Challenges and Strategies in Self-hosting Canvas LMS and LTI Tools

At Learning Impact Europe 2025, Zong-Sheng Yang and I shared a talk titled “Challenges and Strategies in Self-hosting Canvas LMS and LTI Tools,” based on our work at the Digital Learning Center, National Taiwan University.

Our talk covered:
• Why we chose to self-host the open-source Canvas LMS
• The system architecture of Canvas LMS with our homemade LTI integrations
• The upstream status quo in Canvas LMS and our approaches to adapting it

During the roundtable session, attendees actively engaged with us in further discussions on:
• How Taiwan’s regional context and higher-education needs shape the challenges when working on an evolving digital learning platform
• Digital sovereignty and shared concerns around maintaining autonomy in EdTech infrastructure
• Our experience in localizing Canvas LMS and extending it through LTI standards, exploring how these efforts could potentially contribute to the EdTech community

— Learning Impact Europe 2025, hosted by 1EdTech Consortium, held at TU Delft, the Netherlands

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📎 More detailed insights on self-hosting Canvas LMS we’ve also shared with the Ruby Taiwan community: https://speakerdeck.com/kasahno3/challenges-and-strategies-in-self-hosting-canvas-lms-expanded-part-for-rubyjam

Transcript

1. Zong Sheng Yang Yu Shan Hsiao Challenges and Strategies in Self-hosting Canvas LMS and LTI Tools
2. Session Outline • Team Introduction • Why We Host Our Own Canvas Instance and Develop Custom LTIs? • System Architecture Overview • Challenges We Encountered • Open Discussion
3. National Taiwan University • Taiwan’s top-ranked university • Over 30,000 students • Comprehensive and Diverse Disciplines • Strong research focus • Growing international community • High demand for digital learning
4. NTU Course Online ( NTU COOL ) • 30,000+ Students • 3,000+ Teachers • 5000+ Online Courses • Basic Course Management • Video Lectures / PDF Annotation Discussion • Learning Activity Tracking
5. 2000＋ Students TAICA 50＋ Universities
6. We’re like a small EdTech startup in a university. PM PDM ISO UI / UX SRE Full Stack, we’re here :) SRE
7. Why We Host Our Own Canvas Instance and Develop Custom LTIs?
8. Maintenance.
9. Maintenance. Refactor Fix Bugs Customize
10. But… why ?
11. The State of the LMS Market in 2024: Trends in K-12 - ListEdTech
12. Ｍodern, clean, and consistent user interface and experience.
13. RSPack
14. Where the Journey Started… After the pandemic, users at NTU got used to relying on digital tools.
15. From Issues to Insights: Support Team • Quick Support — Help 30,000+ NTU users solve issues • Analyze & enhance before problems arise • Guides in Advance
16. From Issues to Insights: Support Team Recent NTU COOL Customer Service Issue Categories
17. From Issues to Insights: Support Team Stacked Bar Chart of Question Quantity from Phone Calls
18. Language Localization Wrong / inappropriate translations in just one main feature. ? ?! ??? ?? 🤔 ?? 😯 🤨
19. Integrated with Internal Systems in NTU • Regular system integration • Cross-department synchronization • Consistent user data We regularly sync with internal systems — including the course catalog, academic database, and grading system — to keep faculty and student data consistent across platforms. O ffi ce of Academic A ff airs MS SQL
20. Customize Features • We can stay fl exible and proactively customize features for our users. • We can build our own tools and plug them into Canvas. Customized Columns: Student ID & Department
21. AI Subtitle Generation Model High-accuracy subtitles mixed with Mandarin Chinese and English
22. System Architecture Overview
24. Custom LTI Tool Example – PDF Annotation • Integrated with Canvas PDFs to enhance teaching materials • Added interaction stats for better feedback • Supports collaborative annotation and discussion
25. LTI
26. Information security concerns • Higher security classi fi cation ( Level B ) • Frequent cyberattacks • Integration with multiple internal systems
27. Digital Sovereignty • Self-determination over digital data, hardware, and software • Strict permission policy ISO Accreditation Security Audit Report
28. Fast Response to Security Issues The students in NTU uncovered a stored XSS vulnerability related to our fi le upload feature.
29. Challenge of upgrading and maintaining the open-source Canvas LMS Canvas branching strategy
30. AI-assisted and Automation Tools Auto-script for Building Canvas at Development Environment
31. Conclusion
32. Thank you! 謝謝！ Dankjewel!
33. Discussion Topics • Have you explored self-hosting an LMS? What were the key factors in your decision? • How do you approach user data and governance in light of digital self- determination trends in Europe? • Any best practices for upgrading upstream Canvas LMS? • How do you ensure translation accuracy in less common languages? • Do you have a favorite LTI tool? One that's especially well-suited for open use or self-hosting.