning

Plus, with the single sign-on component of LTI, students don’t have to worry
with additional usernames and related passwords that are often randomly
assigned and easily forgotten. As Ewachiw pointed out, everyone in IT can
recognize the value of that.

With those hurdles disappearing, he said, teachers are more likely to expand
their use of digital resources. Students learning a language benefit from audiodriven exercises, and in chemistry, they can view animations of molecular
activity. Online learning systems can now provide more robust offerings
tailored to individualized instruction.

Calvert Hall College High School initially used OneRoster and LTI as it accessed
McGraw-Hill materials for multiple courses, and the school plans to expand to
other educational publishers that are OneRoster-certified, such as Pearson.
Blackbaud has implemented multiple API endpoints for OneRoster integrations,
including those that handle academic sessions, classes, courses, enrollments,
grading periods, organizations, schools, students, teachers, terms, and
users. For Calvert Hall, this seamless experience fits into a connected school
made possible through Blackbaud’s Total School Solution, which includes
student information, learning management, enrollment management,
accounting, fundraising, and school website capabilities.

As an illustration of the benefits the school received with Blackbaud, Ewachiw
noted the ease with which coaches and the school nurse can share necessary
medical information. Once required physical forms are registered, coaches
immediately know which student athletes can participate by viewing their
team rosters. As he put it: “Seeing that kind of integration is really impressive.
We linked two sides of campus like never before.”