Which VLEs does this work with?

Any that supports LTI 1.3, which includes current Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard and Brightspace.

Can a student get teacher rights by being an instructor in the VLE?

No. Following a link makes somebody a student on the module at most; staff are put on a module here.

Do students still need an email address?

The VLE usually sends one, and it is how they can sign in here directly too.

Connecting your VLE

If your college already runs Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard or another VLE, it can be connected once with LTI 1.3, the standard they all speak. From then on a link in a VLE course opens a module here with the person already signed in, and nobody has a second set of details to remember.

Registering the VLE

A college administrator opens Settings and the VLE tab. It shows the four addresses your VLE asks for when you add an external tool, ready to copy, and a form for a name for it and the six details the VLE gives back: its issuer, client and deployment ids and the addresses of its sign-in, token and key endpoints.

A college can register more than one VLE. Removing one puts it in Deleted items with every course link it had, so it can be put back as it was.

Some VLEs, Canvas among them, make a new deployment id for every install. Use Add deployment under the registration to give it the new id, rather than removing the registration, which would take its linked accounts and courses with it.

Linking a course to a module

A teacher adding the tool to a course in the VLE is shown the modules they may link and the tasks in each, and picks a whole module or one task. The VLE keeps the link and shows it to the course.

A student following it is put on the module as a student and lands on it, or on the task. What they are given to do is still decided here, by assigning.

Who arrives as whom

The first time somebody arrives, they are matched by the VLE’s own id for them and remembered that way, so a changed address does not break it. A new address makes an account at your college, staff for an instructor and a student for anybody else. If the address already belongs to somebody here, they are asked to sign in once the usual way, and the next visit from the VLE is linked to that account. An address held at another college is refused, and a student is only ever a student here, whatever role the VLE gives them.

Some VLEs open the tool inside a frame in their own page. The sign-in step cannot run inside one, so there the student is offered a new window to continue in.

The class list, and marks back

When a teacher arrives from a course, the course’s members are read in the background and put on the module, at most once every ten minutes. Leaving the VLE course takes nobody off the module: remove them here if they should go.

Marks go back to the VLE’s gradebook only if you turn that on, on the same tab; it is off to begin with. A mark given to a linked task appears in a column for that task, and is cleared again if the work is sent back. Quiz attempts are not sent.

Questions people ask

Which VLEs does this work with?: Any that supports LTI 1.3, which includes current Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard and Brightspace.
Can a student get teacher rights by being an instructor in the VLE?: No. Following a link makes somebody a student on the module at most; staff are put on a module here.
Do students still need an email address?: The VLE usually sends one, and it is how they can sign in here directly too.