What is discussions sidebar and new topic hierarchy?

This upgrade will allow learners to A new discussion provider, which is an improved version of the current edX discussion provider, where users can participate in discussion forums forum alongside course content through a collapsable sidebar, as seen in the screenshots below.

A discussion sidebar alongside each unit will help learners view, participate in, and initiate discussion threads for that particular course unit. To support this, a new discussion topic hierarchy is introduced for content-specific discussion topics, which mirrors the hierarchy of the course.

In this hierarchy, each course unit can only have one discussion topic. Course teams can choose to enable or disable discussions for each course unit as well as entire graded subsections.

How to enable discussions sidebar?

This upgrade is available as a new discussion provider named “edX (new)”, as seen in the screenshot below. All new courses and new runs of existing courses will use this discussion provider by default.

We do not plan to apply this upgrade to existing course runs, because it is not possible to migrate existing threads in existing course runs to new discussion topics.

Can I switch back to the old provider after the upgrade?

No. This is a one-way upgrade. Part of the reason we don’t support rollback is because the discussion topics are different for old and the new provider. Therefore, discussion threads created using one provider may not be visible when using the other one.

What

features are not available when using provider?

1. Existing discussion xblocks and their associated discussion topics will not be visible.

2. Course authors will not see the option to add discussion xblocks to courses in edX Studio.

3. Existing discussion xblocks and their associated discussion topics will not be visible in new course runs.

4. Adding more than one discussion topic to a course unit will no longer be possible.

How to enable/disable discussion on course units in Studio?

Course authors can enable or disable discussions for a course unit by checking or un-checking the Enable discussions checkbox in settings of that unit (see screenshot below).

If discussions is enabled on a unit, a Discussions enabled label will appear alongside the unit name in Studio (see screenshot below).

What about units in graded subsections?

By default, discussions are disabled on units in graded subsections. This can be changed by toggling on the setting named Enable discussions on units in graded subsections on the discussion configuration page.

If the toggle is turned on, discussions will be enabled on ALL units that are part of graded subsections that are not timed exams.

If the toggle is turned off, discussions will be disabled on ALL units that are part of graded subsections. Topics associated with these units that contain at least one thread, will appear under “Archived” in topics hierarchy in Topics tab on the Discussions page. All empty topics will be deleted.

If the toggle is turned on again, archived topics will be restored to their respective units and new topics will be created for the remaining units.

When a re-run of an existing course is created

1. The re-run will be using the new discussion provider by default.

2. Discussion xblocks from the previous run will be carried over but will not be rendered anywhere in the live course run.

3. If a unit in the previous run contains one or more discussion xblocks, discussions will be automatically enabled on this unit in the re-run. This is also true for units belonging to graded subsections that are not timed exams.

4. If at least one unit in the previous run contains one or more discussion xblocks, and that unit belongs to a graded subsection that is not a timed exam, then Enable discussions on units in graded subsections toggle will be enabled automatically for the re-run.

When a course unit is deleted, renamed, moved or hidden

If a course unit that has discussions enabled is:

1. Deleted: The associated discussion topic is archived if that topic contains at least one thread.

2. Renamed: The associated discussion topic is renamed automatically.

3. Moved within the course hierarchy: The associated discussion topic location will also be updated according to the new course content hierarchy.

4. Hidden: The associate discussion topic is hidden but the threads are not.

What are Archived topics?

Discussion topics that contain at least one thread are not deleted automatically. If due to some reason (discussed below), the association between a course unit and its discussion topic is broken AND that topic contains at least one thread, it will appear under “Archived” section in the topic hierarchy (see screenshot below).

Name of the archived discussion topic will be updated to include the hierarchy where it previously belonged.

Archived topics will only be visible to users having discussion moderator role (Discussion Admin, Discussion moderator, Community TA, Group community TA). However, threads in the archived topics will remain visible to everyone.

To delete an archived topic, change the topic of all the threads in that topic.

When is a topic

archived?

A discussion topic will be moved to archived section only if it contains at least one thread, otherwise it will be deleted. Here are the scenarios when a discussion topic (if it exists) associated with a unit will be archived:

1. The unit is deleted.

2. The “Enable discussions” is unchecked for the unit.

3. The parent subsection is marked as graded, and the Enable discussions on units in graded subsections toggle is in OFF state.

4. The parent subsection is marked as “timed exam”.

When is

an archived topic restored

?

1. The “Enable discussions” is checked for a unit.

2. The parent subsection is un-marked as graded.

3. The parent subsection is un-marked as “timed exam”.

4. The parent subsection is already marked as graded, and the Enable discussions on units in graded subsections toggle is turned ON.

Showing threads at Subsection level instead of Unit level

For courses that have low enrollment or low forum activity, discussion threads for each unit in the discussion sidebar may appear to be sparse. To overcome this, course teams can turn on the toggle named Group in-context discussion at the subsection level to show all threads in the subsection, that the unit belongs to, in the sidebar for any unit of that subsection.

Known issues and pending improvements

1. Issue: Discussions enabled label in Studio, that indicates whether or not discussion has been enabled for a course unit, is not reliable at the moment. We are working to resolve this. As of now, there are two reliable ways to find out if discussions has been on a course unit:

   1. Look for the name of the course unit in discussion topic hierarchy in Topics tab within Discussions tab, in the live course.

   2. Look for the discussions sidebar on the course unit in the live course.

2. Improvement: Topic stats are currently visible at the 3rd level in discussion topic hierarchy (i.e. the course unit). In future, these stats will be rolled up and shown on the 2nd level level (i.e. subsection).

3. Issue: Android and iOS app users will see no change except that they’ll only see the bottom 2 levels of discussion topic hierarchy i.e. subsection and unit. In future, this UI will be improvedNuisance: As mentioned above, upon creation of a new run of an existing course, discussions will be enabled for course units that contained at least 1 discussion xblock in the previous course run. These course units will have a Discussions enabled label visible in Studio. However, discussion topics will be created for all course units. But no need to worry, these “extra” topics will be deleted or archived (if they have at least 1 thread) when the course unit, subsection or section is published.