Hello -
Here's the basic question: How do I take what I can do with a Python script (that uses the Canvas API) on my desktop and turn it into something that lives inside of Canvas? I know that's pretty broad, and that is a reflection of me really not knowing what direction my steps should be in.
The longer version of the story is this: I'm an instructor at my institution, not one of our Canvas admin/IT folks. So I have very little knowledge of what's happening on the back end of our Canvas instance. I've generated a Python script to help me give "nudges" to students. The program pulls the submissions for the students for a particular set of assignments using the API, and puts the students into different buckets based on their grades on those assignments. It then sends semi-personalized messages to students based on those buckets (again, through the API). So a simple example would be that a student doing very well will get a congratulatory message that encourages them to keep up the good work, and a student that is missing a lot of assignments will get a a warning about their trajectory and a suggestion to come to office hours to see how we can get them on track.
After setting up the parameters, this is all done automatically, including filling in information that may be student-specific (student name, list of missed assignments, etc., all of which is collected through the API). And this works fine for me, because I have the programming background and can change the code as needed when I want to update it for a new course or whatever.
But now suppose I wanted to take this concept and make it so that instructors have a link in the course navigation to a web app* that does this, kind of like the analytics link or something like that. And let's pretend** that I can program this as a web application in Flask with a decent user interface and everything. What do I need to know in order to get it to all come together? How do I get it from living on my desktop to becoming a thing inside of Canvas?
* I think we would call it an app? I'm not even sure of the correct terminology.
** I have been meaning to learn Flask. This might be the project that forces me to do it. And if it's not the right tool for the job, I hope someone tells me.
I hope this question makes sense. Thanks for the help!
Aaron
