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In the second half of 2023, the 2U>Teaching & Learning squad team (T&L) will finally be completing the multi-year BD-14 project initiative by rolling out a new Content Library authoring experience (aka “V2”) to edx.org Studio Users.  Primarily, this means: rolling out the library-authoring MFE, and migrating Modulestore-backed “V1” libraries to Blockstore.  Our work will be the culmination of a long series of projects that will enable these features.

T&L will offer as much of this effort as possible back to the community in the following ways:

• Include the updated Library Authoring MFE with the Quince release which will work with V2 libraries, OFF by default

• Include a set of management commands with the Quince release which will provide a path to migrate existing Content Libraries from modulestore to blockstore.

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1. Replace legacy Studio Content Library UI with performant, modern React-based MFEs.

2. Maintain continuity of Content Library feature offerings and experience.

3. Introduce the ability to statically reference library content in courses.

4. Move current content libraries data from course-oriented Modulestore to block-oriented Blockstore.

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We want to maintain continuity of Studio feature offerings and experience. The existing breadth, flexibility, and reliability of Studio is a draw for content authors. We will have to implement a few frontend features (like xblock editing in V2 libraries) to do so. We are hoping to perform a seamless conversion of content. To do so, we will craft runbooks and exercise them in increasingly complex environments.

To prioritize release of the high-value static content reference feature, we will implement parity for the following features after the initial release:

• Import and export of Blockstore-backed content libraries.

• Text templates in the library-authoring experience.

• Filtering content library problems by type when referencing them in courses.

Get Ready to slash-n-burn!

This project will deprecate a number of features and areas of code. The first is Blockstore’s capability to run as a separate service. The second, and largest task, will be to enable the removal of all of the V1 content libraries code.

In addition, we will be removing the library_source block, an initial attempt to add specific library reference. Instead, we will be offering one library block, the library content block, which will allow for both randomized and specific content.

Design Diagram

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This is a high level diagram of the feature implementation. Note that Library content is consumed in courses by xblocks, which contain a reference to that library content in their metadata. Learning contexts can then use that reference to “pull” in the required content from the library. Someday, courses might also store their metadata and content in a fashion similar to blockstore, as it is more performant. It is more performant because V2 xblocks better differentiate their content from metadata, and therefore can operate more efficiently. In addition, S3 provides an elegant solution for object storage, which opens the door for better static asset management and flexibility in learning context structure.

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T&L is splitting this work into two streams, since parallelization is possible.  Dave Ormsbee and Kyle McCormick from Axim will also contribute to the project with code and reviews, focusing mostly on the backend work. Braden MacDonald from openCraft will also contribute to the project with technical/domain guidance.

Rollout Strategy

The rollout of Library Authoring v2 will be atomic in nature (aka flipping the waffleflag for all users), and will require a scheduled Studio downtime window to ensure the migration of Content Library data is comprehensive.  The rollout date will be heavily communicated with edx.org content authors through all available communication channels.  

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1. Pertinent Studio Page usage metrics, e.g. “How many users visited Library pages today?  Where are they located?  How long was their session?”

2. The most pertinent performance metric is likely User-centric page load times from New Relic.  Our goal will be to maintain a consistent experience to the current legacy Studio baseline.

3. “Happiness”-style qualitative user feedback obtained via beta testing, interviews, and surveys.  If our power users are unhappy with the experience, T&L may choose to delay or partially roll out these changes.

Community Considerations

This work will be done primarily in an openedx repo, and we will heavily document the steps that any our instance will need to follow in order to fully follows to convert to Library Authoring Experience v2 in the openedx wiki.  T&L expects these will become available to community members starting with Quince.  T&L will need to update both developer and user documentation as part of this project.

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