api's make us happy - desire2learn ignite wisconsin - nov. 2013

API’S MAKE US HAPPY!

WORKING SMART WITH DESIRE2LEARN API’S

RYAN MISURA & PATRICIA FELLOWSUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN COLLEGES/EXTENSION/MADISON

Why an API?1 Personal Discussion Topic for each student in each online course

140 Courses

30-35 students

4,900 discussion topics

3 staff

3-4 work days to accomplish

~120 hours

Finished Process

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylemcdonald/6857656274/sizes/l/in/photolist-brZhi1-8HbK2t-8F1GRt-dTwNUw-8kyY8i-999VLv-8dptFB-dkKBB4-8Npx1X-8kH2pN-9uoekc-au68Ys-8kH2gy-8seDMm-bDxUWM-bDxV14-bqCZxb-bqCZqJ-bDxULx-bqCZtA-88D3tW-8woPvY-ch8dkj-7KCb1v-bFErBi-bnRR5s-7GgEDD-daXt3S-9zi9kn-f6REfd-a1A19h-8fPHsq-8wr8Fp-f2Vh1a-dW7GrV-a17mfB-8xjH1Y-8kDPNe-8kDPUV/

Kyle McDonald Flickr

Pat Goes to Boston

Fusion 2013Attend Sessions - Really good sessions, great keynotes

Talk to D2L Staff and Attendees - Networking

Go to Usability Matters Center - Met Ryan, “Mr. API”

Explained challenge

Got the API answer we needed

Pat Returns to Madison

What is Valence?

Valence - D2L’s extensibility technology including API’s - http://docs.valence.desire2learn.com/

What’s an API?

API comprises a number of actions that we can take to create, modify, retrieve, or delete resources employed by Desire2Learn.

First Steps!

Created a Google Account (so we could get our app developer keys)

Put in a Service Request to Learn@UW notifying them of the upcoming request to D2L

Requested two Key Tools from D2L, one for each beta instance (UWC and UWC Online)

Ryan Does His Magic!Set up a working environment

Found the API calls that would be needed to Rename the topics in the Forum

oRetrieving All the topics for a given Forum

o Updating a topic with a new topic name

o Figure out what key variables are needed

ForumID, OrgUnitID

Testing Phase

Testing one course and one Discussion Forum

Adding the option to use the API to do renaming in multiple courses at once

Built a secure web interface for D2L Site Admins

Production

Send Service Request to Learn@UW for Production

Send request for Key Tools from D2L, this time for Production instances

Apply API’s to Production

Put Web Interface on a secure production server

Does it Really Work?

Demonstration of one course

Demonstration of multiple courses

Next StepsCreate API’s for actions like:

Add a student to the PDA and have them in the correct alpha order when they add late

Change the start date of a course

Enroll a student in a course with a specific start/end date

Export grades for a student or students once a month

API to Change Start Date

QUESTIONS

Patricia Fellows - patricia.fellows@uwex.uwc.eduRyan Misura - ryan.misura@uwex.uwc.edu

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