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by TrispusAttucks 1678 days ago
The underlying protocol most [1] LMS use, [2] LTI, is horrible (IMHO). That may have something to do with the quality of platforms built in top of it.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_Tools_Interoperabil...

3 comments

Ah LTI, it’s been a while.

The tough thing about LTI is that it assumes the piece of content you’re trying to serve is a single resource. So if you’re serving a video or a single HTML page, then cool. If your page is some sort of JS player that loads the content from an API after the page loads, you basically have to create a relay race of auth systems to tie it all together. This is a super common format (a JS lesson player that lazy loads each page/slide as needed) so a ton of people have had to solve this problem in different ways.

While LMS's support LTI, I have rarely seen it actually used; usually you would have all or almost all content hosted "natively" on the LMS you use.
Hmm do LMSes really get built for the LTI protocol in mind? Or do they add it later for compatibility?
LTI is an afterthought for LMSes.

The standard is a classic patchwork of whatever is used by IMS members currently.

LTI 1.3 is the current active version, which deprecated 2.0.

But wait LTI is actually a collection of standards. AGS (assignment and grade services), DL (deep linking), dynamic registration, etc.

And they are optional, and LMSes implement them in slightly different ways.

So good times.

But wait, there's also the afterthought of 1.3 compatibility jury rigged on top of 1.0/1.1 implementations. Which leads to comical implementation details poking their ugly heads out :)