LTI Resources in Canvas Commons

[DaveWhitehead]

Hello,

We have a repository of content that currently delivered through a LTI 1.x tool.  An end-solution is to have our repository of content searchable within a consumer Canvas account so one can search and embed items within a course.  We were looking at Canvas Commons as a solution to setup a consortium and deliver content via the Canvas Commons LOR. In some initial discovery, it appears that External Tool is not a content type supported by the Canvas Commons API.  A workaround could be placing External Tool (LTI links) within a Module, or even a Page and using that type within Commons.  With that being said, the ability to preview an LTI item does not seem possible in the Canvas Commons LOR.  A few questions:

• If LTI content is published in Canvas Commons, and the consumer account has an App configured with the LTI key/secret, will the consumer account be able to preview LTI items from Canvas Commons?
• Are there any un-documented Canvas Commons features or configurations regarding LTI content that the partnership program could assist with? (e.g., can we provide a global key/secret so the Commons LOR can render LTI content?)
• Does anyone know of any functional Canvas Commons LTI content examples, or able to share any experiences with LTI content within Canvas Commons?
• Is another approach, i.e., External LTI deep linking tool, a better solution than Canvas Commons?

I know there was a similar post from a couple years ago, but it seemed like a different question with a different type of solution.

Any help, insight or information will be most helpful.  Thank you!

[Chris_Hofer]

@DaveWhitehead ...

I may not have solid answers for you, and maybe I'm not fully understanding your question...  but for the LTIs you are using at your school, is it safe to assume that you are installing/configuring these at the Canvas account level?  I know that some LTIs can only be installed at the course level, but many LTIs can be installed at the account level so that all courses in that account would have access to them.  Also, if an LTI would put a new course navigation button/link on the left hand side of the course, I know there is XML code you can add/edit so that the new menu item is hidden by default.  In this way, your instructors can choose to enable the LTI button if they way...but there is no requirement to do so.

In my former role as a Canvas administrator in higher education, we designed a set of help pages for our faculty specifically for the LTIs that we had available for use.  We created a "Faculty Toolkit" course, and we created helpful information pages for LTIs such as Zoom, Turnitin, Films On Demand, etc.  We included information on how instructors could add those tools to their courses, how to use the tools (which sometimes included video tutorials), etc.  So, we never used Commons as a repository for our instructors to gain access to the LTIs we had configured in our account.

Again, I'm not sure if any of this will be helpful to you, but I thought I'd share my past experience...for what it's worth.

[DaveWhitehead]

@Chris_Hofer  thank you for the quick response and sharing your experiences.

Our situation is a little different, as a content provider not necessarily a school.  We are aware of a different LTI path and external tools that would integrate with Canvas.  We didn't know if our LTI-backed repository would integrate with the Canvas Commons LOR which led to the original questions... and the blocker seems is that the preview function is not an option for LTI content in Canvas Commons.

I think we're finding out that the External App path may be the best way to connect our content repository to Canvas consumers instead of going through Canvas Commons.  Thank you again for the response, much appreciated!