Avalon as a LTI tool in a LMS
The purpose of setting Avalon up as an LTI tool in an LMS is to offer course-specific access and customized content verified by the LMS. All a user would need to do to access course items is to log into their LMS, click on an external tool link, and then they will be redirected to Avalon. As part of the redirect, avalon gathers course and user information verified by Oauth. Using the course id, avalon customizes the landing page for the user to only show items listed for that course.
Set up Process
Add the LMS as an authentication provider
The authentication settings for LTI are added to config/authentication.yml with the other authentication providers. A new parameter called "hidden" was added to keep the LTI provider from showing up at the log in screen. Here is an example LTI authentication config block:
- :name: Avalon LTI Oauth :provider: :lti :hidden: true :params: :oauth_credentials: key: 'secret'
Configure hash keys
There are more lti configuration options in config/lti.yml, which tells avalon where to look for user, class and lms information in the hash received from the LMS. These are the default values that are hard-coded into our version of the gem omniauth-lti. You'll only need to add the lti.yml if any of these values are different for your LMS.
--- guid: :uid: :user_id :email: :lis_person_contact_email_primary :context_id: :context_id :context_name: :context_label
LMS/CMS Specific Setup Instructions
The next step is to go into your LMS or CMS and create a link to the avalon LTI.
Sakai
To add an external tool to a course, go to site setup on the sidebar then check off the box for one of the external tools. We already named one "Avalon".
It will then show up in the side bar.
Click on it and select the edit button in the upper left hand corner. We used the following settings (replacing <avalon ip address> with your url):
Blackboard