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Discussion XBlock Meeting Notes - 09-30-2015

Discussion XBlock Meeting Notes - 09-30-2015

Oct 06, 2015

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 Teams 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

  • 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

    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

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