Abstract: Building Learning Tools for Canvas using the Tsugi Application Environment

This presentation will introduce users to the free and open source Learning Application development environment available at www.tsugi.org. Canvas supports the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability to allow external tools to be easily integrated into Canvas and used to increase the richness and diversity of the course experience.   External tools can provide functionality not present in Canvas like a course map tool, or social grading system, or a YouTube viewer with Caliper analytics.   External tools can also be rich auto-graders that make online classes bother more interesting and more effective.  Imagine if you could easily develop an interactive system like Pearson’s MyMathLab for *your* course and topic.  Tsugi provides a set of libraries that allow you to write learning applications without any need to read an LMS integration specification.  Tsugi’s run-time environment takes care of complying with the necessary standards to make plugging Tsugi tools into Canvas, or any other LMS.  Tsugi also provides a hosting environment that is as easy to deploy as WordPress and allows institutions to host tools and provide an “App Store” of available tools to their users.  There is also a free cloud-based Tsugi App Store that provides scalable hosting for open source Tsugi applications at www.tsugicloud.org.  It is easy to learn to write Tsugi applications using the online materials at www.tsugi.org.