Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)

What is LTI?

Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) is a specification developed by IMS Global Learning Consortium to establish a standard way of integrating learning tools with learning systems.   It's widely adopted by almost all learning management systems!
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​Developers have adopted this standard because it allows for somewhat seemless integration with third-party content and tools..  and we all know how much of this there is on the internet!!​

​IMS Global describes this interaction nicely as "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"

​The Tool Consumer  (eg.  the LMS) consumes the learning tool and the Tool Provider  (eg.  premium content) provides it.
The nature of the relationship between the tool consumer and the provider is that the provider delegates responsibility for authentication and authorization to the consumer;  While the consumer provides data about the user and  the context where they have launched the tool.  

Another interesting concept about LTI is that the tool provider can send outcome data back to the consumer such as results form an assessment or activity.   This type of data exchange can be invaluable to an LMS because not only can third-party content be embedded in a course,  so can assessments. 

How TEAMS uses LTI for integration

Recently our team wrapped up some enhancements to TEAMS (www.teams-hub.com) to incorporate support for LTI. Using TEAMS with your LMS now makes it easy to share content, assign resources to students, and track grades and progress.  

More Information

The LTI specification is available on the IMS website at: http://www.imsglobal.org/lti/.