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Presented by Patricia Fellows and Ryan Misursa of UW Colleges Online, at UW Madison on November 8, 2013 for the Desire2Learn Ignite conference.
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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
