This is part of a regular series of articles exploring some of the terms used in e-learning (view other articles in the series).  We’ll do our best to break down the jargon and explain what things are from a basic perspective.

Today’s topic is RSS, which stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’.  However, just knowing what it means is not terribly helpful as it does not mean anything to the average person.  RSS is a way for users or tools to be notified automatically about new content that is available.  Normally it is used with content that changes regularly, e.g. news, blog posts, audio files, video files and other information sources.

Sometimes you may hear of different types of RSS, such as RSS, RSS2 and Atom.  Though the formats they use are different, the principle behind them is the same: pushing information about new content out to users.

RSS uses the concept of a ‘feed’, which is what notifies users/tools about the new content, and a ‘reader’ which is something which monitors that feed and updates itself to show there is new content available.  Feeds are normally identifiable by their orange symbol which looks like this:

For example, this blog has two RSS feeds (one for posts and another for comments) which you can find on the right-hand side panel.  Using the address of one of those feeds, you can add it to any reader that you want (there are many different readers, including software on your PC, mobile apps, web page readers and even your Blackboard site can have a reader inside it.  In the Bb-support tab in shuspace, you can see a simple reader that picks up the headlines from this blog and displays them to users in a channel called ‘e-learning news’.

Typically an RSS feed will deliver headlines to the reader along with links back to the original site.  The user can then click through the headlines to read more about stories which interest them.

Example of RSS feed in Blackboard

It is possible to display the contents of an RSS feed in your Blackboard site.  This allows you to display an RSS feed from the internet in a content area on your site, so students can see the headlines from that source of information.  This is useful for keeping your Blackboard site dynamic and ensuring that students can see the latest subject news or journal articles available in your discipline.  See instructions on how to add an RSS feed in your Blackboard site. For guidance on how to use RSS to keep students up to date in your subject, we recommend you talk to your information specialist.

Currently it is not possible to have an RSS feed of your Blackboard content available to your students.  However with the What’s New feature that is available, students will be notified automatically when most new content types are added to your site.  Therefore this acts in a similar fashion as RSS does.

Read more about RSS in the Educause Learning Initiative’s 7 things you should know about RSS.