For Teachers and Admins
Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) 1.3 is the standard that lets your Learning Management System (LMS) and Vocareum talk to each other securely. Once it is configured, students launch Vocareum assignments from inside the LMS without a separate login, and grades earned in Vocareum post back to the LMS gradebook automatically. This article is the conceptual reference for that integration. It is written for Organization Admins (Org Admins) planning the setup and for teachers who want to understand how the connection works before they add Vocareum to a course. Admin-configurable decisions are called out by section.
What LTI 1.3 enables
The LTI 1.3 connection between Vocareum and your LMS provides four capabilities.
Single Sign-On (SSO) launch. Students and instructors open Vocareum assignments from links inside the LMS without a separate Vocareum login. The LMS passes the user's identity to Vocareum securely on each launch.
Assignment selection and deep linking. Instructors browse and select specific Vocareum assignments from inside the LMS while creating or editing course content. The selected assignment is embedded directly as an LMS item rather than added as a generic link.
Grade passback to the LMS gradebook. When a student completes a graded Vocareum assignment, the grade posts back to the matching assignment in the LMS gradebook automatically. No manual export is required.
Roster and role information sharing. The LMS shares enrollment and role information (student, instructor, and similar roles) with Vocareum, so users land in Vocareum with the correct permissions for that course.
How the connection works
LTI 1.3 requires configuration by an admin on both sides of the connection. The admin registers Vocareum as an external tool in the LMS, then registers identifying information for the LMS in Vocareum. Together, these two registrations establish trust between the two platforms.
Users do not interact with the LTI configuration directly. Each time a student or instructor opens a Vocareum link from the LMS, the LMS and Vocareum exchange identity and assignment context behind the scenes using signed, secure messages. Grade passback uses a separate, secure connection between Vocareum and the LMS, posting grades back to the gradebook automatically and without requiring the student to be online.
LMS placements
Placements are the points within an LMS where Vocareum can appear to users. Typical examples include an assignment-selection picker (used when an instructor creates a graded assignment), a module link, a content editor button, and a course-navigation link.
The specific placements available and the way each one behaves depend on the LMS. For Canvas, refer to Adding Vocareum to a Canvas Course.
Integration scope: organization-level and course-level
When setting up the Vocareum side of the LTI 1.3 connection, an admin chooses the scope at which Vocareum trusts the LMS: at the organization level, where one registration covers every Vocareum course, or at the course level, where each Vocareum course has its own registration. This is an admin decision made once per organization (or once per course, in the course-level case). Teachers do not configure scope.
Organization-level integration (recommended)
In organization-level integration, an admin registers the LMS once in Vocareum at the organization level, and that single registration covers every Vocareum course in the organization. After the initial setup, instructors can add Vocareum to LMS courses without requiring further admin or IT involvement for each new course.
Most institutions use organization-level integration. It is the recommended path because it minimizes administrative overhead, scales cleanly to additional courses and semesters, and gives instructors the autonomy to add Vocareum to their own LMS courses.
Course-level integration
In course-level integration, an admin creates a separate LTI registration for each Vocareum course, scoped to that course only. Each course requires its own unique Client ID and a corresponding LMS tool registration; a single Client ID cannot be shared across Vocareum courses. The result is per-course isolation at the LTI level, at the cost of higher administrative overhead because every new Vocareum course requires a new LMS-side registration and a matching Vocareum-side configuration.
Course-level integration is appropriate for pilot programs, proof-of-concept rollouts, and situations where security or compliance requirements demand that Vocareum access be strictly scoped to specific courses.
For Canvas specifically, course-level Vocareum integration is now legacy. Modern Canvas setups reach the same access-limiting outcome by registering Vocareum once at the organization level and using Canvas's Exceptions feature to restrict availability to specific sub-accounts or courses. Refer to Setting Up LTI 1.3 for Canvas for the current Canvas flow. Course-level integration remains a customer-facing option for Brightspace (D2L), Moodle, Blackboard, and other LMSs that do not offer an equivalent single-deployment-plus-exceptions model.
Choosing between them
A few considerations guide the scope decision:
Scale. Organization-level integration is the better fit when Vocareum will be used across multiple courses or semesters. Course-level integration scales poorly because every new course requires another LMS-side registration.
Trust model. Organization-level integration assumes that any instructor with course-editing permissions in the LMS can add Vocareum to a course. Course-level integration is appropriate when access must be tightly controlled and granted course by course.
Security and compliance. If institutional policy requires strict isolation between courses at the integration layer, course-level integration provides that scoping. In Canvas, the same access boundaries can be expressed through Exceptions on a single organization-level registration.
Administrative overhead. Organization-level integration is configured once. Course-level integration is configured for every course, including reconfiguration when courses are copied or recreated.
Configuration terms
LTI 1.3 uses several identifiers and URLs to establish the connection. The same concepts apply across all LMS platforms, although different LMSs may use slightly different terminology for the same field. Definitions below are conceptual; for the specific values and per-platform examples used during setup, refer to LTI 1.3 Configuration URLs and Fields.
Issuer. A unique identifier for your LMS platform, usually expressed as a URL (for example, your institution's LMS domain). It tells Vocareum which LMS instance is making a connection request.
Client ID. A unique identifier the LMS generates when Vocareum is registered as an external tool. Vocareum uses the Client ID to identify which LMS tool registration is making a given request.
Deployment ID. An identifier that ties the tool registration to a specific scope inside the LMS, such as the entire institution, a sub-account, or a single course. A single Client ID can have one or more Deployment IDs depending on how the LMS scopes the tool.
Platform KeySet URL. The URL where the LMS publishes its public cryptographic keys, sometimes called the JWK Set URL or Public JWK URL. Vocareum uses these keys to verify that incoming launch requests genuinely come from your LMS.
OIDC Authentication URL. The LMS endpoint where Vocareum initiates the authentication handshake for each launch, sometimes called the OpenID Connect Login URL or Authorization URL.
OAuth Token URL. The LMS endpoint Vocareum calls to request access tokens for secure server-to-server actions such as grade passback. Sometimes called the Access Token URL.
Redirect URL. The Vocareum URL that the LMS sends users to after authentication. Sometimes called the Target Link URI or Launch URL.
Prerequisites for setup
Setting up an LTI 1.3 integration requires the following access:
LMS administrative access with permissions to register and configure LTI tools.
Vocareum Organization Admin access.
Familiarity with the LMS's external-tool or LTI configuration interface.
Next steps
The links below organize the next steps by audience.
For admins setting up the integration on a specific LMS:
For admins completing the Vocareum side of the integration: