Usability of Educational Technology APIs: Findings and Guidelines

This paper describes a project that reviewed the usability of existing Educational Technology Application Programming Interfaces (EdTech APIs). The focus was on web-based APIs and the portals through which these are offered to developers. After analysing the state of art with regard to existing EdTech APIs and after conducting a literature review on API usability, a survey was circulated among developers and CTOs of EdTech organisations. The results of the aforementioned three steps were triangulated and resulted in usability guidelines for EdTech APIs. The contribution of this project is twofold: firstly, the production of a concrete set of EdTech API usability guidelines and, secondly, their implementation in a proof-of-concept a portal for two different EdTech offerings.