Add an OpenDSA Exercise or Visualization to a Moodle Course

OpenDSA is an eTextbook project developed at Virginia Tech. OpenDSA materials include many visualizations and interactive exercises that support courses in a wide variety of Computer Science-related topics such as Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA), Formal and Programming Languages.

OpenDSA has hundreds of visualizations and exercises. Most algorithms and data structures are illustrated by interactive algorithm visualizations. Students could enter their own test cases to see how the algorithm or data structure works on that input, and they can control the pacing of the visualization. Go to the OpenDSA website to read more about OpenDSA.

A course instructor who is using the Moodle LMS can add individual OpenDSA materials directly into their Moodle courses. Below are detailed instructions on how to do this. Gradable exercises will report scores to your Moodle's gradebook.

To add one or more OpenDSA exercises in your Moodle course, follow the following steps:

Step 1: Go to OpenDSA.org and create an account.

Step 2: Send an email to opendsa@cs.vt.edu and ask for instructor access.

Step 3: Once you are provided with the instructor access, you need to click on your email address at the top right corner of the page and you will be redirected to a page from where you can copy your consumer key and a shared secret as shown in the image below:

Step 4: Next, navigate to your course in Moodle and click on "Add an activity or resource".

Step 5: Select "External Tool" from the list and click "Add".

Step 6: Click on the "+" icon on the right of Preconfigured tool to add a new Tool Provider.

Step 7: Paste your consumer key and the shared secret that you copied in Step 3. Add https://opendsa-server.cs.vt.edu/lti/resource under "Tool URL". This is the URL to which OpenDSA will send an LTI request.

Step 8: Under "Privacy" settings, select "Always" for all three dropdowns.

Step 9: Click on "Show more..." and check "Content-Item Message". This enables instructors to select content (i.e. exercises) to be added to their courses.

Step 10: Once the above steps are completed, click "Save Changes" to add OpenDSA as a Tool Provider.

Step 11: Now you should be back on a previous page. Select OpenDSA from the Preconfigured tool dropdown and click on "Select content".

Step 12: If this is your first time going through this process for your course, you will be asked to provide some information that OpenDSA can use to identify your course offering. Fill out the required fields and click "Submit".

Step 13: Once you do that, a tree view will be displayed listing the topics for visualizations and exercises that are available. To expand one of the categories, either double click on it, or click the arrow to the left of the folder icon. You will then see sub-categories that you can expand. Expanding a sub-category will display the names of the exercises and visualizations contained within it. Once you find the resource you want to add, simply click on it.

Step 14: The Activity name and the Tool URL text fields will be automatically filled with the name and the URL that will be used to launch the resource. Finally, click "Save and return to course".

Step 15: Select if you want this OpenDSA exercise or visualization as a graded or ungraded content by going to the "Grade" section. Select the type of the exercise from the "Type" dropdown.

Step 16: The selected exercise should be now added to your course.

Step 17: The students will be able to view the OpenDSA exercise or visualization by clicking on it from the list of topics as shown above. One example of OpenDSA exercise is shown here: