Trying out the Google Apps LTI

[dejonghed07]

Collaborative spreadsheets and presentations will be very useful in helping to promote learner interaction in our online courses! While waiting for a plumber at my house over the weekend, I decided to watch  and it was a very worthwhile video. I couldn't wait to try out the Google Apps LTI today.

Advantages

The major advantage in using the LTI is that it adds spreadsheets (Google Sheets) and presentations (Google Slides) to Collaborations (in addition to Google Docs). Another advantage is that students are not required to enable Google Drive under their Account settings (as they are required to do when we are not using the LTI).

Instructor steps

1. Instructors must create a free Google account https://accounts.google.com/signup
2. Enable Collaborations in a course.
3. If Google Apps is not installed at the Account (Institution) level, use the Apps tab under course Settings to select Google Apps.
   
4. Then, click on the install link at https://www.eduappcenter.com/apps/641 to generate and copy the key/secret that allows you to install the Google Apps LTI in a course.
5. Installing the Google Apps LTI in a course automatically enables Google Drive on the navigation menu. Note: when I logged in as a student, I was able to access the Google Drive files, so some instructors may want to disable Google Drive from the navigation menu.
6. When creating a collaboration, use the “Collaborate Using” drop-down to select Google Apps
   
7. Even though the LTI adds two more options to Collaborations -- spreadsheets and presentations -- the icons for all files are the same, so it helps to name the collaborations with the type of file (document, spreadsheet, presentation) like this:

Student steps

1. Students must create a free Google account https://accounts.google.com/signup
2. When they access a Collaboration in Canvas created by an instructor, or begin to create a new Collaboration, they receive a message (and are required to) click a button to connect Canvas to their Google account.

Tip for Instructors
New Collaborations result in blank documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Many times, instructors like to start students off with a template. After we create a Collaboration, we can go to our Google Drive account and replace the blank files. Note: This did not work through the LTI link to the Google Drive files, but worked when directly in a Google Drive account.

Replacing blank files with a template in Google Drive:

• Open a Presentation: File>Import Slides to upload your presentation template
• Open a Spreadsheet: File>Import to upload your spreadsheet template, select Upload and Replace Spreadsheet, Import (see an example at https://lowryinc.com/1654)
• Open a Document: The only method that worked for me was to Copy>Paste from the existing Word template. It worked well and kept all formatting, including styles, tables, links and headers
  
  

*I noticed that there is an Office 365 LTI Collaboration and am hoping to test that soon: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-8684-how-do-i-create-a-microsoft-office-365-collaboration

[norihisa_ando]

Hi,

i have a question.

Self hosted version outside us is working?

i set up google app but when click authentification button, there is error of invalid client Id - unknown client id.

google docs collaboration works fine by the way. Only google app lti has issue.

thanks

[dejonghed07]

Hi Norihisa,

Does the information linked to this page help resolve your issue? OAuth Invalid/Unknown Client Error 

[norihisa_ando]

Thank you so much for your response.

unfortunately no.

i register developer key, update ID of key data to match id - it should be 17xxxxxx, updated with Postgres database directory, then correct redirect uri.

now it proceed to communicate google.structure server but it looks like error- error message is like something wrong in the server.

i am guessing we need to fill correct consumer key to enable google drive for people like me who is outside of United States.

can somebody confirm my understanding?

[dolce]

Hello,

I also have a question: We've recently found that when the LTI is used to embed video from Google Drive into a page, and that page is then imported into a new course we encounter an "LTI Configuration Error." From what I've been able to noodle out myself, it seems to be applying a unique course ID number to the video within the extraneous code wrapped around the referenced iFrame- an issue one does not encounter when manually copying and pasting the embed information directly from Google Drive into the HTML editor.

As the pages in question have numerous small video glosses embedded into them, we're working around this LTI error by copying the original page's HTML into a blank page within the new course (as opposed to simply recreating the page anew), however, I fully expect if/when the original page gets archived this will break pages in which the code has been applied.
 
We currently, have an open ticket with Canvas, and I presume the engineers are on it, but, I wasn't sure if you were aware of this being an issue others have encountered yet.

Any thoughts on the matter would be greatly welcomed.

Be well,

--JD