Prepara and Canvas

Prepara is a courseware platform: interactive course books students read at app.preparacourse.com, with lessons, checkpoint questions, and an AI tutor. Canvas is the course website system your school uses. Connecting the two puts a Prepara link inside your Canvas course: students press it and their book opens, already signed in, and the grades they earn in Prepara flow into the Canvas gradebook on their own. Students never see any setup.

Using a different course system? Blackboard · Moodle · D2L Brightspace.

For instructors: start without IT

You can teach with Prepara today, with no Canvas connection and no IT request.

1. Create an instructor account at app.preparacourse.com, or email admin@preparacourse.com and we set it up for you.
2. Create your class in the app and it gives you a join code, a short code that identifies your class.
3. Put the join code in your syllabus; students register, enter it, and appear in your class list.

Everything then runs on Prepara itself: reading, lessons, checkpoint questions, and a gradebook you can download as a spreadsheet. More detail for instructors is on the instructors page.

Put Prepara inside Canvas

If you want the Canvas button and automatic grade sync, your school's Canvas administrator installs Prepara once for the whole account. You do not need to know anything technical: copy the email below and send it to your IT department (or your Canvas administrator). It carries everything they need.

Copy the email for IT Copy the configuration URL

Subject: LTI 1.3 registration request: Prepara courseware

Dear IT,

My course uses Prepara (app.preparacourse.com), a courseware platform, and I would like to request its registration in Canvas as an LTI 1.3 tool so students can open it from their course and grades can sync to the gradebook.

The whole setup is one URL. Create an LTI developer key with the Enter URL method pointing at the configuration URL below, turn the key on, and install the app at the account level by Client ID. The configuration URL fills in every field, including placements and permissions.

Configuration URL: https://preparacourse.com/api/lti/canvas-config.json

The same values, if you prefer to enter them by hand:
OIDC initiation URL: https://preparacourse.com/api/lti/login
Target link / redirect URI: https://preparacourse.com/api/lti/launch
JWKS URL: https://preparacourse.com/api/lti/jwks

Requested services and why: Assignment and Grade Services (the tool creates its own gradebook columns and posts scores back, which is how students' work in the courseware reaches the gradebook) and Names and Role Provisioning Services (roster read, names and roles only, used to match enrolled students to their section). The tool needs the launch to carry the student's name and email for that matching. Student records are handled under a standard FERPA school-official posture (https://preparacourse.com/privacy).

Deployment: please install it at the account or sub-account level rather than per course, so every course there, this term and future terms, can use it without a new request.

Once it is set up, could you send me three values so I can complete the link on my side: our Canvas base URL, the developer key's Client ID, and the Deployment ID?

Thank you!

When IT finishes, they send back your Canvas web address, the Client ID (the long number on the key IT created), and the Deployment ID (the number Canvas assigns when the app is installed). Email those to admin@preparacourse.com if IT has not already; we complete the registration on our side and confirm. After that, open Prepara from your Canvas course once and pick your class in the chooser that opens. The roster and the gradebook columns follow on their own.

If you run your own Canvas (a free Canvas for Teachers account makes you the administrator), follow the administrator steps below yourself; they take about five minutes.

For Canvas administrators: the install

Prepara connects to Canvas through LTI 1.3, the standard connector for teaching tools. The whole install is one configuration URL. A configuration URL is a web address that answers with the tool's settings; Canvas reads it once and fills every field itself, including the course menu placement, the icon, and the grade permissions.

The configuration URL: https://preparacourse.com/api/lti/canvas-config.json

1. In Canvas, open Admin, pick your root account, and press Developer Keys. Developer Keys is the page where Canvas stores its connections to outside tools.
2. Press + Developer Key, then + LTI Key. An LTI Key is the kind of key used for teaching tools.
3. In the Method menu choose Enter URL and paste the configuration URL above. Every field fills itself; you type nothing else.
4. Press Save, then set the key's State to On.
5. Copy the Client ID, the long number in the Details column; you paste it once in the next step and send it to the instructor at the end.
6. Open Admin, pick the account that should have Prepara (the whole university or one school), then Settings, Apps, View App Configurations, + App; in Configuration Type choose By Client ID, paste the Client ID, press Submit, then Install. Installing at the account level means every course under that account can use Prepara, this term and future terms, with no further requests.
7. Send the instructor three values: your Canvas web address, the Client ID, and the Deployment ID, which is shown under the gear next to Prepara on the App Configurations page.

That is the whole install. There is no server work on your side and no student accounts to create. The Prepara button appears in each course menu on its own; an instructor who prefers to hide it can do that from their course's Navigation settings.

What the connection reads and writes

• Assignment and Grade Services: Prepara creates its own gradebook columns in Canvas and posts scores into them, and any grade an instructor changes in Canvas wins.
• Names and Role Provisioning Services: Prepara reads the course roster, names and roles only, to match students to their class.

Paid access is separate: each student's own Prepara account governs what they can read, and connecting Canvas never changes who has paid access. Student records are handled under a FERPA school-official posture; the details are in the privacy policy. Questions from IT or from instructors both reach a person at admin@preparacourse.com.

Setup values

Some administrators prefer typing the fields by hand. These are the same values the configuration URL fills automatically.