The Product and Engineering teams at Raccoon Gang, OpenCraft, 2U and Axim are very excited to announce that Studio, the course authoring environment, has undergone a facelift!
Studio has been redesigned and enhanced, with a number of new features that significantly improve authoring efficiency.
The redesign revolves around a sleeker, modernized UI. Every page in Studio* has been converted to the Paragon design system. This platform-wide design ensures cohesion and consistency across every authoring workflow. Additionally, each Studio page is now an independent Micro-Frontend (MFE), which will make it easier to continue enhancing and building on these pages in the future.
These Release Notes provide a guided, page-by-page tour through the redesigned Studio interface, including an overview of new features and enhancements.
All of the Studio pages are part of the frontend-app-course-authoring. They are enabled as the default experience for Redwood. For more information about disabling and continuing to use the legacy course experience, see the Release Notes.
*excluding the Unit Page, which will be live in Sumac
Glossary
Studio Home Page
Studio Home is the entry point for authors and course teams to the authoring environment. It has been updated to include a number of new features that make it easier for course staff and authors to manage their courses and easily find which course they may want to work in. In particular, enhancements will benefit course teams that manage large numbers of courses.
New functionality
Search bar
Course filter
Course sort
UI redesign
Pagination
Details
Search bar: Authors can now search for courses in their course lists by using free-text keyword searches. Searches apply across course titles and course metadata.
Filter: Course lists can be filtered by active courses or archived courses. Filters can be applied to full course lists or to search results.
Sort: Course lists can be sorted alphabetically, by A-Z or Z-A, or by newest first or oldest first. Course dates are based on date of course creation. Sorts can be applied to full course lists or to search results.
UI redesign: Actions that may be taken to courses have been consolidated into a three-dot menu. This includes the actions to re-run a course and to view it live.
Pagination: For course lists that contain more than 50 courses, pagination has been introduced to eliminate the need for scrolling.
Course Outline Page
The Course Outline Page has been updated to include new design elements, such as clearer grouping of section content.
New functionality
Three-dot action menus
Details
Three-dot action menus: Each course block - each section, each subsection and each unit - has a consolidated three-dot menu where all actions related to the block can be taken. Actions include publishing, configuring, managing tags, moving, duplicating and copying to clipboard.
Course Updates Page
The Course Updates Page has a new, user-friendly, WYSIWYG editor for creating course updates and course handouts. These editors eliminate the need for users to interact with an html editor and makes it much easier to enhance a text entry with basic word processing tools.
New functionality
Full text editors with complete suite of word processing tools
Details
Full text editors: Authors can use a full suite of basic word processing tools, such as bullet and numbered lists, bold/italic/underline, highlights, quotes, tables and cells, emoticons, special characters, images and embedded links. They can also embed html code into a text entry.
Pages & Resources Page
The Pages & Resources page has been redesigned to allow course teams to turn certain features on and off via a simple toggle. These toggles replace some advanced settings, removing the need for course teams to use json fields for configuring key course features.
New functionality
Feature tiles
Configuration toggles
Details
Feature tiles: Major features that can be turned on or off at the course level each have a newly designed tile. The tiles contain a description of the feature and a settings wheel where the feature can be configured for the course.
Configuration toggles: Each feature can be toggled on or toggled off for the course. Configurable features include the learner progress bar, discussions, the wiki, the calculator, textbooks, custom pages and ORA settings.
Files Page
The new Files page has been redesigned and enhanced with a number of new features that make it easier for authors and course teams to manage large sets of third-party content assets for their courses.
New functionality
Grid and list view
Bulk delete
Download and bulk download
Search bar
Filter and sort
Asset info
Details
Grid and list view: Authors can toggle between grid and list views for all of their third-party content assets. In the list view, at-a-glance info includes file name, file size, file type and access settings.
Bulk delete: Authors now have the option to select multiple files at a time, or to select all files at a time. Once selected, files can be deleted in bulk.
Bulk download: Authors now have the option to select multiple files at a time, or to select all files at a time. Once selected, files can be downloaded in bulk.
Search bar: Authors can search for files using a free-text keyword search. Searches cover file titles and metadata.
Content filter: Content can be filtered by content type (images, documents, audio, code and other). It can also be filtered by action/inaction and access setting (locked/public). Filters can be applied to full content lists or to search results.
Content sort: Content can be sorted alphabetically, by newest/oldest, and by file size. Sorts can be applied to full content lists or to search results.
Asset info: Each third-party content asset now contains a metadata panel, which includes a reference link to where the content is being used in the course. The panel also includes metadata such as the date added, the file size, urls and permissions.
Course Settings Pages
The following course settings pages have been updated to include new design elements, such as clearer grouping configuration fields.
Schedule & Details page
Grading Page
Course Team Page
Group Configurations Page
Certificates Page
Advanced Settings Page
Course Import/Export
