Nowadays, Educational institutions use exceptional technological sources to support their teaching and learning activities to promote and enhance active learning at their campus. In today’s competitive world, learning control systems are seeking to cooperate and studies have been done on various protocols and requirements for statistics exchange among these studying management systems. This creates opportunities for teachers and students to connect, collaborate and share information in their getting-to-know practices. which makes it more applicable in open gaining knowledge of the environment, an interaction between teachers and college students is crucial. This is a creation of the thesis work and a worldwide paper published on this topic in ICDL 2019 which can be found at ResearchGate. Data had been derived from IMS Global’s Website and the official websites of respective software vendors.
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Introduction to Interoperability
Present drifts in technology are modernizing how human beings communicate, trade data, and learn. Web 2.0 tools have made it smooth for loads to not handiest consume records but additionally to contribute to the existing pool of knowledge and additionally to contribute new information. Web 2.0 has presented an exceptional bounce in developing de facto standards for facts change and linking in internet-primarily based E-mastering environments. Institutions of better education are underway to become aware of new technologies giving their students, access to excellent educational practices and resources. Learning Object Repositories, the shape of virtual libraries, are being created to house digital getting-to-know objects and Learning Management Software (LMS) offers new methods to visualize and present course materials for both lecture room and online training. This E-gaining knowledge of enjoying implies a more active, enticing position for students and instructors. In this kind of studying atmosphere shall we the scholar to hook up with our teachers, and teachers can collaborate with their friends for knowledge sharing. Though there are many Learning Management Systems to be had within the market and establishments are selecting in step with their requirement. But the trouble with extraordinary structures and vendors is they use exclusive standards. These systems need to interact and combine and exchange facts with each other. Because these equipment and systems are also written in exceptional coding languages, and work on a specific architecture, it required a super deal of programming and coding changes in the software to connect it to other outside services.
A non-profit organization that is working to standardize the education sector called IMS Global Learning Consortium has come forward to make interoperability widespread for Learning gear, which is known as Learning Tools Interoperability.
Concept of Interoperability
Interoperability can be defined as the ability of software or a hardware system of one computer network to communicate with another system on other computer networks, each running on different underlying technologies and protocols. According to Technopedia, Interoperability is the property of software that allows the unrestricted sharing of resources between distinct systems. Interoperability with regards to Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning tool providers (TP) means that the LMS and TP can communicate and exchange important data with each other irrespective of the platform or the programming language on which they are running.
What is API
Many other methods are available to interconnect the LMS with TP and various other web applications, one of which is Application Programming Interface (API), this is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other, and borrow functionality and data from each other automatically, without doing repeated work.
Learning Tools Interoperability
IMS Global is a non-profit collaborative organization working in formulating the future of education and learning technology. Learning tools interoperability (LTI) is an open standard, developed by IMS, which allows courseware and learning tools from different vendors to be launched from within an application i.e. Learning Management System.
According to IMS official website, “The IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard prescribes a way to easily and securely connect learning applications and tools with platforms like learning management systems, portals and learning object repositories on your premise or in the cloud, in a secure and standard manner and without the need to expensive custom programming.” LTI was created as a tool to standardize the interconnection of contents between learning management system platforms like Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas, etc, and third-party tool providers to incorporate and accommodate everything to work harmoniously.
Tool Provider is an application that delivers features that others can connect and access from the LMS. It can be quizzes, games, simulations, videos, etc.
Tool Consumer is an application that can link with the 3rd party Tool Provider to borrow functionality and data from it. For example, Moodle, Sakai, and other LMS can be tool Consumers.
Before the external learning tools/resources were linked to institutions Learning Management Software by writing an application-specific program or making direct changes to the Code of the LMS Software, which was a very tedious job and was to be done by the Programming experts or software developers only. With LTI, (which acts as a mediator between the LMS and LT) the external learning tools and learning management software are much easier to integrate and work so smoothly that it appears like the external learning tools are part of the LMS itself.
Objectives of LTI
Learning tools interoperability provides a standard way for tools to be launched from multiple learning platforms and that way it allows teachers and students to have a seamlessly integrated experience. It allows the functionality of learning technology to be delivered by a variety of platforms like Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas, etc. The benefits of LTI standards as per different perspectives are as follows:
- Students: It allows students to use only a single sign-in to perform all activities in the LMS, so they don’t have to create and provide credentials for each course they take, and all the resources they use.
- Teachers: it allows the teacher to include third-party applications in their courses (resources of other simulations, mock tests, MOOCs for example) that are stimulating for the students and which were not available in the LMS internally.
- Developers: it allows the developers to develop a single interface or method for interconnection with various Tool Consumers and Tool Providers, and saves the time which was earlier devoted to rewriting new code for each new application.
- Administrators: The system administration can effectively integrate, control and monitor the external tools integrated with the LMS. It also makes Upgradation and migration much easier.
LTI provides a common way to perform integration with a vendor-neutral approach and allows synchronization to enable the rapid deployment of enterprise applications. This simplifies self-registration, enhances data integration, and expanded the LMS capabilities. At present, there are many applications and products available for LMS that have some of the different IMS certifications for interoperability standards, like (Moodle, Canvas, Sakai, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, etc.), portfolio tools (Mahara, Chack & Wire, etc.), eBook (Course Smart, Course Load, etc.), collaborative tools (elgg, Piazza, etc), Grading tools (Turnitin). Companies such as Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Wimba, and open source tools like Moodle, and Sakai, have certified their products with the different versions of LTI.
Versions of LTI
Like any software, LTI has evolved and what it can do continues to mature, which is why there are different versions. And IMS Global is tirelessly working and adding new layers of security and functionality to this specification. The following are the versions launched by IMS global.
| Version | Release date | functionality |
| 1.0 Basic LTI | 2008 | A secure connection between the Tool Consumer and Tool Provider |
| 1.0 Full LTI | May 2010 | Unidirectional communication with Tool Consumer and Tool Provider. |
| 1.1 | March 2012 | Added functionality to fetch grades and results, and Basic Outcomes. |
| 1.1.1 | June 2012 | Added functionality of role provisioning |
| 2.0 | July 2013 | Used Tool Consumer, Proxy and Auto-Registration |
| 1.3 (LTI Advantage) | 2017 | Use of REST, JSON web tokens and OAuth2 |
Who is using LTI standards? :
The usage spectrum of LTI is rapidly increasing globally many universities, educational institutes use LTI-compliant LMS and many companies are actively engaged in the strategic development of their equipment and aid to conform with LTI standards. For an empirical study paper published in ICDL 2019, the facts from diverse institutional websites and IMS international official website are collected and analyzed. whole tables and graphs can be found within the full text which is freely available on Research Gate. A super increase is seen in the development of Open Education Resources in the closing decade.
A listing is compiled from the IMS worldwide website listing their associate member institutions, which shows diverse instructional institutes that have an established Learning management system that complies with LTI requirements and also make use of the technology. The listing also suggests the learning management system being used by the institution. This covers Open Educational Resources (OER) and commercial resources as well. The usage is shown in the following graph
Conclusion:
Due to predominant technological advancements, the establishments of higher education have upgraded their e-learning environments and are complying with today’s standards. this study observed that the United States of America is the leader in adopting LTI-certified mastering equipment for their instructional surroundings. An examination conducted using Phil Hill shows that 87 percent of institutions and 91 percent of student enrollments rely upon Canvas, Blackboard, or Moodle. Learning tools interoperability has outstanding possibilities in the E-learning atmosphere and is more relevant in an Open Learning Environment. Although many foreign universities have followed interoperability requirements to promote active getting to know of their instructional structures, much extra work is but to be done. but this takes a look at has not located any Indian instructional institute, no longer even content carriers like NDL, and EPG Pathshala. Although MHRD and RBI have taken some initiative by using offering LTI well-suited systems in their precise domains, these are yet to be formalized. Looking at the tremendous horizon of opportunities best issue we can now say is that we have got a long way to travel. A detailed study can be found in my Researchgate profile.
