Improved Course Enrollment Views / Discovery

Owned by Marco Morales
Last updated: Jul 23, 2024 by Feanil Patel
6 min read

Please include:

  • Overview: 1-2 sentences that describe the project

  • Problem: 1-2 sentences that describe the primary user problem, challenge or barrier

  • Use cases: As a [course author author/instructor/learner], I need to be able to [do something] because/in order to [achieve a specific outcome].

  • Discovery approach: What questions would you ask to explore solutions to this problem?

Status

PROPOSAL / DRAFT

Contributing Team

@Marco Morales , @Sam Daitzman

Earlier Discovery

Project - Improved Mobile Discovery (FC-28a)

Linked Initiatives

[Mobile] Improved Mobile Discovery

Overview

This is a proposal to improve the Open edX platforms basic course enrollment views and how these are authored in Studio. This would allow for improved mobile discovery and general improvements to enrollment and discovery, views which have been largely unchanged in the platform since its earliest days.

Overview

This is a proposal to improve the Open edX platforms basic course enrollment views and how these are authored in Studio. This would allow for improved mobile discovery and general improvements to enrollment and discovery, views which have been largely unchanged in the platform since its earliest days.

This document was created using the OE Roadmap Submission item template , but it likely will benefit from being represented in the roadmap as a series of smaller efforts to make it easier to provide visibility on whatever fraction of this set of initiatives moves forward.

Abstract

We would like to modernize course enrollment pages and enrollment page authoring on the Open edX platform, as doing so would enable:

  • mobile friendly enrollment pages with richer categorization (subjects / topic),

  • the removal of raw HTML authoring for enrollment pages,

  • future mobile optimization for improved performance of these pages.

Context & Background

  • The base enrollment page authoring views have changed little on the Open edX Platform since its early days. Authoring in Studio is largely a single HTML editing text block hiding in the Schedule & Details page within Studio.

  • Most Open edX instances with the budget revamp / change their discovery engine and enrollment pages to something more sophisticated but we can do better, even without the need for a full discovery / catalog service adopted by 80%+ of the community.

  • We can improve the base template for enrollment pages to support improved performance, mobile discovery, and improve the authoring tools used to generate these pages within Studio.

  • Recent updates like the course authoring MFE, Paragon, and system level tagonomies / tagging makes improved course enrollment page now possible in a much smaller scoped effort than before.

  • This work should help unblock expanded mobile access, and eventually improved mobile discovery APIs to support native (and improved webview) mobile discovery, including fully offline discovery for smaller sized catalog instances of the platform.

Scope & Approach

The team at Schema Education has only just started scope and approach discovery review, and we are interested in collaborating with the community on next steps for this project, including potential sequencing & funding paths.

Value & Impact

  • We hope to dramatically improve the out of the box rendering and mobile friendliness of our enrollment pages for the platform.

  • We hope to add to the course authoring MFE improved authoring tools for enrollment pages and more structured data for instructors, subjects, topics, and more.

  • We hope to make it much easier for platform adopters to customize these page fields to help reduce the cost of enrollment page customization and extension.

Milestones and / or Epics

Any relevant background information about the Initiative. What key pieces of information are important for newcomers to understand about the nature of the problem or pain point, the current user experience, etc. Please use the following format:

Milestone 1: [Title]

  • [1-2 sentence abstract. Include key user stories if appropriate]

  • [Impact metric]

  • [Link to Epic where it may exist in GH, jira, etc]

Initiative 1: Course Enrollment Page Authoring

  • Updated experience for basic platform authoring of course enrollment pages to support improved metadata and the new MFE development patterns of the platform.

  • This would move the course enrollment page content of the Schedule & Details page to its own Course Enrollment page, built into the course authoring MFE. Additional metadata fields to be added to build richer enrollment pages.

  • Defined APIs for this work will help unblock future mobile web + native discovery improvements.

  • Improvements / expansion of the fields used to generate enrollment pages such as: Subject, Topic, Instructor, Pacing, Duration, etc can be extended or added over time. This basis should also support much quicker extension by having core enrollment metadata placed close to courses (or within courses directly?)

I

image-20230626-161729.png

Some details about metadata for these enrollment pages has been added here from our earlier (linked) mobile discovery project page:

Section 1 - Basic Course Details

  1. *Course Display Name

    1. Enter the name of the course as it should appear in the course list.

    2. (text input, defaults to existing course creation value)

  2. *Course Number Display

    1. Enter the course number that you want to appear in the course.

    2. (text input, defaults to existing course creation value)

  3. *Course Organization Display

    1. Enter the course organization that you want to appear in the course.

    2. (text input, defaults to existing course creation value)

  4. Course Subtitle (via S&D page)

    1. originally labeled “Short Description” field

  5. Course Long Description

    1. new field, previously on S&D page within “Course Overview” HTML default

  6. Course Prerequisites

    1. new field, previously on S&D page within “Course Overview” HTML default

  7. Course Staff

    1. new field, previously on S&D page within “Course Overview” HTML default

    2. add new instructor, each with Name / Image / Title / Overview fields

  8. Course FAQs

    1. new fields, previously on S&D page within “Course Overview” HTML default

    2. Each new fields has a question and answer text input pairing.

Section 2 - Visibility and Access

  1. *Course Visibility in Catalog

    1. Defines the access permissions for showing the course in the course catalog.

    2. Toggle button with options: Private, Public Outline, Public

      • Help text for each of the options should appear when selected

  2. *Course Visibility For Unenrolled Learners - TBD what this field does (but it exists in Advanced Settings, more discovery needed here)

  3. Course Dates

    1. TBD what to do here, reference S&D section for Start + Enrollment Dates, allow for data entry on either page, etc. To review with UX/UI support.

Section 3 - Visual Assets

  • Course Introductory Video Source - Course Media / External Youtube Video

  • Course Introductory Video

  • *Course Video Thumbnail Image - …

    • This should pull up a modal for image selection from the existing file and uploads page

    • A preview of the image would be shown once once is selected.

  • *Course Banner Image

  • *Course Card Image

Initiative 2: Updated Course Enrollment Template in edX-platform

  • Mobile friendly templates for use on desktop, mobile web, and for use in the mobile applications if web view based discovery is enabled.

Initiative 3: Mobile Catalog Discovery Browse Screens

  • Basic Catalog Browse views on mobile application experience (web / native options)

  • Support for mobile web views / embeds of the existing + updated course enrollment pages

  • Support for native mobile app enrollment page (TBD)

Initiative 4: Mobile Catalog Discovery Search Screens

  • Ability to search the catalog, see recent personal and popular searches as well

Named Release

First Named Release to include this initiative. Alphabetical named releases are generally cut in early April and early October. Based on the removal date, what named release would be the first without this code? Please reach out to the Build Test Release working group (#wg-build-test-release in Slack) if you're not sure. Use the letter, if you're not sure of the name.

 

This is TBD based on community interest.

Timeline

 

Recognizing that many Initiatives evolve incrementally, please include a brief scope of the Initiative timeline. Please include a target Named Release, with contingencies if necessary.

TBD

Proposed By

@Marco Morales , and team @ Schema Education