Page Comparison

Milestone 1a: Teams Front-End Infrastructure Modernization

• Understand and implement the changes necessary to move the Teams Django App in edx-platform out to its own MFE built to current standards in Paragon, rebuilding and supporting existing functionality with modern platform practices, all as we reduce the size of the edx-platform Core! This also makes it possible for Teams to include the modern Discussion MFE instead of the current legacy version.

• Metrics: Future development speed & core reduction

Milestone 1b: Support for LTI Apps within Teams

• Updates to the Teams API to facilitate the ability to plug in other applications, including the latest version of the edX Discussion application. Future examples include live audio and video chat, social networking app integrations, collaborative document apps, diagram/sketching apps, and other tools that support live and async remote collaboration. As part of this, explore different tiers of controls that allow or disable groups of apps (such as allowing instructors to remove the entire category of live video tools from a large MOOC, or a team manager locking in a limited set of apps that the team can focus around control over team apps / tools linked in to a given team). Should consider how LTI might facilitate many more integrations as well as part of this effort.

• Metrics: Platform extensibility (including breadth and depth of partner commitment to build upon it) & Team engagement / usage (professor adoption/approach and student buy-in/usage).

Milestone 1c: Teams Discussion Updates

• Support new Discussions MFE in teams. The new MFE is a purely infrastructural improvement to be able to abandon the older code-base and invest new changes in the active code. This sets up work for next milestone (improvements to discussions for teams) in a way that avoids updating or maintaining the legacy Discussions app.

• Metrics: Teams app is running the new Discussions app and legacy code is no longer depended upon.

Milestone 1d: Teams Discussion Updates

• Streamline the UI for team discussions to encourage more frequent usage. Specifically, it addresses how the hierarchy The discussion-board structure of post-reply-comment can be bloated for a team and is likely to reduce spontaneous conversation. A visual reformatting with a similar back-end structure, “channel”-”message”-”thread”, could give teams a Slack-like UI for conversations that are still organized, yet easier to display from a team home view and embed in a future sidebar. Channel names could be prefixed with “teamshortname-” to simplify views that integrated chat from multiple teams of the same student. All teams can default to have a “teamshortname-general” channel to make it easy for new teams to begin using discussions without requiring a user to manually create the first “space” for discussion. These improvements are made in the Discussions MFE and could later be utilized via that app directly, not just via Discussions when integrated inside of Teams.

• Metrics: Student engagement with teams and team discussions

Milestone 1e: In-Context Teams Sidebar

• This effort involves bringing team conversation as an optionally pervasive secondary sidebar in the learning MFE. Whether for team assignments, or more open conversation, teams could have ongoing conversations alongside a course. Team discussion updates (above) would make it easier to flip between multiple channels of conversation in the sidebar and engage in quick posts.

• Metrics: Course student engagement (learner session duration, time in course, learner outcomes)

Milestone 1f: Exemplar Teams Apps & Extensions (Big Blue Button / Zoom)

• Initial exemplar application extensions to the LTI Apps milestone above, this would allow teams to join on demand video calls, schedule future team conversations, or whatever other potential tools are possible for Zoom / BBB. The Zoom work could extend from the existing LTI Pro integration. Both video apps would have a primary UI component within the teams view, but we have an opportunity to integrate teams apps into the in-context course view via the Teams sidebar (above).

• Metrics: Student course engagement