Hackfest UK 2014/LTI
From MoodleDocs
LTI Usability improvements
This session is about exploring how to improve the use of external (LTI) tools in Moodle.
Participants
- Michael Aherne, University of Strathclyde
- Michael Hughes, University of Strathclyde
- John Tutchings, Coventry University
- Stephen Vickers, IMS Global
Rationale
- Usability: enable instructors to more easily find external tools, particularly for high-profile / heavily-used tools (such as Turnitin)
- Usability: enable instructors to customise list of tools in activity chooser
Requirements
- Tools can be defined by admins and appear as activities in the activity chooser
- It would be a good start to have these appear as subtypes of "External tool"
- Ideally, it should be possible to allows tools to appear as top-level activities.
- Ability to add these specific LTI tools to a course should be controllable by admins (currently anyone with LTI addinstance capability can add any tool)
- Tools should be able to be set up as activity or resource
Suggestions
- Ability to mark admin-set tools as "to be shown in activity chooser" (and show them)
- Ability for plugins to dynamically define capabilities so that these LTI tools can be given their own "addinstance" capability
- Ability for users to define which activities are available in a course (not just LTI tools - this would be a new general Moodle feature)
Questions
- Module sub-types are marked in the code as "legacy" and there is a strong suggestion that they aren't used. Why? ("// NOTE: this is legacy stuff, module subtypes are very strongly discouraged!!" in /course/lib.php)
- Dynamic properties (i.e. created / controlled by module code, not pre-defined in access.php) - is this a reasonable proposal?
Code
A proof-of-concept patch to dynamically show LTI tools in the activity chooser (as sub-types of "External Tool" - second best to being shown at top level) was developed during the hackfest: [1]
