External app integration

[Magdalena2]

Hello 🙂

I'm doing a student project where I have to create an app where teachers publish quizzes for students. I would like to integrate my app with Canvas.

The features I need are:

-securely redirecting users from Canvas course to my app

-teacher and student authentication

-teachers sending grades from my app to Canvas

What method should I use to integrate my app with Canvas? Do I need to get some credentials from my university Canvas administrator?

[chriscas]

Hi @Magdalena2,

The standard for apps that want to integrate with a learning management system like Canvas is called Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI), and the current version of the standard is LTI 1.3.  You can find some basic info about the spec at 1EdTech.  I think there are some people on this board who have made their own apps or parts of apps who might be able to give you some guidance, but from my viewpoint as a Canvas administrator, I don't think implementing the LTI spec is trivial, it's going to definitely take some time and effort on your part, even if you use a 3rd party library with some of the functionality coded for you out of the box.

As far as testing, you would definitely need to talk to your school's Canvas team about installing.  Depending on the level of access you need, they may or may not gran you access to your school's Canvas.  They may have a separate Canvas instance without any real student data for you to use as well, though that's a rarer case usually only found at very large schools/universities.

I hope this helps point you in the right direction a bit.

-Chris