pli

The goal of pli is to provide an interface to PrairieLearn’s API endpoints. By providing a bridge to the endpoints, we can quickly import assessment data into R and perform psychometric analyses. Moreover, the data can automatically be moved between PrairieLearn and LMS systems that do not yet have an LTI connection available. (Looking at you Canvas.)

Installation

You can install the released version of pli only from GitHub with:

if(!requireNamespace("devtools")) { install.packages("devtools") }
devtools::install_github("illinois-r/pli")

Setup

Prior to using pli, a personal access token (PAT) must be created on PrairieLearn’s production server.

https://prairielearn.engr.illinois.edu/pl/settings

Once on the page, press “(+) Generate New Token.” The token will only be displayed once. Please make sure to copy the token. For pli to know about the token, please include it in ~/.Renviron file as PRAIRIELEARN_API_TOKEN.

Steps for using the Token in R

First, open the ~/.Renviron file by typing in R:

usethis::edit_r_environ()

Second, within the file, add the following line:

PRAIRIELEARN_API_TOKEN="<your-token-here>"

Subsitute <your-token-here> with the token that was generated. (Note: Make sure to remove <>.)

Third, save the file and restart R for the changes to take effect.

Endpoints

The package supports downloading data from the following endpoints:

Function	Description
pl_course_gradebook()	Gradebook
pl_assessment_list()	List of all assessments in course
pl_assessment_view()	View a single assessment in course
pl_assessment_instance_list()	List of all instances underneath a specific assessment
pl_assessment_instance_view()	View a single student instances of an assessment
pl_assessment_submission_list()	List of all submission underneath a specific assessment
pl_assessment_submission_view()	View a single student submission

Sample workflow

Login in to PrairieLearn and select the course you wish to obtain information from. The course instance number for this course can be obtained by looking at the URL for the class:

https://prairielearn.engr.illinois.edu/pl/course_instance/54777/instructor/instance_admin/assessments

In this case, the course instance number would be 54777. With this in hand, let’s query the grade book:

library(pli)
course_instance_id = 54777

## Gradebook Manipulations ---- 

# Download the entire gradebook
grades = pl_course_gradebook(course_instance_id)


# Format for a single assessment to Compass2g
library(tidyverse)
grades %>% 
  filter(assessment_id == 1228980) %>%
  select(user_uid, points) %>%
  mutate(
         points = replace_na(points, 0),
         user_uid = gsub("@.*","", user_uid)
        ) %>%
  write_csv("grades-quiz1.csv")

## Specific assessment manipulation ----

# Get an overview of all assessments
assessments = pl_assessment_list(course_instance_id)

# Retrieve scores for that instance
quiz_1 = pl_assessment_instance_list(course_instance_id, 1228980)

# Export to Compass2g
grade_format_compass2g(quiz_1, "quiz1-stat486.csv")

Author

James Joseph Balamuta

License

GPL (>= 2)