IMS Learning Tools Interoperability 1.1 is in “Member Draft”

IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) 1.1 has moved from the working group to “Internal Draft” / “Member Draft”. This means that we consider the specification development 100% done and locked down.

The scope of IMS LTI 1.1 is the addition of grade return from a tool to an LMS using web services. It is simple and easy to implement and we expect pretty rapid market uptake.

IMS LTI is already supported in the trunk of Sakai 2.9 in the BasicLTI portlet, tracked under

https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/BLTI-123

Designating an IMS spec as “Member Draft” triggers the implementation activity of our members so we can make sure that there are no little “gotchas” in the spec. Having developers actually implement the spec is a great way to cause them to read it *very carefully*.

If you are not an IMS member, there will soon be a public draft of the specification once we have developed the certification and seen demonstrations of two interoperable products. The standard is pretty simple and mature so I hope that the public draft is ready in two months or less.

You can wait until public draft to see the spec or join IMS to be part of the member draft evaluation. The cost is not all that great to on the Alliance and it can be done online.

http://www.imsglobal.org/joinims.html

If you already are an IMS member – the discussion of the LTI 1.1 Member Draft is here:

http://www.imsglobal.org/community/forum/categories.cfm?catid=138&entercat=y

Here is an Educause presentation about LTI from this past week:

http://www.slideshare.net/csev/educause-ims-update-learning-tools-interoperability

Let me know if you have any questions.

This is a great time to publicly thank the co-Chairs of the IMS LTI Working Group for their hard work and dedication: Greg McFall of Pearson Education and Lance Neumann of Blackboard. They have put an amazing amount of work into this specification and we all benefit from their knowledge and skill. It has been a great personal learning experience and I consider it a privilege to have worked with them on the preparation of this specification.

Note: I am a member of the IMS staff part-time – but my compensation is not linked to changes in IMS memberships.