To the Worldwide IMS Community & IMS Member Organizations,
These are very exciting times in IMS! Thank you so much for your support and involvement.

At a meeting of the IMS Board of Directors in mid-July the Board tasked IMS staff to bring together Basic LTI (BLTI) and Full LTI to leverage the market success of BLTI while continuing to draw from the advanced features of Full LTI.

Basic LTI has enabled plug and play learning applications from diverse sources to be rapidly and safely integrated into the educational enterprise. BLTI has been embraced by suppliers because it has reduced the cost associated with integrations. It has been embraced by end-users because it enables a more seamless experience and wider choice of innovative learning content and tools.

In the several weeks that followed and based on conversations that occurred last week at our quarterly meeting held at Microsoft and pending further feedback from the IMS Technical Advisory Board, we are anticipating a rapid path to bringing BLTI and Full LTI together into a single LTI.

If all goes as hoped, with the next release of BLTI (estimated October 1) it will simply be LTI v1.1. Included in that release will be formal conformance support for outcomes. We anticipate that in September the Common Cartridge/LTI Accredited Profile Management Group (APMG) will begin taking up the further evolution of the one LTI, drawing from the detailed technical work accomplished in the Full LTI workgroup (led by Blackboard and Pearson). From that point forward there will no longer be a BLTI or a Full LTI - only LTI.

The following resources are available for the IMS community to partake in the adoption or development of LTI:

Public LTI specifications & forums for technical support (free):
http://www.imsglobal.org/lti/index.html

http://www.imsglobal.org/commu...4262&entercat=y


Developer and certification community for LTI and Common Cartridge adoption (requires minimal annual dues):
http://www.imsglobal.org/cc/alliance.html


Information on which products are certified as compliant:
http://www.imsglobal.org/cc/statuschart.cfm


Information on IMS Memberships to develop, evolve, and financially support LTI and other IMS standards:
http://www.imsglobal.org/joinims.html


A special thanks to the IMS Contributing Members who have made this work possible (IMS Contributing Members support 95% of IMS's non-profit operating budget):
http://www.imsglobal.org/membe...iliates.html#ML


And a VERY special thanks to Blackboard and Pearson who have contributed an extraordinary amount of technical resources to create Full LTI - upon which BLTI and LTI going forward has been based.

Please let me know if you have any comments or if IMS can help.

Best regards,
Rob


IMS Global Learning Consortium
Where the World's Leaders in Learning Converge

Rob Abel, Ed.D.
Chief Executive Officer
www.imsglobal.org