Depending on how long you’ve been working with Canvas, Impact and/or with LTI tools, you can determine whether to call it an evolution or a revolution… but, whatever you want to call it, we are just really, really excited that it’s finally happening! Gone are the days of the LTI “Wild, Wild, West” and we are embarking on our “LTI Era” (tour coming soon, lol!).
From speaking with so many of you, we know that you, as educational institutions, currently struggle to find and make sense of your LTI data inside of Canvas, much less take necessary action as a result of it to improve return on investment, implementation and/or migration, training and support, compliance and/or accreditation, course consistency and best practices, and equity. This is where LTI Usage with Impact as key components of our strategy, focus, and commitment on improving edtech management and ensuring return on investment and effectiveness comes into play.
Presenting LTI Usage!
The first phase of the new LTI Usage feature set is now complete! This first phase provides much-needed functionality for Admins to understand where, when, by whom, and how often LTIs are used within Canvas.
For launch, LTI Usage includes aggregated quick facts showing total launches, unique users, sub-account usage, course usage, and LTI tool champions across your Canvas instance, as well as a disaggregated table view showing all of the same metrics on an individual tool level with the ability to drill down and see specifics,
as well as create a custom user group and launch a campaign (for those who have Impact).
This is available for existing and new Impact Admins across the globe, translated into all of the same languages as Canvas and Impact. (Note that LTI Usage is linked from navigation currently, as we work through some navigation and layout changes, but the above is the future state.)
We know that this has been an important missing piece, as up until this year, there’s been no way to accurately aggregate LTI usage data. Exciting stuff, right?! As mentioned in a previous blog post, the acquisition of LearnPlatform has helped to accelerate our vision and strategy regarding Edtech Effectiveness. The foundational elements behind the scenes making this work are the global product ID (leveraging LearnPlatform’s database of 20k+ products), as well as our newly created unique tool ID. Just as the features and functionality will be rolled out in phases, so too will the availability of LTI tool data based on region, instance, and tool configuration. The goal is to have 100% of all LTI tools, regardless of where they are installed, placed, and/or configured, represented inside of LTI Usage. This is a massive undertaking and one that takes time to do right. Due to the massive amount of mapping that has to go on behind the scenes and the need to ensure utmost accuracy in the data, we started small. We prioritized our LTI Working/Advisory Group, as well as beta participants, and started with the AWS regions of Virginia, Oregon, and Dublin. Those regions have the features and functionality ready/showing and data onboarded or in process of being onboarded. Next up, we’ll be expanding to the remaining regions and onboarding the data for the remaining associated instances. On the LTI tool side, we identified and are surfacing 870 of the most commonly used LTI tools. That list will continue to grow and we will continue to keep the LTI Usage Data Availability guide up to date showing each LTI tool’s start/born-on date based on its configuration.
There’s still an incredible amount of work yet to be done and on our roadmap and future phases of LTI Usage spanning the rest of 2024 and potentially into the beginning of 2025 will include:
- Fast-follow/phase 1 (targeted for Q3 2024): providing export functionality, individual tool details page detailing usage by version, and the addition of many more tools (and their data)
- Phase 2 (targeted 2H 2024): improving flow and accessibility for mobile and tablet users, as well as users of all abilities.
- Phase 3 (targeted 2H 2024): enabling users to compare usage data of LTI tools and have tiered sub-account access
- Things to include in future phases (target dates TBD) that are very much on our radar include the ability to create, pin, export, and share custom charts regarding LTI Usage; correlating LTI tool usage to student engagement and performance metrics, and getting LTI Usage data into CD2 for all Canvas users.
Current & Future State of LTIs in Impact…
With the advent of this exciting new feature set, it may leave you wondering what the future holds for LTIs inside of Impact given its pre-existing features and functionality support LTI usage and adoption. In the table below, you will find the current state along with the future state of where we are immediately headed in regard to LTIs.
|
Current State |
Future State |
|
Out of the Box Integrated Tools Reporting Template shows LTI data based on LTI Tool Groups |
Reconcile LTI data and simplify reporting of LTI tools in Tool Adoption Report |
|
Unclear connection between data on LTI Tools page and Tool Adoption Report |
Add unique users to LTI Tools page and clarify connection |
|
Redesigned LTI Tools page shows launches only per placement |
Reconcile duplicate launch counts between LTI Tools page and LTI Usage dashboard |
|
Lack of definition and clear control with LTI Tool Categories |
Greater visibility into the role and application of LTI Tool Categories |
|
Limited Out of the Box LTI Tool Contexts & Monitors |
More Out of the Box LTI Tool Contexts & Monitors (with partner help!) showing where & how users use LTI tools once launched |
|
Limited Out of the Box LTI tool content |
More Out of the Box LTI tool content (from partners!) for in-LTI messaging & support |
We look forward to partnering with you for continued discovery, design validation, and user testing of the subsequent LTI Usage phases and additional enhancements to improve your experience, as well as unveiling additional plans for 2025 within the coming month! Please leave your thoughts and feedback below about what you are looking forward to the most and what you'd like to see/do that we've not mentioned above!
