Navigator Developer Portal

Who do I contact if I need help?

Whether you are just getting started on Gooru or are an experienced user who needs a little extra support, our Support Team is excited to help out however we can!

If you’re unable to find the support you need here, please feel free to email us at support@gooru.org. We will respond within 24 hours during the business week.

When you send us a message, it helps us if you can include a link or screenshot to any Gooru page that you are using, and contact us using the email account that you’re registered with on Gooru. The more context we have, the easier it is for us to help you!

With the exception of a few holidays, a member of our support team will respond within one business day – usually in under 2 hours during our official business hours (9am-6pm PST) – to ensure that you have the solution you need in a timely manner.

What do I do if Navigator won’t load?

If Navigator is not loading or working properly, there are several things you can try:

Refresh the page.
Clear your browser’s cache and then revisit gooru.org. You can find instructions on how to clear your cache for Mozilla Firefox here, Google Chrome here, Safari here, and Internet Explorer here.

If you are a learner trying to access your class, try this work-around:

If you are trying to access Navigator from a school or institution, it is possible that the firewall is blocking our website. Please ask your IT to white-list these domains in the proxy as these domains are what Navigator depends on.
You may be trying to access Navigator from an outdated browser. In order to provide you with the best and most secure experience, we only support the most recent browsers.

Please contact us at support@gooru.org if you are still having problems with the platform.

To what extent can we customize the rubrics and the parameters of the assessments? Eg-can we capture the process of students reading a text as a criterion to pass, selecting a particular image from a set, etc…

Gooru Navigator supports 9 different question types

Multiple Choice
Multiple Answer
Drag & Drop Order
Highlight Text
True or False
Fill in the blank
Multiple Select – Image
Multiple Select – Text
Free Response Question (FRQ)

The questions can include math expressions and equations in the question and answer text. Images can be included in questions and also in the answer options depending on the question type.

Gooru Navigator also supports automatic evaluation of machine gradable questions and provides the ability for content authors to define rubrics based on the evaluation criteria for free response questions and offline tasks such as projects, that cannot be system graded.

What will be/can be the best possible way to track a student’s journey if they switch tenants?

Every learner within the system has a Universal Learner Id that follows the learner life-long across the different stages of learning from K12, Higher Ed, Professional learning irrespective of the tenant they may be in each stage. So, when a learner moves from one organization to another within Gooru Navigator, the learner identity including proficiency in various facets, their portfolio, preferences and all the different attributes of the learner is available and accessible in the new organization.

Can we have a dedicated library for our content?

Yes, Navigator allows you to create a featured library. Here is how it looks.

Will a content provider be remunerated?

A content builder is encouraged to make their content open-source and public. However, they can provide premium content and make it selectively available to their learners.

Why would a content provider collaborate with NLC?

A content provider could reach out to a wider audience through the Learning Navigator effectively. The Platform offers content providers feedback on the quality and effectiveness of the content and helps content builders to build focused competency oriented learning content.

What is the technology stack of Learning Navigator?

NLC embraces open-source technologies in realizing the Navigator and at a broad-level following are the guiding design principles used:
- Microservices architecture for better scale
- RESTful API with JSON responses to access core features
- Consistent API design for ease of development
- Open-source technologies at all layers of solution
- Queuing over message bus for communication across microservices
- Localization support
- Scalable with minimum footprint
- Deploy not tied to custom infrastructure
Consequently, the choice of technology reflects the same:
- Ubuntu Linux OS is the choice of development and deploy environment
- Java-based microservices implementation
- Postgres database as a primary datastore
- ElasticSearch extensions for search engine
- Postgres based datastore for analytics data
- Kafka as a message bus for data relay across microservices
- AWS hosting environment, leverage at infra-level and not custom services
- Github for source code management
- Atlassian Bamboo for CI/CD
- Atlassian Jira for product backlog, releases, and bug tracking

How often will the openly licensed educational resources be reviewed and refreshed?

One of the many benefits of OER is the ability to update and refresh instructional materials. Instructional teams and classroom teachers that implement new instructional materials convene regularly to review and assess the current resources, add new ones, and remove outdated or ineffective resources. Districts aggregate feedback from classroom teachers throughout the year. All of the information is used to evaluate and refresh resources.

What should application developers (who will extend Navigator and make contributions to core solution — more of engineering team extension) should be prepared for?

Partners should have a good understanding of microservices architecture
Partners should have a good understanding of RESTful API design
Partners should have a good understanding of Java-based implementations
Partners should have a good understanding of front-end implementations based on EmberJS