Talk I’ve given at #openedxcon on November 18th 2014.

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