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(Project) LTI Support in ILIAS

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1 Aim of Project

IMS LTI is a concept to connect / integrate tools with learning management systems or portals. The concept has been published by the IMS Global Learning Consortium and is already supported by several software systems like Moodle, Sakai or Blackboard.

The basic use case behind the development of the LTI specification is to allow the seamless connection of web-based, externally hosted applications and content, or Tools (from simple communication applications like chat, to domain-specific learning environments for complex subjects like math or science) to platforms that present them to users. In other words, if you have an interactive assessment application or virtual chemistry lab, it can be securely connected to an educational platform in a standard way without having to develop and maintain custom integrations for each platform. (see http://www.imsglobal.org/toolsinteroperability2.cfm)

LTI becomes more and more important for e-learning as it extends the didactical and technical possibilities of a system by connecting external tools to a LMS without a lot of developing efforts.

LTI support by ILIAS has two general aspects:

  1. ILIAS tools can be integrated into other systems via LTI → ILIAS as LTI tool provider
  2. External tools can be integrated into ILIAS via LTI → ILIAS as LTI tool consumer

Which tools / systems should  / could be integrated into ILIAS using LTI? (ILIAS acts as a LTI consumer/platform)

This is a draft collection of use cases for a specific usage scenario of an upcoming LTI interface. It focuses on the use of Opencast (formerly Matterhorn).
 
UC 1 : Creating a Opencast recording object:

  1. Tutor wants to offer recordings of his weekly lecture made by Opencast in a course.
  2. Tutor enters course and opens Add New Item menu to add a Opencast recording object.
  3. ILIAS a create form for the object.
  4. Tutor enter title and description.
  5. ILIAS offers a setting form.
  6. Tutor enters necessary settings, especially which recording stream shall be displayed.
  7. Tutor sets object online and saves.

UC 2 : Using an Opencast recording object:

  1. Learner enters course and sees the offered Opencast recording object.
  2. Learner clicks on the object title.
  3. ILIAS displays the recorded lecture.

2 Involved Maintainers and Stakeholders

3 Timeline

2018

Introduction of ILIAS as LTI tool provider with ILIAS 5.3

2020

Introduction of Consuming LTI in Repository – Basic with ILIAS 6

2022

Update to LTI 1.3 Basic

2024

Implement Features of LTI Advantage and Dynamic Registration for ILIAS as Tool/Provider

2024/25

Planned certification of LTI support in ILIAS

4 Related Feature Requests and Status

Feature Request

Suggested by

Funding

Planned Release

Status

LTI Consumer with support for LTI 1.3

Kohnle, Uwe [ukohnle]

ILIAS-Verein

8

implemented

LTI Provider with support for LTI 1.3

Kohnle, Uwe [ukohnle]

ILIAS-Verein

8

implemented

LTI Wiki

Kohnle, Uwe [ukohnle]

ILIAS-Verein

8

implemented

LTI Outcome Improvements

Meyer, Stefan [smeyer]

n.y.a.

8

suggested

LTI Media Pool

Kohnle, Uwe [ukohnle]

n.y.a.

8

suggested

LTI Page Editor Component without support for Learning Progress

Kohnle, Uwe [ukohnle]

n.y.a.

8

suggested

Tile View to select LTI-Providers

Kohnle, Uwe [ukohnle]

n.y.a.

8

suggested

LTI Group

Tödt, Alexandra [atoedt]

n.y.a.

9

suggested

LTI Data Collection

Tödt, Alexandra [atoedt]

n.y.a.

9

suggested

…

5 Implementation (trunk)

5.1 ILIAS as LTI Tool Consumer

Consuming LTI in Repository – Basic has been implemented for ILIAS 6 (see wiki page for more information). The ExternalContent plugin is no longer needed to consume LTI tools with ILIAS.

  • LTI 1.0 and 1.1 are supported as type models. Types could be:
    • Matterhorn / Opencast
    • H5P
    • BigBlueButton
    • and many more applications that have been added in recent years

5.2 ILIAS as LTI Tool Provider

ILIAS as LTI tool provider has been implemented in a first version with ILIAS 5.3. More information on the related pages.

6 Further Results

6.1 Implementation as Plugin

Before ILIAS was able to be LTI tool consumer with ILIAS 6, the ExternalContent plugin was the only way to integrate external tools in ILIAS via LTI.

LTI 1.1. is currently implemented in the ExternalContent Plugin by Fred Neumann. After installing the plugin, you will need to create a proper content type for LTI. Attached is a config specifically for integrating Opencast.

External Content Config for Matterhorn

7 Additional Information

In contrast to LTI 1.1, LTI 1.3 now consists of mandatory elements and optional elements (LTI Advantage s. https://www.imsglobal.org/activity/learning-tools-interoperability-lti:

With Names and Role Provisioning Services, you can:

  • Exchange a list of users and their roles
  • Provision a learner using LTI's secure exchange
  • Learn who has not yet accessed a tool
  • Enable communications among users without sharing contact information

With Deep Linking, you can:

  • Select and add course content in a few clicks
  • Add playlists and tables of content
  • Enable links and other HTML content
  • Add pre-registered tools with a few clicks

With Assignment and Grade Services, you can:

  • Gradable assignments shared with a tool
  • Numeric scores returned to LMS grade book
  • Assessor's comments returned if provided
  • Multiple results supported in a single exchange
  • Instructor override and history of attempts allowed

s. https://www.imsglobal.org/lti-advantage-overview

For ILIAS as Platform/Consumer, only 'Names and Role Provisioning Services' and partly 'Assignment and Grades Services' are implemented as part of LTI Advantage - the important 'Deep Linking' is not.
For ILIAS as Tool/Provider, LTI Advantage only implements 'Names and Role Provisioning Services'. Dynamic registration is also missing here, which means that increased setup work is necessary for platform(s).
All in all, there is still a lot to do for LTI 1.3. The statement that ILIAS 8 supports LTI 1.3 is basically correct, but without the optional elements, usability is limited.

8 Discussion

DZenker (09/01/2013): In my opinion, LTI support (at least LTI consumer) is obligatory for LMS nowadays. Especially for integrating OC-MH which is increasingly be used by universities, this would be very interesting, and if this will receive broad approval, I will try to convince our parent company COGNOS to fund the development of a LTI interface.

JF 21 Jan 2013: We strongly support the whole idea. We definitively would like to have a first fixed use case. E.g. the implementation of an LTI repository object with the goal to represent a matterhorn recording as a repository item to the learner. We must clearly define how the behaviour of different LTI consumer implementations as repository objects would be, e.g. their presentations in the "Add New Item" drop down, their presentation in container objects, their permissions, ... So beside the use case a next step would be to have a technical concept.

Matthias Kunkel, 20 Feb 2013: We have discussed LTI support at the ILIAS-NRW meeting today. A lot of participating institutions would be interested in such a standardized way to connect external tools / services. A majority would favour an option to connect Matterhorn and to display a recorded lecture published by Matterhorn in a course or group.

Pascal Grube, 28.03.2013: I have created a first version of a plugin. I was able to connect the lti-demo-provider from  IMS and our Matterhorn installation into ILIAS. The code is still very much a proof of concept style, but in any case, you can give it a try.
 
I will try to improve the plugin, but since this is my first plugin, it will take some time. Especially, I think there needs be a way for an admin to create lti presets e.g. for the local matterhorn, so that a teacher using lti only needs to add his recoding-id and everything else will be done automagically.

Pascal Grube, 8.4.2013: From what I know about Matterhorn, only UC2 is supported by the lti interface provided by matterhorn. UC1 would from I know require an on Ilias-MH-Plugin which uses the MH-Rest interface to schedule things.

Matthias Kunkel, 31 Mar 2014: The external content plugin of Fred Neumann works fine and is already a big step forward. But IMHO LTI support should become a core feature of ILIAS. Therefore I add this topic to the JF agenda and hope to get funding for a core integration for 4.5.

Kaiser, Sascha [skaiser] We are also intrestet in an LTI integration. For example we want to use ILIAS with MyMathLab from Pearson.

 JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], 23 NOV 2023: Uwe presented the plans for implementing LTI Advantage (as part of LTI 1.3) for ILIAS 10. We will discuss the use and need of the CELTIC library in ILIAS 10 on the upcoming Dependency Jour Fixe at 11 DEC 2023. Uwe plans for 10 to implement mainly the part for ILIAS as Learning Platform and for ILIAS as Learning Tools only the grade service. Decision if Uwe will be project manager for this project is currently open (final decision comes soon).

We see the importance of supporting LTI from a Product Development Perspective. But we also see a huge project risk as the quality of the current code is not as it should be and as the project management and the future maintenance of the LTI component seem to be unclear at this moment.

The Technical Board is worried that the future of this component of some importance for ILIAS is in jeopardy. We see that this project would need some involvement of the Technical Board, but we have a hard time figuring out how much time and effort we have to and should dedicate to this as we lack the necessary information to figure this out.

Considering all this we urge Uwe Kohnle to rather invest his time into improving the technical foundation of the LTI component instead of expanding it. If he still decides to go ahead with this project, we kindly ask him to involve the Community and the Technical Board early and often in its development. Please also update the current project page, as it lacks a lot of important information and does currently not reflect the status of the project. This project has a link to the point "Platform for Learning" of the current TB-Strategy.

Statement UX/UI/A11y-Experts, 6 DEC 2023

This may be a helpful feature for promoting ILIAS, but it is less clear to us whether accessibility, UI and UX can be influenced here (as external content is integrated).  We therefore give this Big Development project a prioritization level 4 compared to the others.

11 DEC 2023: The product manager considers a sound and reliable support of LTI in ILIAS as an important feature for the attractiveness of the product and its capablilty to be used in a networked ecosystem of e-learning-related IT applications. As already mentioned by the TB, the project page needs an overhaul that makes it clear which specific features are to be implemented for ILIAS 10 (and 11?).

…

Last edited: 18. Oct 2024, 17:38, Kunkel, Matthias [mkunkel]