Bulk Course Participation Change

[eric_evans1]

Is there an existing API call that will allow for me to select all courses in a given Term and change their Participation to "Term" if they are set as "Course"?

In the past, we allowed instructors to choose their own participation settings. We now have this feature locked. When the new/empty course shells are created, the participation defaults to "Term". However, then instructors import their content from a previous term, the settings are overridden and if the previous version was set to the "Course", this setting gets changed from the default of "Term" to "Course".

We are trying to have a uniform management of student access dates in our courses.

I have found a Live API call that can do this for each course, but was curious if anyone had any guidance on an API call that could handle this for all courses in a given term in-bulk. Thanks for your guidance.

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @eric_evans1,

I don't think there is a single call to do this.  What you will likely need to do is string some API calls and/or reports together to basically get every course_id you need to update, then call the courses API for each course and change the setting.  I actually have a script written in python that does this and more, and we run it once daily for our whole instance.  I might be able to pare it down to just fixing date settings, shoot me a direct message on here if you're interested.

-Chris

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @eric_evans1,

I don't think there is a single call to do this.  What you will likely need to do is string some API calls and/or reports together to basically get every course_id you need to update, then call the courses API for each course and change the setting.  I actually have a script written in python that does this and more, and we run it once daily for our whole instance.  I might be able to pare it down to just fixing date settings, shoot me a direct message on here if you're interested.

-Chris

[eric_evans1]

@chriscas, I was figuring it would be a string of API calls and reports to process, which definitely beats have a student worker manually open each individual course and change it one at a time. 😳 I will send you a DM and see what you have built that we might be able to adapt for our instance. Thank you!

[kkorstad1]

I'd be very interested in this script as well. @chriscas I just sent you a DM here.

Karen

[CheleaHoldt]

Chris,

Can you tell me the name of the field where this 'Term' and 'Course' is being modified?

Chelea

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @CheleaHoldt,

The three API fields being touched for each course are:

• course['restrict_enrollments_to_course_dates']
• course['start_at']
• course['end_at']

Does this help?

-Chris

[CheleaHoldt]

This does help.  Thank you Chris!