Getting courses that use LTI connection to load and backup and restore

One of our vendors Middlebury Interactive has a big ol AP French course that we wanted.  I worked with Jeremy on their side to set this up.  Actually, the steps were

Me getting the .mbz file from their server, I have an account - that needed to be clarified for me to even get in .... there was a typo in my name....

Restoring the .mbz file to our moodle instance.  It was built using moodle 2.4.  Installed on our 2.2 server.  The final step of the restore tells you that there could be incompatibilities.  

The course uses LTI method of delivery of content.  This means the course content lives on their servers and we have a shell course that points to unique URLs in their content environment (server), fine.  The course is large, in the sense of the # of activity items on the course page.  I think I counted over 200. 

Synching course shell to their server content...

Their is a pair of secret long keys that are provided by the vendor and stored with a connection to the vendor, deep in the moodle admin area.

Course page

When I backed the course up, it took a long time, even tried to time out, browser complained, but still worked.  It took a long time because of the connections and communication going on between our slave shell and their master content server.  It did not take a long time because of large video, graphics etc.  All that stuff is stored on their server and served up to the course.

The backup file is only 2.4 MB.  That part makes me happy.

After backing up the course, I restored or deployed a copy of it to a teacher category on our server. this was not fast either.  For the same reason the backup was S L O W, so it the restore.  The good news?, it restored as a new course.

The teacher can edit their copy of the course to their hearts content.

The course content looks pretty good - the teacher can turn things off and even remove them in their copy of the course.