16 September 2022, 1:47

We've recently linked our Mahara site to our Brightspace VLE using LTI Advantage as per instructions found here:

https://manual.mahara.org/en/21.10/external/ltiadvantage_mahara.html#enable-ltiadvantage

and here

https://manual.mahara.org/en/21.10/external/lti_brightspace.html#ltiadvantage-brightspace

The part of the integration that creates the group and populates the members via the basic link is working perfectly.

The issue we are running into is around the Deep Linking for Assignment Submissions.  I have created an Assignment submission area within Brightspace and set it to a Text only submission as per the guidance.  When the student Inserts a quicklink they can choose Mahara as an option and can view their available collections or pages to submit.

The problem then arises once the student has completed the submission.  As a marker, when you access the link via the assignment box it takes you to the group but shows no submissions have been made.  If I log into Mahara as the student, their collection states that it has been submitted but doesn't specify where, it just seems to be submitted into a black hole, the student then has the option to release their collection back to themselves.

Another odd part to this, if I access the Insert an External Learning Tool menu within the course in Brightspace it displays a list of LTI links that match the names of the Mahara collections I have submitted from students.

20 September 2022, 8:03

Hi Scott,

Do you have separate deployments for deep links and NRPS? I noticed that if I only have one deployment that has both in it, I do end up on the group homepage. However, if I have one deployment for deep links and one for NRPS, he assessor is taken to the portfolio. That's how a client of ours has set up their connection as well and it's working without problems. You can add up to three deployment IDs into the configuration on the Mahara side for that reason.

I will add that as a note to the latest version of the Mahara manual.

As far as the display of the additional assignment goes, apparently that's normal with LTI connections in Brightspace and happens with other tools, too, I'm told.

Thank you

Kristina

21 September 2022, 1:53

Hi Kristina

Thanks for this I'll give it a go.

Another question I have is regarding LDAP.

Annoyingly our institution has two LDAPs for Mahara, one for staff and one for students.  When you set the Parent authority you can only choose one.  Is there any way to choose multiple?  I have asked our IT team if we can merge the two but they are reluctant to do this.

Thanks

22 September 2022, 16:44

Hi Scott,

It's not possible to set two authentication methods as parent authentication method. You are the first to ask. ;-) That would also probably make things much more complicated. It's already intricate enough with the current setup allowing the logins. When LTI is set up with a parent authentication method, it actually adds a row for that auth method into a Mahara table which is then used for the parent auth. Thus, if you had two parent auth's, it would add the same value for two auth methods which could come to complications if the same ID were used on both ends. That's probably not really going to be a problem for you as both LDAP go into the LMS and thus need to have unique usernames (I suspect), however, 'in the wild' that might be a problem.

Brightspace doesn't allow you to set up two LTI connections to the same site or you could set up two LTI and use one only for NRPS which you ask your instructors to use to log in and the other only for students.

I think your only solution would be to customise how your two LDAP are handled in Mahara, e.g. that even though teachers would be added to authinstance=1 that they are also added to authinstance=2 which is the student one, which is the parent auth for LTI. A developer might have a more elegant solution as there's typically a code solution, but you won't get around a customisation.

Cheers

Kristina