Canvas instance for LTI App development

[fmaoc]

Hey! I'm a university student, and I am developing an LTI app for my dissertation, (specifically, I need to send/receive quiz information to/from Canvas). For this, as my university obviously cannot give me free rein on their Canvas, I need to create a "dummy" instance, where I can set up modules, quizzes, etc, and use them to develop my app. 

From what I've seen, the Free For Teacher and Quick Start versions are not suitable for LTI development. The only other option I've seen is the Production Start setup, which seems overkill when all I need is a development environment, where I can get quiz information (MCQs specifically, so the questions, and the possible and correct answers) from Canvas, and then send back answers. 

Is there a simpler way to set something up? I'm able to host it myself, but configuring and running a production-grade instance would be a huge timesink, so if anyone has any info on a simpler way to do this, where I could find a disk image, or any tools for LTI development that wouldn't require creating a full Canvas instance, I would really appreciate it! Thank you!

[chriscas]

Hi @fmaoc,

You could ask your school/university if they have a development instance of Canvas you could use (some larger schools *might* have this available).  Aside from that, I don't know of any other great free options than the one you have already found.

As a Canvas admin, I did want to ask/comment a bit mor broadly on your project though.  From your description, it doesn't sound to me like something that would really be an LTI application if what you're doing is trying to directly act on the build in Canvas quizzing systems.  Maybe I'm misinterpreting what your goal is, but seems like this would be something that would interact more via an API Developer Key than LTI.  Just wanted to put this question out there so you could perhaps give a bit more info here and some community members may be able to give you guidance on the best approach before you potentially go very far down the wrong road at the beginning of your project.

-Chris

[fmaoc]

Hey @chriscas, firstly thank you so much for your reply!

My dissertation supervisor has previously inquired about the university's Canvas license and was told that if we wanted a separate development instance, it would be treated as just "this university wants Canvas", and billed as such (extremely expensive). So, I assume that the production instance will be my best option.

In regards to the LTI vs API, you may be right! For some more background, I have a quizzing application, where students answer a multiple-choice quiz - this is an existing web app, with hardcoded questions/answers.

The goal in regards to Canvas integration is as follows: The teacher would create an MCQ in Canvas. When it is time for students to do the assessment, the MCQ questions will be sent to the quiz app. From a student's POV, the student would go to Canvas, start the quiz, be redirected to the quiz app, log in/authenticate with their Canvas credentials, and do the quiz. Their answers/results would then be sent back to Canvas, where they can be graded. The student would then see their results, their answers, etc in Canvas as they would with any MCQ, as if it was done natively in Canvas. 

As far as I was aware, this would be doable using LTI 1.3, as it covers assignment and grading services. However, I admit that I'm very fuzzy on the line between using Canvas API versus creating an LTI application.

The goal of making an LTI application vs using the API was also to make it relatively platform-agnostic, (so that in theory, it could be used by any LMS), as from the project perspective, we want it to be as adaptable and "impressive" as possible. However, now that I've been reading more of the Canvas docs, would I be right in saying that the functionality I'm looking at (receiving quiz questions for example) would only be achievable using the Canvas API? 

Thank you so much for your help! 

[chriscas]

Hi @fmaoc,

Thanks for the additional context, that really helps.  Upon reading your use case, I think maybe there is just some terminology getting in the way...

If you have an external quizzing platform, where the quiz questions live, students would take the quiz, etc, and want to plug that into Canvas, LTI would likely be the right approach.  There can be a seamless transfer of the user from Canvas over to your platform (the LTI launch from Canvas will send user info to your platform), and your platform can then do the grading and return the percentage score back to Canvas.  This would be done via the "external tool" assignment type in Canvas, and would show in the assignments area instead of the quizzes, but that's basically the standard expected behavior of all external tools.

You did originally mention reading quiz questions and answers FROM Canvas though, which wouldn't really apply in the scenario above, and your clarified project description makes it seem like this isn't necessary.  if you were trying to get the questions from your existing platform into the native Canvas quizzing engines, you could do that by following the QTI file format, but again I don't think this is what you intend to do.

Does any of this make sense to you?  I'm ad admin, and know some high-level info like this, but I have never coded an LTI app myself, so I'm not able to dive into the fine details of HOW you'd do each step.  Some others in this group may be able to help if you have specific questions though.

-Chris

[fmaoc]

Hey @chriscas,

Thank you! I think I'm getting more of an understanding now - at the moment, the external quizzing platform is very much still in development and isn't functional as a standalone tool. I see now that there are two distinct routes I could take to turn this into a functional quizzing platform, one using the API to integrate it with Canvas MCQs and one where I'm creating an LTI app, and I think I've been mentally mixing and matching the two scenarios. If I understand you correctly, here is where I think I was getting lost:

Currently, it's more of a "quiz displaying" platform than one that stores and grades quizzes - it currently has one set of hardcoded example questions, no way to create quizzes or return a grade for students, it just stores the answers that the student selected. Originally, I was envisioning the quiz "living" in Canvas and being sent to the quiz platform via the API, and the quiz platform then sending the answers back to Canvas. The "quizzing platform" would be more of a UI shell for students to take the quiz - no grading would be done here, just answers returned, and all grading, etc would be done in Canvas. This isn't an LTI application - this would be done via Canvas API. 

In the second scenario, the quizzing platform will need to store, handle, grade, etc quizzes itself - it will be independently functional. In this scenario, Canvas's only job will be to send the student (and maybe student information, authentication details, etc) to the platform and receive a grade - the quiz platform will not be dependent on Canvas "giving" it a quiz. This would be an LTI app.

Does this make sense or have I misunderstood? If so, I will weigh up the pros/cons of the different approaches and proceed from there.

Thank you so much for explaining this to me! During my initial research, I think I was mixing resources from people developing via the API with resources from people developing LTI integrations - which led to me completely misunderstanding both. If I have understood you correctly, everything is much clearer now!

[chriscas]

Hi @fmaoc,

Yes, that understanding now better matches how I think about this in my head.  There are times where an LTI integration will also use the API, depending on what the purpose is (one frequent exampple is for teacher applications that need a list of all courses the teacher is enrolled in, as the LTI handshake will generally just provide the info about the course the tool was launched from.

For your specific app, I'm still a little unsure what it's doing that either classic quizzes or new quizzes build into Canvas could not do, but I have to say that I've never encountered an app that tried to essentially use the API to access/answer quiz questions on behalf of a student, so in my head the LTI method seems more appropriate here.

-Chris

[sendres]

Hi @fmaoc,

There's a lot to unpack in this thread so far, so let me see if I can give you a few ideas:

Gaining access to a production Canvas installation is unlikely to happen. LTI 1.3 developer keys are located at the root account level of Canvas and you're unlikely to convince anyone to open that door for you. Sorry, but we Canvas admins like keeping our jobs!

You mentioned the Free for Teacher and QuickStart installations of Canvas. Free for Teacher would be fine for LTI 1.1 development but doesn't provide access for LTI 1.3 developer keys, so that's out. I think you'd be fine with the Quick Start installation of Canvas. You'd have root access to the system and be able to use it as you see fit. Can you share why that wouldn't work for you?

I sense that you're working to finalize requirements for what your tool will do and how it will interoperate with the host LMS. This requires at least a moderate level of familiarity with LTI installation and (probably) API usage. If you're not familiar with these aspects, I suggest you try to recruit someone with experience in these areas. Perhaps you can reach out to the Canvas admin of your institution to see if they can help you with this. I'd also be willing to help; contact me off list.

Good luck with your project!

Steven Endres (he/him/his)
Director of Learning Technologies
Information Technology (Lewis 001A)
Dominican University | 7900 Division Street | River Forest, IL 60305
Mobile: (708) 466-9452 | sendres@dom.edu | Book a meeting with me
.................................
We are Dominican. We Go First.

[Quander]

Considering your situation, you might want to explore using virtual machines or containerized development environments that are already configured for educational tech development. This way, you can avoid the hefty setup of a full production environment.