This document discusses the development of an API by IONIS Education Group to access their course catalog data in a modular, flexible way. IONISx launched their first MOOCs and blended courses in early 2014 on the Open edX platform. As more customized features were needed, they developed a RESTful modulestore API to browse and edit course trees outside of the Studio interface. This API was released on GitHub to provide analytics, reporting, and flexible course listing capabilities to other Open edX instances.

1. THE STORY OF AN API
Bertrand Marron, CTO 2014.11.18 @tusbar

2. • IONIS Education Group
• Leader of private education in France
• 20 schools (Technology, Business, Art…)
• More than 62,000 alumni
• Inside startup of 10 people
• Full production (content, pedagogy & platform)

3. • IONISx launched in Jan 2014
• Jan 2014: First SPOC (Python for college prep Math teachers)
• Feb 2014: First blended private course (Math)
• Mar 2014: First MOOC (Data Science)
• Now running more than 20 courses

4. • Active Open edX contributor
• Responsive theme ( IONISx/edx-theme)
• XBlocks ( IONISx/xblock-taggedtext)
• Multiple contributions to the core code

5. FACT
More and more people use and setup Open edX
(different people, businesses, etc.)

6. TWO ASPECTS Front-end: branding, online presence, …
Back-end: custom needs, productivity, …

7. Front-end Back-end
• Not enough info
• Not accessible (mobile)
• No control over what’s
displayed

8. Front-end Back-end
• Not enough info
• List too long
• Hard to find a course

9. Front-end Back-end
• Not customizable
• Not actively developed
• Not very optimized for
search engines

10. Front-end Back-end
• Designed for developers
• Not actively developed

11. SOLUTION
(at least for the front side of things)

12. ENABLE_MKTG_SITE
• wiki/Alternate-site-for-marketing-links
• This is what edx.org uses (I believe)

13. IN THE END…
Great platform for education content
Not for marketing/text content

14. BROWSE YOUR MODULESTORE
“how do I list my courses on my website?”
“what content do I have?”

15. MODULESTORE API
• REST API, currently exposing
• /courses
• /chapters
• /sequentials
• /modules (location based)

16. MODULESTORE API
• Built in node.js, on top of IONISx/edx-modulestore
• Component for browsing and editing modulestores
• No user management
• No access control
• Not designed to replace Studio

17. DEMO
A few usage examples
http://localhost:5000/

18. HOW WE USE IT
• Analytics (external lookups, coupled with tracking logs)
• Reporting (generate course trees, etc.)
• Administration app:
• List courses, filter them, link them with other entities
• Create a course, then give me a link to Studio
• Front app (list courses with extreme flexibility)

19. RELEASED TODAY
Everything is available on Github
https://github.com/ionisx

20. WHY EXTERNAL? WHY NOT A PR?
• Following UNIX philosophy…
• “Small is beautiful”
• “Make each program do one thing well”
• If it needs other data, it communicates with another with text
• Easier to maintain (really)

21. @IONISx MERCI !
fb.me/IONISx
IONISx
IONISx
Bertrand Marron, CTO 2014.11.18 @tusbar