We’ve just released a new major version of the Numbas LTI provider.
This release adds support for LTI 1.3. This is a new version of the LTI protocol, supported by all major virtual learning environments and providing new features.
We’ve also taken the opportunity to completely redesign the user interface from scratch, with a focus on accessibility and ease of use.
I’ve made a short video describing the changes in this version:
LTI 1.3 support
While it provides the same functionality, LTI 1.3 works completely differently to LTI 1.1 behind the scenes, so you’ll need to set up a new connection to your VLE.
We’ve tested with Moodle, Canvas and Blackboard. At the moment, there are instructions in the interface to guide you through the registration process for Canvas and Moodle. Over the next couple of months we’re going to add instructions for Blackboard and D2L Brightspace, once we’ve had access to them.
The biggest change to how you use the tool is that we’ve added support for deep linking. When you create a link to Numbas in your VLE, a pop-up window will take you through the process of creating a Numbas resource, or linking to an existing one. This allows you to set up multiple links to the same resource, possibly with different availability settings for each. And a nice side-effect is that the name of the link is automatically set to the name of the exam you selected.
Two other notable additions in LTI 1.3 are the names and role provisioning service (NRPS) and the assignments and grades service (AGS).
The NRPS allows us to fetch a list of all people on the course that a Numbas resource is linked to. At the moment, this means that you can select students to apply an access change to from a list, instead of having to type in their identifiers yourself.
The assignments and grades service allows us to send back not only a score for a resource, but a time and completion status. This allows the receiving platform to correctly apply late-work and score release policies.
Redesigned user interface
We took the opportunity to redesign the user interface from scratch, aiming to improve accessibility and ease of use.
The new interface is designed to satisfy the WCAG 2.2 criteria at level AAA, the highest level.
We’ve put together an accessibility statement, including a VPAT document detailing which of the WCAG criteria the Numbas LTI tool satisfies (currently it’s all of them up to level AA, with all but a couple satisfied at AAA level).
Upgrading to this version
There are detailed upgrade instructions in the documentation.
We’ve tested the upgrade process with Moodle, Canvas and Blackboard.
The registration process for each learning environment is different; while we’ve done some testing with Moodle, Canvas and Blackboard, it’s possible that there are still steps we haven’t documented. Please make use of our office hours if you’d like some help with upgrading, or encounter any problems.
You can also report issues on GitHub or by emailing us at numbas@ncl.ac.uk.
Coming soon
Now that we’ve got LTI 1.3 support in place, we can use it as a base to build more new features.
First on the list is better handling of due dates. The plan is to add a “due date” field to the “available from/until” fields, to allow students to submit work late. We’ll also allow students to look over their answers at any point, before feedback is released.
We’re going to test this at Newcastle in the coming term, before releasing it to everyone else as v4.1.