Does Blackboard Support LTI® 1.3?
The short answer
Yes. Blackboard Learn supports LTI® 1.3 and the LTI® Advantage services. Registration is manual rather than dynamic, and the process differs structurally from every other platform here.
Anthology publishes an LTI tool implementation guide, which is the most useful vendor-side reference, alongside the specification from 1EdTech Consortium, Inc.
How registration works
Blackboard registers tools centrally rather than per institution. A tool is installed once and made available across tenants, then each institution installs it into their own Blackboard and creates placements for it.
That means the steps are:
- Install the tool into Blackboard for all tenants.
- Register the details Blackboard gives you on your side.
- Install the tool into the specific Blackboard instance.
- Set up a placement so it appears somewhere a user can click.
Steps three and four are separate from one and two, and skipping the placement leaves a correctly registered tool that no one can reach.
The Blackboard-specific thing that catches people
One registration serves many institutions. Because of the multi-tenant model, several institutions can share a single registration, arriving with the same issuer and the same client ID.
The deployment ID is what tells them apart. On most platforms it is a formality; on Blackboard it is load-bearing. An integration that keys tenants on issuer and client ID alone will merge separate institutions into one, which is a data separation problem rather than a cosmetic one.
If you support Blackboard, store and check the deployment ID from the start.
Naming
Blackboard is now part of Anthology, and its documentation and product naming have shifted accordingly. Blackboard Learn, Anthology Blackboard and Blackboard Ultra all appear in current material, with Ultra referring to the newer interface rather than a different LTI® implementation.
Two vendor references worth having: the LTI tool implementation guide for the developer side, and Blackboard's administrator documentation on Learning Tools Interoperability for the person who will actually be clicking through the setup.
Setting it up
The Blackboard setup guide has the current step-by-step process, including screenshots of where each value goes.
Common questions
Does Blackboard support dynamic registration?
No. Blackboard registration is manual, so the values are exchanged by hand between the administrator and the tool.
Why do two Blackboard institutions look like the same one?
Blackboard's multi-tenant model lets several institutions share a registration, so they arrive with the same issuer and client ID. The deployment ID distinguishes them and must be checked.
Is Blackboard Ultra different for LTI®?
Ultra is the newer interface rather than a different LTI® implementation. The registration and launch behaviour is the same.
