LAKE MARY, Florida, 26 October 2017 — IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS), the world leader in edtech interoperability and innovation, announced today the launch of LTI® Advantage, the next step in accelerating the movement toward a fully integrated and innovative digital ecosystem based on open standards.
LTI Advantage is the next phase of market adoption for the highly successful Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) standard from IMS. Learning environments, tools, and digital content that implement the LTI Advantage features will enable institutions to move beyond first generation learning architecture by enabling deeper integration that ensures better teaching and learning experiences. Leveraging the education sector’s ubiquitous and trusted LTI standard as the foundation, LTI Advantage adds key functionality beyond core LTI that enables deep linking of learning objects from anywhere in the learning environment, as well as flexible and secure passing of user and results data across all LTI-enabled applications.
Leading education marketplace suppliers have committed to rolling out LTI Advantage over the next 12 months. Members of the IMS higher education institutional leadership board have developed procurement language to help institutions guide suppliers in supporting the most up-to-date features of LTI Advantage now and as the feature set evolves. A special website and product directory have been set up to help institutions and suppliers adopt and certify products to meet the LTI Advantage features. For more information go to www.imsglobal.org/lti-advantage-overview.
“The ubiquitous adoption of LTI expanded the use of open interoperability standards in the education sector to levels never seen before,” said Dr. Rob Abel, chief executive officer, IMS Global Learning Consortium. “LTI Advantage is based on years of market feedback from both institutions and suppliers. It is the right combination of simplicity of implementation with the power to go beyond costly custom integrations in terms of enabling teaching innovation, better data, and better recognition of student achievement.”
Statements of Support for LTI Advantage Certification
"UMBC regularly is rated among the top 20 in undergraduate education by U.S. News. At UMBC, academic innovation is focused on integrating pedagogy with technology and analytics. LTI Advantage combines all the necessary components needed in learning tools in an easy to understand package that allows faculty to identify technology solutions and for our procurement office to validate requirements. Moving forward we believe LTI Advantage will be an essential requirement when selecting learning tools.”
—Jack Suess, Vice President of Information Technology and CIO, University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and Chairman of the IMS Global Learning Consortium Board of Directors
“Blackboard continues to be fully supportive of the work that IMS is doing to advance interoperability standards. We’re committed to enabling institutions to define the right educational eco-system for them, regardless of the LMS in use. Support for LTI Advantage will provide a way for us to offer deeper connectivity between our products and whatever other teaching and learning products an institution is using.”
—Phill Miller, Vice President of Teaching and Learning, Blackboard
“D2L is excited about the IMS community’s interest in LTI Advantage, which raises the “LTI bar” for platforms and learning tools. We appreciate the value these services provide in enriching teaching and learning by enabling the development of innovative, interactive and engaging learning activities and tools.”
—David Koehn, VP Product Management, D2L
"LTI Advantage provides a set of open standards that further Indiana University's mission for data and application integration throughout our digital learning ecosystem. By moving forward with LTI Advantage, IU can further reduce risk through the transparency of system interactions and more seamlessly tie together systems and learning data workflows. LTI Advantage is another example of IMS providing solutions that further empower higher education."
—Matthew Gunkel, Director of Teaching and Learning Technologies, Indiana University
“Any and all progress we can make in the area of open standards adoption serves to enable us to craft the digital learning environments needed by our faculty and students. LTI Advantage serves to further remove any barriers to the adoption of the LTI standard, and hence represents a great opportunity for us to move forward with architecting those environments.”
—Malcolm Brown, Director, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative
"Standards-based integrations are critical to enabling highly effective learning ecosystems, especially when they allow for deep integrations among vendors and institution-based solutions. LTI Advantage is a great example of IMS Global Learning Consortium and the education industry driving forward the importance of interoperability and technology for achieving student success."
—Melissa Loble, Vice President, Platform and Partnerships, Instructure, Inc.
“The accelerated adoption of the LTI specification in recent years speaks to the power of this important interoperability standard and the tremendous value it provides in enabling a seamless digital learning ecosystem. Deeper, more powerful integrations that simplify access and improve learning outcomes depend on interoperability standards that can be easily implemented and address the spectrum of interoperability needs. McGraw-Hill Education applauds IMS on the evolution from LTI to LTI Advantage as the means to achieve deeper integrations and is committed to evolving with IMS to support LTI Advantage.”
—Stephen Laster, Chief Digital Officer, McGraw-Hill Education
“LTI Advantage allows Penn State to fully integrate technology-based learning tools within our Learning Management System. LTI Advantage provides faculty and students with seamless access to digital content and technology tools. Additionally, it provides an additional layer of data security, protecting student data across our learning tools ecosystem. IMS Global Learning Consortium standards are yet another opportunity to utilize agile technology to enhance learning in timely, secure and cost-effective ways.”
—Jennifer Sparrow, Ed.D., Senior Director of Teaching and Learning with Technology,
Penn State University
“LTI Advantage is a step in the right direction in providing an ecosystem of connected technologies for the enhancement of teaching and learning. Through standardization, Purdue can find, test, and implement tools quickly with minimal overhead. LTI Advantage will enable instructors to spend less time moving people, grades, and data back and forth and more time engaging with students or doing research.”
—Jason Fish, Director, Teaching and Learning Technologies, Information Technology at Purdue, Purdue University
“The learning technology ecosystem is self-organizing, dynamic and evolving. In this context, supporting pedagogical and technological innovation requires the ability to rapidly and seamlessly integrate new tools in a privacy conscious way, and that is facilitated by a commitment by institutions and learning technology suppliers to adopt LTI Advantage and keep up-to-date with all applicable standards.”
—Marianne Schroeder, Senior Associate Director, Teaching & Learning Technologies, The University of British Columbia
“The University of Central Florida believes that personalization will become increasingly important to tomorrow’s faculty and students. It is only through the creative application of proven, standards-based technologies that we will be able to realize such personalization at scale. The expanded capabilities of LTI Advantage will allow UCF to increase our already robust integrations work to positively impact the broader teaching and learning experience both within the LMS and beyond.”
—Thomas Cavanagh Ph.D., Vice Provost for Digital Learning, University of Central Florida
“An open and standards-based approach to application and data integration within the University of Michigan’s digital learning environment is pivotal to realizing our institutional vision of personalized and engaged learning at scale. LTI Advantage is helping pave the way for institutions to realize a more innovative ecosystem that leverages transformative open standards like IMS Caliper Analytics. As one of the top public research universities, we are proud to play a leading role in the development and promotion of IMS Global Learning Consortium standards, which are critical to data-enhanced teaching and learning.”
—Kelli Trosvig, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, University of Michigan