Attendees

Andy S (Unlicensed), ChristinaR (Deactivated), Steve Magoun (Deactivated), Xavier Antoviaque

Notes

• We discussed what the T&L team is thinking for discussions
  • The proposed Discovery - Discussion Redesign epic
    • The intention is to keep this story light by building upon the /wiki/spaces/LEARNER/pages/19006021 design
    • The initial thinking was to update the existing xmodule without converting to an XBlock
    • Plan is to use the mobile team's new Discussion API
  • Redoing the discussion back-end
    • Replace the Ruby-based comment service with a more maintainable solution
    • Reevaluate the buy vs build options
    • Consider having a single discussion service that combines the comment service and Django comment client
  • Open question: does it make sense to do the UX redesign first?
    • Major benefits to user experience
    • Will it require a lot of rework once the new back-end is in place?
  • None of this work will be in Q2, but initial planning and architectural designs should start
• For Solutions, managing their forked discussion XBlock is expensive
  • McKinsey solution cannot use XModules, so an XBlock was developed
  • The XBlock is a clone of the edx-platform code (primarily the client-side JavaScript)
  • Every time the platform changes, the code has to be merged into the fork
  • The preference would be to merge back the code so that McKinsey and edX are both using the same XBlock
  • This is a large project, so jimcaiN (Unlicensed) had suggested that a good first step would be to merge the code back as is
    • This PR is: https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/pull/5565
    • The intention is that only McKinsey would use the xblock, but at least it would be sharing code with the xmodule
• What are the options going forward
  1. Status quo
     • Solutions continues to manage the XBlock in their McKinsey fork
     • T&L builds the new redesign by updating the existing xmodule
  2. Merge the XBlock back to edx-platform
     • Use this PR or something like it: https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/pull/5565
     • edX would continue to use the xmodule, which T&L could update for the redesign
     • Does the XBlock keep the old UI, or does it pick up the new one?
  3. T&L build the new redesigned discussion forums as an XBlock
     • Would be more work than just updating the existing xmodule
     • Major benefit: removing tech debt by building the new component following our own best practices
     • Supports a gradual rollout where most courses stay on the xmodule until the new xblock has proved itself
     • Would need to involve McKinsey at some level with the design and rollout of the new forums
• Conclusion
  • There was a general consensus that building a new discussion forum XBlock was the best approach
  • Steve Magoun (Deactivated) will discuss with LeslieG (Deactivated) to understand how to bring McKinsey into the discussion

Related Links

• Solutions XBlock PR: https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/pull/5565
• Discussion Forum Architecture Notes
• Forums v2