GuidesToolsCanvas–OnCourse integration

This tutorial shows how to use an OnCourse (Moodle) quiz as an assignment in Canvas. This is achieved by a protocol called LTI, by means of which Canvas communicates to OnCourse that a student is logged in and wants to start the assignment, and OnCourse renders the assignment content and afterwards communicates the grade back to Canvas. With the right setup, as described in this tutorial, all of this is handled behind the scenes automatically.

You need to repeat these steps for each individual quiz that you want to use in Canvas.

Acknowledgment This tutorial is based on material provided by Jan-Willem Knopper.

Step 1: The OnCourse side

Login to OnCourse with your usual login information. Open your course, to which you need to have editing rights. In the Course administration section of the sidebar, click Published as LTI tools (the bottommost option). Click Add, and fill out the following:

Note Setting Role for teacher to Student makes sure that teachers in the Canvas course do not automatically get editing rights on the OnCourse quiz. This is desirable since in Canvas, SAs may be considered as teachers in some situations.

Now click Add method. Your LTI tool is now shown as an entry in the list; take note of the cartridge URL and the secret.

Step 2: The Canvas side

In your Canvas course, go to Settings, then click the Apps tab, and click View App Configurations. Click + App, and fill out the following:

Now click Submit. Then, go to Assignments, and click + Assignment. Give the assignment a name (probably the same as the OnCourse quiz). Then set the Submission type to External tool, and click the Find button to select the app we just made:

Warning Sometimes the new app will not immediately be found after adding it. You may need to wait a few minutes.

After clicking Save, your assignment is ready to be published.

Note One annoying aspect of this setup is that whenever you open the assignment in Canvas, it will log you in into OnCourse with a temporary account. This account does not have editing rights: it is set up to only be able to take the one particular quiz made available via LTI. Hence, whenever you notice that you lost the ability to edit (or even see) parts of the course, log out from OnCourse and log back in with your usual login information.