LTI 1.3

LearnHouse is an LTI 1.3 tool. Any LMS that supports LTI 1.3 (Moodle, Canvas, Open edX, Sakai, ILIAS, Chamilo, OpenOLAT and others) can add LearnHouse content to its own courses: courses, single activities, assignments, communities, podcasts, boards, playgrounds and library folders. Learners open them from the LMS and are signed in to LearnHouse automatically. Course progress and assignment grades show up in the LMS gradebook.

What is supported

What teachers can add

Assignments are listed under their course in the picker, marked with their due date. When the LMS creates the gradebook column from the picked item, it also gets the due date where the LMS supports it (Canvas does).

Learners need to be able to see what is placed. Drafts (unpublished courses, podcasts and playgrounds) are marked in the picker. Private content is opened to the platform’s learners as described in Accounts and access.

If placed content is later unpublished, learners who open it are told it isn’t published yet. If it is deleted, learners are told to ask their instructor, and the next instructor who opens the link picks new content. In both cases the LMS also receives the message.

Connecting an LMS

Go to Developers → LTI in your dashboard.

• Connect with a registration URL (Moodle, Canvas, Sakai, ILIAS 11): generate a one-time URL and paste it into the LMS. It expires after 24 hours and can only be used once.
• Add manually (any LMS): LearnHouse shows the URLs to enter in the LMS (initiate login URL, launch / redirect URL, deep linking URL, public keyset URL, and the public key itself for LMSs that can’t fetch a keyset). Then copy back the values the LMS gives you: issuer, client ID, deployment ID, authentication request URL, access token URL and platform keyset URL.

See the LMS setup guides for step-by-step instructions per LMS.

Accounts and access

• A learner is matched by the LMS user ID first. On the first launch, an existing LearnHouse account with the same email is linked only if it belongs to your organization alone and was created through LTI; otherwise a new account is created and added to your organization with the platform’s default role.
• If the email belongs to any other LearnHouse account (one with its own password or sign-in, or one that is also in another organization), the person is asked to sign in to that account once and confirm with its password to link it, in the browser that opened the activity. LearnHouse never hands over such an account based on an email asserted by an LMS, and an LMS stops signing in as an account once it joins another organization unless its owner linked it.
• Platform administrator accounts can’t be used from an LMS.
• A sign-in that starts from an LMS only works in your organization, never in other organizations the same person belongs to, and it can’t change account security settings (password, email, two-factor, deleting the account). Someone already signed in to LearnHouse as themselves keeps that session when they open an activity.
• People with two-factor authentication enrolled are asked for their code after the launch.
• An email sent by the LMS counts as verified only when it is on a domain your organization has verified as a custom domain, the same rule as SSO.
• If the LMS doesn’t share an email address, LearnHouse creates an account with a placeholder address.
• Learners get access to private content through one user group per platform and content (LTI · <platform name> · <content>), which you can see and edit under Users → User groups. A learner placed in one course doesn’t get into other private content placed from the same LMS. Content that isn’t limited to user groups is already open to every member of your organization, so LearnHouse leaves it as it is. Boards add the learner as an editor instead.
• LMS administrators can’t be given the LearnHouse admin or maintainer role through LTI.

Grades

• A course placement reports the percentage of published activities completed, out of 100. Once the learner earns the course certificate, the gradebook comment links to its verification page. A single-activity placement reports 100 once the activity is complete.
• An assignment placement follows the submission:
  • not handed in yet: no score;
  • submitted: no score, marked as waiting for grading (LMSs that support it show “needs grading”);
  • graded: the percentage, with a comment such as Grade: B — passed. Feedback: …;
  • for ungraded assignments, 100 once submitted.
• Communities, podcasts, boards, playgrounds and folders don’t send grades. Their placements show Not graded and still list the learners who opened them.
• Scores follow every change, wherever it happens: completing or un-completing an activity, a teacher grading or rejecting a submission or marking it done, a learner retrying, and progress changes made through the admin API.
• If the LMS created a gradebook column when content was added, LearnHouse uses it. Otherwise LearnHouse creates one (when the LMS allows it).
• Sync grades on a placement re-sends every learner’s current score, for example after reconnecting an LMS. Each placement shows how many learners are synced and whether any sync failed.
• Turn off Send progress to the gradebook on a platform to stop sending scores.

Keeping the LMS in sync

Besides scores, LearnHouse keeps these up to date in the LMS:

• Column titles and due dates. Renaming a course, activity or assignment renames its gradebook column. Changing an assignment’s due date changes the column’s end date; Canvas shows it as the assignment’s due date. Edits made in the LMS are only overwritten when the content changes in LearnHouse again, or when you click Sync grades on the placement. If the LMS is down, the change is sent once it is back.
• Course progress. Adding, publishing, unpublishing or deleting activities changes every learner’s course percentage, so course columns are re-scored.
• Profiles. Accounts the LMS created get the LMS name and picture on each launch. If the LMS starts sharing an email address, it replaces the placeholder. Accounts that people linked themselves are left alone.
• Class lists. Turn on Sync class lists daily to pull every placement’s class list once a day, so learners have accounts and access before their first launch.
• SCORM results. A SCORM activity reports the package’s own score and pass/fail, not just completion, as soon as the package saves it.
• Grades changed in the LMS. Before Sync grades, and once a day, LearnHouse reads the LMS gradebook back. When a teacher has changed a grade there, the placement shows N changed in the LMS and LearnHouse keeps the teacher’s grade. Click it to replace those grades with the LearnHouse ones. Some LMSs keep showing a teacher’s override even after that (a Moodle gradebook override); LearnHouse checks and tells you, and the override has to be removed in the LMS.
• LMS groups. LMSs that support the Course Groups Service share the groups of a course; with A user group for each LMS course on, each group becomes a LearnHouse user group (<platform> · <LMS course> · <group>) with the same members, updated with the class list.
• Course copies. LMSs that support the Platform Notification Service (Canvas does) tell LearnHouse when a course is copied. Placements in the copy that don’t carry their content themselves take the content of the placement with the same title in the original course, so teachers don’t pick everything again.
• Submission times. Scores for assignments carry when the work was handed in, and later attempts are named in the comment. Canvas uses the time to mark late submissions.
• A column per assignment. With A gradebook column for each assignment, a course placed as a whole also gets one gradebook column per published assignment and SCORM activity, named <course>: <item>, with its due date, grade and feedback. Columns of deleted assignments are removed. Some LMSs don’t accept scores in columns a tool created (ILIAS) or don’t let tools create them (OpenOLAT); Sync grades says so.
• LMS course groups. With A user group for each LMS course (on by default), everyone who comes from an LMS course is placed in a user group named after it (<platform> · <LMS course>). The group isn’t linked to any content, so it doesn’t change access; use it to filter, follow up or message a class.
• Leaving the LMS course. When the class list shows someone is no longer in the LMS course (inactive, or gone from the list), their scores stop syncing and they leave the course’s user group. If they come back, syncing resumes.

LMSs that can’t create gradebook columns from picked content (accept_lineitem: false) get items without one.

Some LMSs put several picked items in one placement (an OpenOLAT LTI page element). LearnHouse keeps each item separate, and since the LMS has a single gradebook column for the placement, the graded item opened last reports into it.

Deployments

Each installation of LearnHouse in the LMS (Canvas: the account and every course where it was added) has its own deployment ID. LearnHouse records new ones automatically, since they come signed by the registered LMS. Turn on Only accept the deployments listed above to refuse unknown ones instead.

Removing access

Turn on Remove access when someone leaves the LMS course to also take back the access LTI gave them: membership of the platform’s user group, of boards, and contributor rights from the instructor option. Access is only removed once no LMS course still needs it, and access given in LearnHouse by other means is never touched. Progress and grades are kept.

Instructors

People count as instructors when the LMS sends the course Instructor role (or one of its sub-roles such as Teaching Assistant), the course Administrator role, or an institution or system Administrator role. Mentors and content developers don’t.

Turn on LMS instructors can grade in LearnHouse to give people who launch as instructors the LearnHouse Instructor role and make them contributors of the courses they place. Opening a submission from the LMS gradebook then lands on the assignment’s submissions in LearnHouse: from Moodle’s grade report (use Open in new window; Moodle’s automatic popup loses the request) and from Canvas SpeedGrader.

Placements

Each LMS course link that has launched LearnHouse appears under its platform with the LMS course, the LearnHouse content and its type, the number of learners and the gradebook status. Remove placement forgets a link. If an instructor opens a link that isn’t connected to content yet, LearnHouse asks them to choose; learners see a message asking them to contact their instructor.

Sync roster works for every content type: it creates accounts for the LMS class list and gives them access to the placed content.

Signing keys

LearnHouse signs deep linking responses and grade requests with a key per organization. Rotate signing key creates a new key; the previous keys stay published for a while, so LMSs that use the keyset URL keep working. LMSs where you pasted the public key need the new one.

Embedded launches

Many LMSs open tools inside a frame. Browsers don’t keep a sign-in made inside another site’s frame, so LearnHouse shows a Continue in a new tab button. Where the LMS allows it, set the tool to open in a new window instead.

A launch signs in straight away only in the browser that started it. If the sign-in link reaches LearnHouse any other way (for example a forwarded link, or a browser that blocks the cookie LearnHouse uses to recognize it), the learner is asked to confirm the account first.

Self-hosted: LMS on a private network

LearnHouse only calls LMS addresses on the public internet (token, keyset, gradebook and roster URLs), and refuses URLs that point to private or internal addresses. If your LMS runs on a private network, set LEARNHOUSE_LTI_ALLOW_PRIVATE_HOSTS=true on the API. LearnHouse Cloud ignores this setting.