TL;DR:
In the educator preview for new discussions experience, we have enabled content editing and post closing reasons. Users with moderation privileges can now specify reasons for editing a message or closing a post.
Release date: 27th April, 2022
Product owner: Marco Morales (Deactivated) Aamir Ayub
What is it?
In the new discussions experience, users having discussions moderation privileges will be able to specify reasons when they edit a message or close a post.
These reasons will be visible to other users having moderator privileges and will help provide some context to the changes made. It will be required for moderators to select a reason when closing a post or editing content. Lists of available reasons are as follows:
Reasons for closing a post:
Has grammar / spelling issues
Content needs clarity
Has academic integrity concern
Has inappropriate language
Contains personally identifiable information
Reasons for editing content:
Post violates honour code or academic integrity
Post should be read-only
Post is a duplicate
Post is off-topic
Key talking points for customers:
Who will notice the change, and where (LMS/Studio)?
Educators having discussion moderation privileges will notice this change.
Is there anything a user needs to do to enable the feature?
As of now, this feature is available to anyone who can see the new discussions MFE (i.e. educators) provided that they have discussions moderation privileges.
Results:
We are hoping to get feedback from educators on this feature via the provide feedback button in the new discussions MFE preview. Specifically, we’ll be on a look out for requests regarding adding more reasons to the list or the reasons being mandatory.
Link(s) to additional details: Consumer review memo
Credits: Thanks to the Infinity squad and our OpenCraft blended for development of this feature. Thanks to Jonathan Fay for UI design and Marco Morales for his guidance and support.
TL;DR:
We have just updated Studio’s course authoring experience for Text components inside of the course experience. Included below is a summary of the changes included in this update.
Release date: 4/21/22
Product owner: Marco Morales (Deactivated)
Formerly known as the HTML Component, the newly renamed Text Component includes updates that make it even easier to include text and images in your course content. The newly updated editor:
makes incorporating special characters and symbols easier,
adds undo / redo actions,
lets you author tables without going into HTML mode,
makes emoticons easy to include 💯
and more.
Updated Editor Overview
The visual above shows the updated Text component editor, with a new toolbar that starts with the new undo / redo actions, existing formatting options, text layout tools, as well as list and indentation controls. Additional details for the other tools are described below.
Adding Images
We have made it easier to reference existing files & uploads from your course in text components as shown in the visual below. You can search and sort all images as well as upload new images to your course as you are authoring a specific text component.
Table Tools
Another category of new tools we have added includes the addition of tables without needing to jump to the HTML editor. The table toolbar icon lets you drop in a table component, and selecting a given cell lets you create, remove, or adjust rows and columns.
Emoticons
You can now also easily add emoticons into your text content, a small but visually obvious way to break up long stretches of text content. You can see the emoticon library tool referenced below.
Special Characters
We have also introduced a way to include special characters into your text content, including mathematical and symbolic elements.
Future Improvements
We will be looking to improve linking to other parts of the course to eliminate the need to copy and paste jump-to-location IDs. Other improvements include in-context image editing tools, spellchecking and other tools.
TL;DR:
Our new ORAs grading experience (internally known as Enhanced Staff Grader or ESG) will have a linked demo for all users on 4/18/2022. In this new on-platform grading experience one can easily preview common file types, assign rubric values, provide comments, and coordinate grading with all members of the course teams. In this demo, users will be able to preview the experience but will not be able to submit grades. On 5/2/2022, we will roll out the new grading experience to all users.
Release date: 5/2/2022
Product owner: Spencer Tiberi
What is it?
Key talking points for customers:
Is there anything a user needs to do to enable the feature?
Before full rollout on 5/2/2022, course teams may enable our new ORAs grading experience by reaching out to their partner support rep. To enable it for them, we simply need to flip the openresponseassessment.enhanced_staff_grader waffle flag for either their course run or the entire partner. Otherwise, the course teams will not need to do anything after 5/2/2022.
How does it connect to existing or future features?
This experience will work for both ORAs and Team ORAs!
Link(s) to additional details: /wiki/spaces/PT/pages/3391390018
Credits:Mat Carter (Deactivated) Nathan Sprenkle Ben Warzeski (Deactivated) Jansen Kantor Justin Lapierre (Deactivated) Leangseu Kim (Deactivated) Gabriel Weinberg
TL;DR:
Zoom integration is now available at the course level and if configured is available in the course navigation as the “Live” tab in the course navigation. Course teams can schedule and manage meetings and learners can see and attend those meetings from the Live area.
Release date: April 7th, 2022
Product owner: Aamir Ayub
What is it?
Zoom integration at course level has been delivered as part of this work. Course teams will be able to add LTI configurations for Zoom via the Pages & Resource area of Studio. Once configured, Zoom can be accessed in the Live tab as seen below.
Key talking points for customers:
Is there anything a user needs to do to enable the feature?
Course teams will need to enable Live app from the Live configuration card on Pages & Resources page in studio.
Course teams will need to contact their project coordinator to get PII sharing enabled for their course.
Once PII sharing is enabled, course teams can generate LTI credentials in the Zoom LTI Pro app using this procedure:
Create or log in to zoom account.
Install the Zoom LTI Pro app ( https://marketplace.zoom.us/apps/f8JUB3eeQv2lXsjKq5B2FA# ) from the marketplace in your account.
If you are using an institutional Zoom license, you may need to contact an administrator to have this application enabled for your license and use. They will be able to complete steps 3-6 and provide you the right LTI details.
Navigate to configurations of the LTI Pro app via the “Configure” option.
Click on “Create a new credential”.
LTI URL, LTI Key, LTI Secret will be auto-generated for you. Add these credentials to the “Live” app configuration interface, along with the email ID associated with your zoom account.
Add the string “instructor_email” to “Email or Employee Unique ID Attribute Name” configuration option.
Who will notice the change, and where (LMS/Studio)?
Course teams will see “Live” configuration card on Pages & Resources page in studio. Learners enrolled in the course will see “Live” tab in course navigation if Zoom has been configured for that course.
How does it connect to existing or future features?
We are planning to explore additional video-conferencing providers (ex: Big Blue Button) in the future.
Results:
We plan to monitor adoption and use of this feature across the edX catalog. We anticipate most usage will be in smaller degree or credit program courses. Features like these require educator planning, course design, and thus often take time to be adopted more broadly. In the future, synchronous learning tools like Zoom may also enable 2U product lines (ex: Bootcamps) to migrate some form of their existing learning experiences onto the Open edX platform.
Link(s) to additional details: [Spec] Course level Zoom integration (Spec Memo)
Credits: Thanks to the Infinity team for discovery, development, and testing features in this milestone, Jon F for UI/UX design and Marco Morales (Deactivated) for guidance and support.