Basic LTI in Ares, Ares Virtual Conference Notes

Following are my notes from today's Basic LTI session of Atlas System's Ares Virtual Conference. We're planning to take advantage of Basic LTI once Blackboard replaces Angel as the primary course management system on campus. Basic LTI between Ares and LCMS+ is also likely assuming LCMS+ adds support for Basic LTI.

Atlas Systems Ares Course Reserves Basic LTI webinar

LTI v1.0, released May 2010
  : No support for callback messages from Ares to CMS. Such callbacks are supported in LTI v1.1, but Ares never passes data back to CMS. Data flow is one-way from CMS to Ares:
  : CMS -> Basic LTI -> Ares Web Service -> Ares Web DLL (pages)
Basic LTI points to "responder", Ares in this case.
  : Term "responder" is confusing; it's really a "consumer" of CMS info, but "consumer" is used to refer to the CMS' relationship to Ares? Strange.
Ares config
  : LTIConsumers Table
    : Ares Web URL field designates the page to display (e.g. for different audiences, CMSs. We might want the Ares response page for BlackBoard to look different from LCMS+).
  : LTIFieldMappings
    : Map Ares fields to LTI fields. Limited by values sent from CMS.
CMS config
  : "Launch URL" = http://ares.host.name/ares/webservice/BasicLTI
  : Consumer Key and Secret
  : view all available CMS params with Ares test link = http://ares.host.name/ares/webservice/BasicLTI/ShowLTIParams

New Health Information Literacy Tool Available at Dykes Library

Dykes Library has been awarded a 1-year license for software called Health Literacy Advisor from Health Literacy Innovations, Inc. The MidContinental Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine awarded licenses to regional libraries. Described on the HLA website "[a]s a health literacy checker, the HLA streamlines the review and simplification process by allowing users to assess the health of their documents and then fix it using plain language principles."

Documents can be reviewed for readability level and the results stamped in the footer. The software will scan the document and highlight words that compromise the readability. It will then make recommendations for improvement.

The Health Literacy Advisor program will run for 1 year from the end of April 2012 through the end of April 2013. This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, under Contract No. HHS-N-276-2011-00006-C with the University of Utah Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library.

For more information about how to access the software, contact Amy Ritterskamp at Dykes Library at 588-7168 or aritterskamp@kumc.edu