If you are looking to add a new Third Party Tool/Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI), like McGraw Hill, Labster, or Camtasia, to Canvas you will need to make sure that the tool is accessible and ask the company about their security protocols. Once we receive all this information from you about the LTI tool you want to use, we might need to talk to their company and sign an agreement to integrate that LTI (this will include our lawyers and their lawyers - eLearning or TSS will handle this part once we have all the other information requested). Here are the steps that you will need to do or alternative steps to find the tools for your courses.
Accessibility:
- You will need to ask the representative that you are working with to give you the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). A VPAT is used to create an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) to document the accessibility status of an organization’s digital content based on Section 508 guidelines.
- You will need to verify the weaknesses of the Tool in question, which means you will need to interpret the VPAT. Here are some important questions: What students would not be able to use it? Can Screen Readers be used and used well? Will it pass the WCAG 2.2 or newer regulations? Is the company working on the issues that are known? Who completed the VPAT?
- There is free VPAT training out there and we suggest that you take some VPAT training to understand how VPATs work.
- Once you have done your due diligence to make sure that the tool is accessible, send an email with this information in it:
- What VPAT training you completed
- The actual VPAT
- What weaknesses did you find in the VPAT
- How the company is working on the VPAT
- The company's directions on how to add the tool to Canvas including how to get the developer key
- The representative's information just in case we have more questions
- How you are going to meet the accessibility needs that are lacking in the tool that you are using. We will then give this to our SAS department to see if those plans meet the accessibility guidelines.
- Once we receive that email, we will verify the company's accessibility issues with the Student Accessibility Services office. If they find that the LTI is accessible to most students, we will go ahead and contact the company to complete the deep integration. We will notify you if we can move forward or not. If we cannot move forward with the integration, we will offer our assistance to find ways to help with what you want in your course as an alternative.
Student Protection
It's crucial to ensure that any third-party integration, such as an LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) company, follows strict measures to protect student information and maintain data privacy. When discussing data protection with an LTI company, consider asking the following questions:
1. **Data Security Policies:** What specific data security policies does your company have in place to protect student information? How do you ensure compliance with relevant data protection regulations, such as GDPR or FERPA?
2. **Data Encryption:** How is data transmitted and stored? Do you use encryption to safeguard data during transit and at rest?
3. **Data Access Controls:** How do you control access to student information within your organization? What authentication and authorization mechanisms are implemented to prevent unauthorized access?
4. **Data Breach Response:** What is your company's protocol for responding to data breaches? How quickly do you notify affected parties if a breach occurs?
5. **Data Minimization:** How does your system handle data minimization? What data elements do you collect, and for what purposes?
6. **Data Retention and Deletion:** How long do you retain student data, and what is your process for data deletion once it is no longer required?
7. **Security Incident History:** Have you experienced any previous security incidents? If yes, how were they handled, and what measures have been taken to prevent recurrence?
8. **Data Sharing with Third Parties:** Do you share student data with any third parties? If yes, what measures do you have in place to ensure data protection in such scenarios?
9. **Anonymous Data Collection:** If data is collected anonymously for analytics or research purposes, how do you ensure that individuals cannot be re-identified from the data?
10. **Data Ownership and Usage:** Clarify who owns the student data collected through the LTI integration and how it will be used.
11. **Vendor Subcontractors:** Do you engage any subcontractors or cloud service providers to handle data storage or processing? If yes, what measures are in place to ensure their compliance with data protection standards?
12. **Incident Reporting and Communication:** How do you communicate security incidents and updates to your clients, such as educational institutions using your LTI integration?
You can send this list to them and have them answer these questions.
Here are some alternatives to the process above:
Looking to use course materials from a publisher?
Most publishers have cartridges for you to use for your courses and the LTI does not need to be integrated into Canvas. These cartridges come with all their material such as tests, quizzes, PPTs, practice exams, and fully built courses. You will need to sign up on their website and contact their representative to get access to these cartridges.
Looking to get a new tool for your course?
We already have tools that you can use, maybe they are not active in your courses or you have not heard about them. Please reach out to us to see what tools we have that can help you with what you are trying to do in your course. Some tools that we already have help with recording, storage, Labs, meeting rooms, Microsoft 365, accessibility reports, how to create rubrics, immersion reader, etc. We also have instructional designers and Assistive Technology Specialists that can help you with creating assignments.