IMS Global Learning Consortium Announces First EdTech Solutions to Achieve LTI Advantage Certification

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• USA - English

LAKE MARY, Fla., Feb. 5, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS Global/IMS), the world-leading non-profit collaborative advancing edtech interoperability, innovation, and learning impact announced today the first IMS Global members to achieve certification for LTI Advantage.

LTI Advantage is an interoperability standard for learning platforms and application integration. It provides educational institutions and edtech suppliers with a core integration strategy for enabling plug-and-play interoperability that dramatically improves usability and secures data. Leveraging a robust security framework that offers more advanced protection of sensitive student data, LTI Advantage enables the most desirable end-user services—via three unique extensions—to support the delivery of innovative learning tools and applications necessary for digital transformation.

Blackboard, Instructure, Moodle, and Sakai learning management platforms are the first organizations to pass rigorous IMS certification requirements for all components of LTI Advantage—Assignment and Grade Services, Deep Linking, and Names and Role Provisioning Services. The LTI Advantage designation means that a product has successfully implemented and achieved IMS certification for the latest version of the core Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) standard, which includes an upgraded security model, and all three extensions. As the foundation for learning product integration, LTI Advantage adoption and certification provides a path for the wide array of tool providers to rapidly scale their integration to work with any LTI Advantage-certified platform.

"LTI Advantage represents an unprecedented collaboration among the leading learning platform, tool, and application suppliers to respond to requirements from institutional leaders for a more secure, reliable, and cost-effective way to integrate learning technology," said Dr. Rob Abel, chief executive officer, IMS Global Learning Consortium. "Thanks to Blackboard, Instructure, Moodle, and Sakai for their leadership accelerating the transition to LTI Advantage as the new model for extending the digital learning ecosystem."

"We will look back in several years and realize that the release of LTI Advantage was the moment where the LMS marketplace was truly transformed into an ecosystem of cooperating platforms and tools," said Dr. Charles Severance, PMC Chair, Sakai Project. "The close alignment of design, engineering, and security efforts by the major vendors for the past several years is why LTI Advantage has the unprecedented scope, quality, and support at its launch."

"Like Canvas, LTI Advantage is anchored in openness," said Melissa Loble, SVP of Customer Success at Instructure and IMS Board Member. "Through both its scalable technical foundation and services extensions, anyone using edtech tools is able to take advantage of enhanced interoperability, richer integrations, and more accessible teaching and learning. Improving teaching and learning is foundational to who we are at Canvas and why we are proud to be among the first to be LTI Advantage certified."

"Blackboard is proud to be part of a community of leading educational institutions and technology providers to collaborate on defining and implementing LTI Advantage," said Jim Chalex, Vice President of Product Management, Teaching & Learning, Blackboard. We're committed to enabling institutions to build the right edtech platform to meet their needs and drive learner success and academic innovation. Openness and standards are the foundation of this edtech platform, and we look forward to continuing to work with our partners and developer community to realize the potential of LTI Advantage."

"Moodle firmly believes in sustainable open solutions and the importance of open standards. We are extremely pleased to be among the first to be certified and ready for LTI Advantage," said Martin Dougiamas, Founder and CEO of Moodle.

On 7 February 2019, at the IMS Quarterly Meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, there will be a dedicated LTI Advantage boot camp offering implementation guidance and assistance to all solutions providers working toward IMS certification for LTI Advantage. Another intensive boot camp will take place on 22 May 2019, at the Learning Impact Leadership Institute in San Diego, California.

IMS offers an Alliance membership for educational technology providers that want to implement certified-LTI Advantage now. To facilitate adoption, IMS has developed an innovative test reference implementation for learning tool providers to build out and test their deployment. LTI Advantage will be available to non-IMS members upon its public release.

For more information on LTI Advantage go to http://www.imsglobal.org/TakeAdvantage.

About IMS Global Learning Consortium
IMS Global is a nonprofit organization that advances technology to affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment. IMS Global members are leading suppliers, institutions, and government organizations that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability and adoption initiatives. IMS Global sponsors the Learning Impact Leadership Institute, a global program focused on recognizing the impact of innovative technology on educational access, affordability, and quality while developing the people and ideas to help shape the future of educational technology.

SOURCE IMS Global Learning Consortium