Overview
What are third-party tools in Brightspace?
Third-party tools can be integrated within Brightspace to extend its functionality. New tools must undergo a rigorous evaluation process to ensure data security and technical feasibility, which can take weeks or months to conduct. Because adding new tools into Brightspace can have system-wide implications, requests to enable a new tool require department sign-off; therefore, they are not commonly fulfilled for an individual faculty or course. Panopto, ExamSoft, Voice Thread, Piazza, etc. are common third-party applications that are available to use from within USC’s Brightspace.
An external tool can be enabled campus-wide or for a department (i.e., isolated and available to only valid licensed users in that department). This functionality permits simultaneous installations of the same tool under different licenses that are only available and accessible to the users in those programs. For example, Piazza is licensed by the Viterbi School of Engineering, so only their classes will have the tool available for students and faculty to use.
What are the advantages of integrating third-party tools into Blackboard?
The advantage to configuring an external tool in Brightspace is that a user, once they are logged in, will not need a separate username or password to access the tool.
What are LTIs?
‘LTI’ stands for Learning Tools Interoperability and is a protocol used by learning management systems (LMS)- like Brightspace- to communicate and share data with external, third-party tools so its users can have access to them within the LMS environment. It is a term used interchangeably with ‘external tools”, and the preferred standard for adding external tools into Brightspace.
Who do I contact for support with school-specific LTIs?
If you need support activating or have issues with an enabled school-specific tool, please get in touch with your school’s administrator, as outlined in the table below.
Tool Name | Description | Available Schools & Contacts |
| Akindi | Web-based test scoring tool that allows for test creation, online and paper test scoring, and report and analytics. | – Marshall: Contact |
| Codio | Provides a college computer science platform that makes it easy to deliver engaging computing learning experiences with templated labs, auto-graded assessments, instant student feedback, customizable courseware, and research-based instructional tools. | -Viterbi |
| Ed Discussion | Helps scale course communication and provides a place for students to ask questions, share resources, create announcements, and chat. | – Viterbi |
| ExamSoft | Helps improve student learning with secure assessment tools and software that provide valuable data, insights, and reports. | – Ostrow: Contact |
| H5P | Makes it easy for everyone to create, share, and reuse interactive HTML5 content. | – Price: Contact – Keck: Contact |
| Kritik | Provides a peer assessment Tool | -TBD |
| Lumen Learning | Creates a platform for open educational resources | – Price |
| myBusinessCourse | Complements your textbook and classroom instruction by providing author-created tools to learn, practice, and master key accounting concepts | – Marshall: Contact |
| MyOpenMath | Provides mathematics assessment integration | – Dornslife |
| Padlet | Supports a real-time collaborative web platform where users can upload, organize, and share content to virtual bulletin boards. | – Dornsife: Contact – Price: Contact |
| Panopto | Used to record lectures and share videos. | – Price – Marshall – Viterbi – Gould – Ostrow – Mann |
| Peerceptiv | Peer learning and collaboration tool that includes peer review assessment and team member evaluation assignments, in which students evaluate themselves and their peers on their group participation, leadership, and collaboration skills | – TBD |
| Perusall | An online social annotation platform that works with your course content to increase student engagement and collaboration. | – Annenberg – Dornsife: Contact – Price: Contact |
| PlayPosit | An online learning environment to create and share interactive video lessons. | – Marshall: Contact |
| Piazza | Allows students to ask questions in a forum-type format. Instructors can moderate the discussion, along with endorsing accurate answers. | – Viterbi: Contact |
| Simple Syllabus | Provides a centralized, template-driven syllabus management system that enables instructors to personalize digital syllabi quickly | – KSOM: Contact |
| Top Hat | A student response, web-based system to poll students, ask for discussion prompts, present lecture material, and track attendance. | – Dornsife: Contact |
| Vocareum | Offers a cloud-based platform for hosting and deploying Jupyter Notebook, a platform for Python programming in an educational context, and is suitable for multiple users. | -Viterbi |
| Voice Thread | Provide virtual rooms where course content can be uploaded, and students can interact using voice comments. | – Dornsife: Contact – Price: Contact – Rossier |
Configuration
All Available LTIs
A list of all currently available LTI’s is available here.
External Tool Roles
| Sponsor | A third-party sponsor is a faculty or staff member who has oversight responsibilities for licensing third-party applications (e.g., YouSeeU, Lecture Tools, etc.). The LTI sponsor may be responsible for supporting the LTI application once installed. |
| Course Instructor | A course instructor is a current paid USC faculty or staff member who is assigned to teach a Brightspace course. The LTI sponsor may also act as a course instructor. The course instructor is specifically responsible for monitoring and maintaining the course participants’ compliance with the University of Southern California policies and guidelines. Course instructor(s) can manually activate any LTI applications, licensed by their school, and enabled within their course, only after the tool is installed by the Brightspace Server Team. |
| Course Participant | A course participant is a currently enrolled USC student or USC faculty, staff, teaching assistant, or affiliate who is enrolled in a Brightspace course. Only users with valid, current USC user names and passwords can be Brightspace course participants. Course participants can access LTI applications from within a Brightspace course, if enabled by the course instructor. |
Default Integrations
The following tools are enabled, by default, and ready to use in all courses:
- Qwickly & QwicklyAttendance – Add content to multiple courses and take attendance from within Brightspace.
- Turnitin – Turnitin checks students’ submitted work for text matches to outside sources. .
- Zoom – Zoom is USC’s primary video conferencing platform. All virtual class meetings are hosted on Zoom.
- Respondus Lock Down Browser – LockDown Browser® is a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within Brightspace, making students unable to copy, print, access other applications, or visit other websites during an online exam
Requesting an External Tool Integration
Please visit our service catalog to request an LTI integration to: LTI Service Request Form. LTI sponsors should complete the request form. LTI integrations require the license holder to work with the Brightspace server team to integrate LTI too
The license holder will be required to:
- Work with the ITS Brightspace Administrator and the IAMSC (Identity and Access Management Steering Committee) as needed to ensure that the LTI conforms to USC policies and to obtain required approvals.
- Sign a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that requires the signer to assume all support responsibilities for the configured LTI tool.
- Provide Enterprise Learning Technologies with a copy of the agreement with the LTI vendor. The LTI tool needs to be purchased under a valid campus-wide or departmental license agreement.
- Work with the ITS Brightspace Administrator to test the LTI on a test environment.
Typically the review, approval, testing, and activation on the production system, may take up to 45-days to complete, assuming no issues are found.