External tool activity

The External tool activity is used to add external content into Moodle. 

Content providers that support the LTI format can be added to Moodle courses this way. Common tools are available within the ‘Preconfigured tools’ dropdown when adding an external tool, these require minimal setup as they are already made available in Moodle. 

The external tool offers a way for instructors to link to materials and interactive content on other websites from within their own Moodle course page and where available to have grades sent back into Moodle. 

Students only need to log in to Moodle, they do not need to log in a second time to the connecting site. 

Different types of LTI will behave differently when the course is rolled over. There are three different types of LTI links and how they behave when course is rolled over.

Auto Configured link: Auto configured LTI will detect the course they are in and use this information to link to specific content in the target system. These should continue to work after rollover but will automatically update to point to content related to the new course. 

Linked to generic page: If an LTI is rolled over which only acts as a link to a generic page and does not provide any information from Moodle’s end, it should continue to work. Common examples of these LTIs are myExperience and Virtuala. 

Linked to specific content: If an LTI is rolled over which links to specific content that is in another system, it should become outdated and requires updating to point to the correct content. 

To add an external tool or LTI into a course, the tool specifications are required. These specifications are obtained from the external vendor and are usually a set of ‘Tool URL’, ‘Consumer key’ and ‘Shared secret’. Moodle courses have a set of preconfigured LTI links already, so most of the time required specifications are already there.