Moodle (LTI 1.1) LMS Admin Install Guide

This guide is for LMS admins installing the CourseKata application so that it can be used for all courses on a Moodle learning management system using the LTI 1.1 protocol.

LTI 1.1 is no longer the recommended protocol to use for LTI Tools. Use the newer LTI 1.3 protocol.

Prerequisites

To follow this guide, you will need

an instructor account at CourseKata. If you do not have one, you can request one (free) at our website. Make sure to mention that you are an LMS admin, and use your institutional email address.
permissions to install external LTI tools into your LMS.
a class in your LMS to test the installation in.

If you are using domain blocking, you may also want to add domains used in our content to your allow list.

How CourseKata Works

CourseKata content is built and hosted on our servers and delivered via <iframe> over the LTI protocol to your Learning Management System (LMS). To make this work, you will need to install both the CourseKata application as an external LTI tool, as well as the content as modules in your course. This document will start by explaining how to install the tool—and then how to get the course content linked up with your class.

Registering the Tool

Registering your Platform on CourseKata

Start at our platform registration page.
If you see a platform listed for your institution, congrats! It looks like someone has already installed this on your platform and assigned you as the owner. You can check that the settings there are correct, and move on to Importing Content below. If not, click Register Platform at the top right.
Enter the information for your platform there, then click Register Platform to continue.
Choose the IMS LTI 1.0/1.1 pathway and then leave the page open at this step.

Registering CourseKata on your Platform

In Moodle, click the Site administration tab, then the Plugins tab. On that page, in the Activity modules → External tool section, click Manage tools

Click configure a tool manually.
On the form on the next page add the following information
1. Tool name: CourseKata
2. Tool URL: coursekata.org
3. Consumer Key: from the page on CourseKata that you opened in the last section, copy the Consumer Key over
4. Shared Secret: from the page on CourseKata that you opened in the last section, copy the Shared Secret over
5. In the Privacy section
  1. Share launcher's name with tool: Always
  2. Share launcher's email with tool: Always
  3. Check the box for Force SSL

Click Save Changes to finish registration

Importing Content

CourseKata is now installed and ready for your instructors to use. From here, you can test that the installation is working properly by creating a test course. This is the same process that an instructor would follow to create their course.

From the menu on the top right of CourseKata, choose My Classes under Teaching.
Click the New Class button and choose New Class

A Continuation Class is something you might use if your course is split over two academic periods (semesters, quarters) but you have a separate LMS class for each period. The first period you will select New Class and the second period you would select Continuation Class to connect the class. Using this class will let your students pick up from where they left off the last period.

Fill out the form with your institution’s information, and make sure to mark that This is a test class (real instructors will choose real class) but this helps us categorize cleanups. If you are unsure of which book, you can just choose our flagship College / Statistics and Data Science (ABC), though it doesn’t really matter which you choose. When you are done, click Create Class.

Copy and paste the URL to your Moodle course into the textbox click to the next step where you will download your cartridge for the course.

The cartridge is specifically built for the book and version you have chosen. Once you install that cartridge into your LMS class and link it to your CourseKata class, you should not change the cartridge—it may appear that everything is working, but it is likely to fail at some point.

In Moodle, click the Site administration tab, then the Courses tab, and on that page, Restore course

On this page in the Import a backup file area, upload the cartridge you downloaded in step 4, then click Restore

Confirm: The next page will indicate that this is a non-standard import file, and that the format is IMS Common Cartridge 1.1. Continue to the next page.
Destination: Choose to Restore into an existing course. You can either choose to Merge the backup course into the existing course, which will add the contents of the book to your course, or Delete the contents of the existing course and then restore, which will clear everything out first.

If you are trying to replace a previous CourseKata book with a new one, only matching pages will be replaced. For that reason, it is recommended that you choose to Delete to make sure there are no broken pages lying around after. However, this will remove other content you may have added.

Settings: Keep the default settings on the next page, and just scroll down to continue to the page after.
Schema: This page lets you configure your course settings, merging in any values set by the cartridge. Make any change you wish and then continue to the next page.

Make note of the settings at the top of the page, as the cartridge will provide a suggested course name and short name. These may not be what you want. In that case make sure to uncheck the Overwrite boxes on anything you don’t want to change.

Review: Check that everything looks right to you on the next page. There should be course settings at the top, then a bunch of modules being imported by the book cartridge. If anything looks wrong, go back to the previous step(s) to fix it. Click Import to finish.

The content should now be properly imported! Open one of the CourseKata modules like My Progress + Jupyter. When you access the module, you should see a sign in page where you can sign in and choose which class on CourseKata matches the one that you are in.