Integration with the LTI standard

Several LMSs adopted the LTI standard from 1EdTech Consortium (1EdTech, formerly IMS Global Learning Consortium). LTI-compliant applications can work with any LMS that is also LTI-compliant, as long as both LMS and app support the same LTI specification.

Moodle supports the most recent releases of the LTI standard: LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage. Once integrated, the LTI-compliant app will launch from an iframe inside Moodle – a common LTI Launch experience. Since Moodle supports LTI Advantage, integrated edtech products can use grade passback and enrollment provisioning services offered by LTI Advantage.

Integration With Moodle Plugins

Moodle does allow external edtech products to integrate with its environments through Moodle's Core APIs. But to make integration possible, a can create a Moodle plugin. From the plugin, a developer can integrate with Moodle through the Core APIs. This plugin, which must be written in PHP, must be manually installed in a school's Moodle environment by the environment's administrator.

The Core APIs can be used to access different parts of a Moodle environment depending on the role of the user that the plugin authenticates. For example, the plugin can write back to the user's Moodle gradebook, calendar, or profile. It can also be used to gather enrollment information to view a list of courses and roster information for the authenticated user.

Which Moodle Integration Method is Better?

The type of integration that a developer should build should depend on the needs of the educational institution. Some schools particularly need LTI integration with their Moodle environments. Other schools may be looking for a solution that includes features that are better supported by Moodle plugins, like district-wide rostering. Having solutions for several situations can be valuable to work with several schools.

Read More on Moodle:

Read these other articles we've written on Moodle and integrations.

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