Explain it Like I'm 5: LTI Advantage

by Jordan Clark

Okay, what does that mean?

LTI - or Learning Tools Interoperability - is a set of rules from a group called the IMS Global Consortium that provides a way for apps to talk to learning management systems. Many LMS's support LTI, which has been around since 2010.

The LTI Advantage rules helps keep student data better secured when apps talk to LMS's. LTI Advantage also make it easier for apps to work with other features of an LMS. Below are the three services that make up LTI Advantage.

Names and Roles Provisioning Services

The Names and Role Provisioning Services (NRPS) allows apps to view a list of users and their roles with a specific course in the LMS. So a teacher who logs into an LTI app can view the list of their students in the course within the app.

One of the improvements supported in LTI Advantage is that a teacher can see everyone who is a member of the course even if other users have not entered into the app. In earlier versions of LTI, the teacher could only see students in the app who had also entered into the app.

Assignment and Grade Services

Assignment and Grade Services (AGS) allows apps to send grades and teacher comments back to the LMS gradebook. Teachers can also see who has started the assignment and who has finished the assignment. Additionally, the service can be used to alert teachers that a specific questions needs to be manually graded.

Deep Linking

Deep Linking makes it easier for teachers to set up different ways to students to access content from an app. Teachers can use the app to select specific content to add to their course.

For example, let's say a teacher is using an app that contains a collection of videos. With Deep Linking, the app can allow the teacher to provide their class a link to a specific playlist of videos in the app. This was sort of possible in earlier versions of LTI - but in the previous example, the teacher would have needed to manually configure the LTI links that opened into a specific playlist.

Interested in LTI?

Read these other articles we've written on integrating with the LTI standard.

If you’re looking for a partner to guide you through integrating with the LTI standard, then let’s introduce ourselves. We’re Edlink!