TL;DR:
The full educator release of Studio’s Pages & Resources experience brings simplified configuration to a long list of course applications including discussions (- previously covered). App Configuration for educators is a top 15 platform gap according to our partners, and through these changes, we have eliminated many distributed and hard-to-author advanced settings.
TL;UseEmoji: 📇 📝 🚤
Release date: 10/25/21
Product owner: Marco Morales (Deactivated)
What is it?
A centralized view into the app status and configuration options for all course tools. Each tool can now be configured using similar patterns in the same place, all built using Paragon components in our new course authoring MFE.
Discussion configuration details have been detailed before, if you are interested check out this post. Since our last update, we have made major improvements to how educators configure blackout dates, using new data and time fields that other authoring tools may emulate in the future.
The Progress, Wiki, Calculator, and Notes tools can now be enabled or disabled easily, replacing 5 advanced settings for these tools.
Custom Pages & Textbooks link to their existing configuration pages, simplifying authoring navigation by moving these 2 tools to be within the Page & Resources view.
Proctoring settings have been improved by the Cosmonauts team, built into this new Page & Resources area in anticipation of its release.
Teams have a simplified configuration area that helps educators create groups of teams, replacing a difficult JSON formatted advanced setting. This configuration area also adds in-context messaging and edge case validation, patterns we hope to emulate in additional configuration areas in the future.
Note: Teams will be enabled separately later this week once we have reviewed some documentation and rollout details. All other changes are live on production currently.
Key talking points for customers:
Who will notice the change, and where (LMS/Studio)?
These changes will be in Studio, accessible in the Content dropdown within a course as the Page & Resources view.
Is there anything a user needs to do to enable the feature?
Detailed documentation for educators is published to explain how to enable and configure each of these tools in more detail.
How does it connect to existing or future features?
This milestone wraps up the infrastructure and educator app configuration phase of the Discussions blended project. Next up is an educator preview of our new discussion experience, which will be covered in future posts. Additional improvements to this educator configuration experience are expected in Q3 after gathering feedback and improvement suggestions based on this release as well (to be covered in milestones v1.14 / v1.15 in the Discussions effort).
Results:
After release, we plan to monitor partner feedback and conduct a platform map ratings exercise in early January to assess the impact of these and other educator-facing changes since our last ratings assessment in May 2021.
Link(s) to additional details: Educator documentation link coming soon!
Credits:
Thanks to the Infinity Squad ( Awais Jibran (Deactivated) , Awais Ansari , Asad Azam , Mehak Nasir (Deactivated) , Ahtisham Shahid, Saad Yousaf ) for their efforts as part of the BD-38 Blended effort on Discussions to get these changes live for our educators.
Thanks to Jon F for all the UX definition and review work to get all these experience improvements into this release.
Additionally, the Cosmonauts team (Bianca Severino , Simon Chen ) built the Proctored settings area, readying their changes before we were even able to get the rest ready for educators. We are excited to see these improvements launching alongside the other course applications.
TL;DR
To enable faster movement through course content for learners and educators familiar with the course’s hierarchy, we have deployed jump navigation selectors to augment the existing course breadcrumb in the learning sequence experience (Learning MFE). With this deployment, a staff user can select a section or subsection, a menu will appear, and the users can jump to a particular unit within a course.
What is it?
Today, users employ the sequence navigation bar to find their way through course content in the learning sequence experience. This navigation bar though useful when traversing between units can be tedious for learners and educators when navigating between sections. To encourage faster movement through course content, we’ve enabled jump navigation in the learning sequence experience. The jump navigation selector augments existing course breadcrumbs in the Learning MFE to allow users to move directly to a specific section or subsection with a course.
When staff users utilize the breadcrumb navigation tool on the course page to move between sections, they will now observe a select menu dropdown that will allow them to quickly jump to specific chapters within a course.
When staff users utilize the breadcrumb navigation tool on the course page to move between sections, they will now observe a select menu dropdown that will allow them to quickly jump to specific chapters within a course.
Once a staff user clicks the augmented breadcrumb, the selector will direct the user to the first uncompleted unit within the section or subsection of the course by default. Once in the desired chapter, users can navigate between units using the current sequence navigation bar as expected.
With these changes, we aim to unlock greater flexibility within course navigation. Today, users have to make multiple selections in the sequence bar navigation to view specific content. With the new breadcrumb navigation experience, staff users can jump to specific areas within a course to access the desired content.
Key talking points for customers
At this time, the jump navigation selector is not learner-facing. This feature will be available to staff users as a preview. Once we determine that the feature is ready for learners we will share another internal and external update.
Results
Through this update to the learning sequence experience, we aim to support educators’ edX internal users’ ability to quickly navigate through course content. We plan to gather feedback from internal users and course teams to better understand the value of this change before rolling it out to learners.
Credits / A Group Effort!
Major thanks to the TNL-Cambridge Squad for driving this forward.
Product Manager | Engineering Lead | Software & UX Development |
Chimuanya Okoro + Marco Morales | Jeremey Ristau | Connor Haugh Monica Diaz Adam Butterworth Gabriel Weinberg |
Special thanks to all other contributors who took part in this initiative not listed above.
TL;DR:
Course staff can now reuse a rubric from an existing Open Response Assessment (ORA) in a course when creating a new ORA in the same course. This MVP version is part of our greater effort to increase task efficiency around authoring and moderating staff graded assignments.
Who you can contact:
Product Manager: Sapana Thomas (Deactivated)
Engineering Leads: Mat Carter (Deactivated) Justin Lapierre (Deactivated)
UX Lead: Kevin McGrath (Deactivated)
Aurora Engineering: #content-aurora slack channel
What is it?
Using Block ID, course staff can specify which ORA’s rubric they want to clone into another ORA within the same course.
In Studio, course staff navigates to the “Rubric” section of the editing modal for the published or unpublished ORA whose rubric they want to clone. After expanding the “Clone Rubric” section, they can copy the Block ID for that ORA.
Next, they can either create a new ORA or navigate to an existing ORA, and open the “Rubric” section of the editing modal. Here, they can either paste the full Block ID of the ORA whose rubric they want to clone or type in a few characters of that Block ID and select it from the dropdown.
Once the correct Block ID is selected, they can select “Clone” and all of the existing rubric values will be replaced with the rubric values from the original ORA.
Key talking points for customers:
Why work on this area of the platform?
Open Response Assessments were flagged as a top 20 Teaching and Learning platform gap in the last platform map rating exercise about a year ago. Commonly cited as a time-intensive instructor process when this component uses staff and peer assessments, this was also called out as a reason why some course teams haven’t switched over to using self-paced courses. This component can provide rich learner feedback through its rubric-based grading and more broadly open-ended assignment submissions can drive higher quality courses beyond our other basic problem submission options.
Why did we build it? What problem does it solve?
Inefficiencies with authoring and moderation of ORAs became spotlighted through the Grading research study conducted with Masters and Micromasters Partners in the spring, providing both new insights and deeper context around partner feedback previously gathered by other groups at edX. Some of these courses use numerous ORAs and assess students against standard criteria across ORAs within a course--sometimes across multiple courses in a program. Having to create identical rubrics multiple times during course authoring was a great source of frustration for course staff.
Who will notice the change, and where?
This is a general release. All course staff will notice the functionality in the ORA editing modal in Studio.
What impact will it have on course development teams?
By allowing them to clone an existing rubric within a course, this should reduce time spent authoring ORAs and increase standardization of how students will be assessed within a course.
Results
Through this new functionality, we aim to decrease course authoring friction and improve the ORA authoring experience, and we’ll be working to gather feedback from partners to better understand the value delivered.
Credits / A Group Effort!
Thanks to the Aurora Squad, including Product Designer Kevin McGrath, for all their hard work making this a reality. Thanks also to Marco Morales for historical ORA knowledge and guidance.