This document discusses how an API was used to automate the manual process of creating discussion topics for online courses in the Desire2Learn learning management system. Previously it took staff 120 hours to create 4,900 discussion topics across 140 courses with 30-35 students each. At a conference, the challenge was presented to "Mr. API" who helped develop an API solution. It allowed discussion topics to be programmatically created and renamed via a secure web interface, reducing the work to just a few clicks. The document outlines the steps taken to set up the API integration and test it before bringing it into full production use, reducing staff time spent on the task significantly. It also discusses some other potential uses of APIs to automate other

1. API’S MAKE US
HAPPY!
WORKING SMART WITH
DESIRE2LEARN API’S
RYAN MISURA & PATRICIA FELLOWS
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
COLLEGES/EXTENSION/MADISON

2. 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

3. Finished Process

4. 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-
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Flickr
Pat Goes to Boston

5. Fusion 2013
Attend 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

6. Pat Returns to Madison

7. 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.

8. 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)

9. Ryan Does His Magic!
Set up a working environment
Found the API calls that would be needed to
Rename the topics in the Forum
o Retrieving 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. Does it Really Work?
Demonstration of one course
Demonstration of multiple courses

14. Next Steps
Create 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

15. API to Change Start Date

16. QUESTIONS
Patricia Fellows - patricia.fellows@uwex.uwc.edu
Ryan Misura - ryan.misura@uwex.uwc.edu