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Authen_LTI and Canvas LMS

Authen_LTI and Canvas LMS

by Frank Cavadi -
Number of replies: 6
Can the authen_LTI be created per course by instructor? i am told by Canvas LMS admin that instructor can do this for Courses in Canvas without need for LMS admin to do the global one. Other the /opt/webwork/webwork2/con/authen_LTI.conf.dist template, is there a Course one for LTI?
In reply to Frank Cavadi

Re: Authen_LTI and Canvas LMS

by Frank Cavadi -
So, even if an admin/instructor creates a course based LT, do I still create
the main one in /opt/webwork/webwork2/conf/authen_LTI.conf ?

Will the course based LTI ones have their own .conf file that goes the same
directory /opt/webwork/webwork2/conf ? If so, what is the filename format for it?
In reply to Frank Cavadi

Re: Authen_LTI and Canvas LMS

by Michael Gage -
Have you looked at the LTI posts in the "installation" forum?


Setting up LTI on a course by course basis is kind of experimental at the moment so it's hard to give step-by-step instructions. However a few institutions have done it. (e.g. Paul Pearson at Hope College and Alex Jordan at Portland Community college)

I _think_ that you may be able to do it by putting just the right configuration parameters into the webwork/courses/myCourse/course.conf configuration file to turn LTI handling on for myCourse but not for other courses. I don't think you need to copy the entire LTI configuration file, but I might be wrong about that. Some experimentation will be required.
In reply to Michael Gage

Re: Authen_LTI and Canvas LMS

by Frank Cavadi -
Yes, I have read the LTI posts in the "installation" forum.

From our current "maa.org hosted" WeBWork solution, our Math dept. gave me an LTI config that has authen_LTI.cong appended to bottom, but the config file name is course related i.e. course-xxxxxx.conf
in name. We only had one course. But, now that we built webwork on
our own server, we will have Summer courses and mulitple courses.

All of the courses to my knowledge will need LTI due to Canvas.
So, would we not need to append authen_LTI.conf to each course and
just use the main in: /opt/webwork/webwork2/conf ?

The beginning of that course-xxxxxx.conf has things such as:

$dbLayoutName = 'sql_single';
*dbLayout = $dbLayouts{$dbLayoutName};

$mail{allowedRecipients} = ['<email_address_here>'];

$pg{specialPGEnvironmentVars}{PRINT_FILE_NAMES_FOR} = ['<name,name,name>'];

This, of course, is followed by authen_LTI.conf contents appended
to the file.






In reply to Frank Cavadi

Re: Authen_LTI and Canvas LMS

by Danny Glin -
There are two sides to this:
  1. You need to configure WeBWorK to accept LTI logins. This can be done at the course level or the server level (or some combination of both, as discussed in the referenced forum).
  2. You need to create the appropriate links in your LMS (Canvas) to log in to WeBWorK courses. The important thing here is setting the shared secret to match what is configured in WeBWorK. Setting this up for your whole Canvas server would mean less configuration for the individual instructor. In particular, they would not need to know the shared secret to set up an LTI link.
If all of your courses are going to use LTI, then it makes sense to set things up in authen_LTI.conf. If there are any courses which will not use the global settings, then you can override them in the respective course.conf.

In reply to Danny Glin

Re: Authen_LTI and Canvas LMS

by Frank Cavadi -
Our dept. client thinks that it will be more secure if we let every course have its own Consumer Secret. Otherwise, they think the instructor of any course who knows our (global) secret can (at least with default setting) become 'professor' in any course in webwork. As 'professor' they can then edit assignments, administer users, view scores, etc.
In reply to Frank Cavadi

Re: Authen_LTI and Canvas LMS

by Danny Glin -
In that case, I would say leave all of the other settings in the Authen_LTI.conf file, with the exception of the secret. Then you can simply add the secret to the course.conf file.

BTW, by default the LTI setup will only create accounts with permission level TA or lower. If someone is a professor in the LMS and does not already have a professor account in the WeBWorK course, then they should get an error when they click on the LTI link.