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LabXchange 2018-03-27

LabXchange 2018-03-27

Apr 20, 2018

  • Clarify limitations of current Modulestore and Content Libraries

    • Scaling issues

    • Coupling xblock runtime with store

    • Black-box ?

  • Planning to reuse

    • XBlocks

    • OLX

  • Agenda

    • Process

    • Flesh out Collections vs Unit vs Sequence

    • Clarify ownership use cases

    • Semantics versus structure - flexibility

  • Process

    • Use OEP? Yes, but timing considerations:

      • Braden: Wants to hash out some of the high level details first.

      • Ned: The more public, the better.

      • OpenCraft doesn't have a contract for LabX yet. Braden doesn't want this public with OpenCraft's name on it before the contract is in place.

      • Gaurav doesn't want it public at this point because they're trying to set up the organization in house first.

        • Ned: Can we take "LabX" out of it and talk about it as an Open edX design discussion?

      • How does adaptive play into this?

        • Nimisha: We need to have requirements, but they don't need to know the details on this yet.

      • We'll check in on Monday about communicating this.

  • Collections vs. Units vs. Sequence

    • Proposed Vision

      • Units

        • "Normal" chunk of content, smallest useful piece.

        • Maps best to a vertical in current edx-platform (could even use the vertical block as implementation)

        • Single XBlock, or a few together (e.g. preamble, video, question).

        • Could have children (implementation detail)

          • For our purposes, smallest chunk.

        • Q: Are Units shareable?

          • A: Yes. Also can see OLX of the Unit via a "view source" type of thing. Not necessarily built into the app.

        • Q: Is UI included in proposal?

          • A: Some UI to import/export, but the focus of this is API.

        • Unit is an addressable piece of content that can be referenced and used in many different places.

      • Collection

        • Simple folder concept, not dynamic/tagged. Item is only in one Collection at a time.

        • Ownership, licensing, permissions can be determined at Collection level.

        • Simple organization scheme to make things easier for content authors.

        • Not planning to build the UI for this.

        • Examples:

          • HarvardX Physics Problem Bank

          • Joe's Course on PCR

          • A bunch of Videos

        • Maps to a Library in the current Studio, but with the ability to hold more different types of content.

        • Historical note: "Collections" term was originally part of the v1 for Content Libraries proposal, that indicated a subset of a Library.

      • Sequences

        • Short, linear pathways of content.

        • LabX doesn't have courses, but small, linear, curated paths.

        • Marco: Today: The fact that subsections in edx-platform are linear (and that's all that's available) is a limitation Product has run into. If you were to introduce the notion of a type of sequence (linear, adaptive, choose-your-own, explore, etc.)...

          • Sequences in the proposal are the "dumb" version. Adaptive would be implemented by hitting units, and not deal with Sequences.

          • Alternative can be to make it a more general interface and have multiple sequence types.

          • "Pathway" as a term? (many layers, Marco: everything is a pathway)

          • Pathway as the general thing, Linear Sequence as the more specific.

          • Dave: make sure the API and its promises are clear and forward thinking depending on which way we go with Pathways vs Sequences.

          • Determining where things are stored (based on DDD exercises): Content authoring vs Content repository vs Content management

            • Q: Should Sequences be stored alongside BlockStore?

          • Braden: Abstract Sequence - what does the blockstore need to be concerned about?

            • Type (linear, etc.)

            • Storage/settings (order of units, for linear sequence)

            • Units that may be referenced

          • Marco: What vs. How things are consumed (units vs. pathways/seq)

  • Ownership

    • Sequences can have Units from different Collections

    • Publisher associated with a Collection

    • Nimisha: Can ownership be a tag built on RDF primitives? Or more generic in general.

      • Braden: Permissions vs. Ownership in the legal/branding sense. For BlockStore, want to have permissions system be simple.

      • Nimisha: RDF relationships so that we don't have to hardcode one or two layer organizational layout. Can build onto that relationship when sharing.

      • Marco: If it could be Organizations v2, who can author, who can see? (Most of what we have today rolls up to Orgs. It does currently hurt us that we don't support sub-orgs.)

    • Ned: Proposal doesn't include what operations are supported on these data types.

    • Relationship within the Org

    • What happens when you create a Sequence of Units from different Collections?

      • Content could either be public or private.

      • Public content would have license, and be discoverable. Usable in a read-only way.

      • Q: No overrides?

        • A: To keep things simple, read-only or make a local copy if license allows to modify.

        • Marco: We ran into this on libraries. There is a lot of power that would be useful here.

        • Braden: XBlocks tries to do this with settings scope.

          • In the longer term, want to be able to do overrides at the sequence scope or higher level.

    • Braden: look at Git (fixed hierarchy) versus Gitlab (flexible hierarchy)

  • Publishing

    • At what granularity?  Sequence-level or Unit-level?

    • LabX requires both use cases.

  • Ned:

    • Why only units and sequences?  Do we need more?

    • Same issue with organizations.

    • Should we consider having a more flexible and abstraction structure?  Or would that be over-engineering?

    • Braden: OEP input on the use cases.

  • Next Steps:

    • Braden will create a new Google doc, consolidating the latest thoughts, sharing with this group.

    • We'll expect an email from Gaurav and/or Braden early next week regarding opening up the discussions over an OEP proposal.  The OEP may remain in a Draft state while things are being fleshed out.