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	DRAFT FOR EARLY INPUT
Contributing Team	@Marco Morales , @Sam Daitzman
Earlier Discovery	N/A
Linked Initiatives	[Mobile] https://github.com/openedx/openedx-app-ios/issues/375 https://github.com/openedx/platform-roadmap/issues/376
Overview	A few platform services provide foundational data that we use to help convey to learners their course engagement details around engagement status / next steps. Completion, grades, and effort tools are all examples of this, providing visibility into progress and size of upcoming work. We are proposing a similarly foundational measurement of learner activity. By storing activity measures like daily / weekly / monthly engagement streaks, key milestones (ex: 20% of videos watched, 50% of assignments done, etc) these activities can be used to power various engagement plugins / features that we have described in the proposal. For the mobile experience we are interested in upgrading the “Profile Page” to be an “Activity View,” echoing the progress feeds, opportunities for social kudos, and other more dynamic representations of your learning seen in other mobile experiences.

Overview

A few platform services provide foundational data that we use to help convey to learners their course engagement details around engagement status / next steps. Completion, grades, and effort tools are all examples of this, providing visibility into progress and size of upcoming work. We are proposing a similarly foundational measurement of learner activity. By storing activity measures like daily / weekly / monthly engagement streaks, key milestones (ex: 20% of videos watched, 50% of assignments done, etc) these activities can be used to power various engagement plugins / features that we have described in the proposal. For the mobile experience we are interested in upgrading the Profile page to be an Activity View, echoing the progress feeds, opportunities for social kudos, and other more dynamic representations of your learning seen in other mobile experiences.

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

Learning can be a grind, especially for new challenging topics, complex degree or higher education certificate level coursework, and we would benefit from applying a handful of motivational support tools in the platform when possible without becoming a distraction. Opinions vary widely on how many gamification hooks, streaks, challenges, competitions, comparisons, and other forms of motivators help learners take a break from the learning grind and find new energy to continue. We believe however that an activity service on Open edx that can capture major categories of learner activity would be helpful to build features and plugins that explore the space of motivational tools, plugins, etc as a supplement to basic completion, effort, and grades.

Most specifically, we are exploring this concept because for the mobile applications we would like to modernize our very bare bones profile pages through the use of a personal activity feed, capturing key course learning milestones or activity summaries of a given learning session to help learners see their progress more tangibly and in ways that could power social learning feeds or optional kudos if you choose to learn with others.

Many other applications could be imagined by having a platform level service that captures common learning activity milestones or markers, some of which you might choose to celebrate on your learner profile as a sort of badge or designation. Not only could you complete a course but maybe you can also see a list of milestones / badges that can be earned within a course for completing all course areas, watching all course videos, etc.

Context & Background

We believe a handful of features exist downstream of improved learner activity metadata and tracking, and we would like to get community input on what that metadata is that would have helped power existing gamification plugins, social learning tools, comparative learning research projects. If we can identify commonly used / valuable sets of activities we can hopefully make it easier to maintain these tools as well as create other plugins or features.
- Note - Each of those examples could be linked to real plugins / features / research papers of old. We will endeavor to list other examples here but if you have an example of a project that would have benefitted from something like this Activity Service please let us know!
Additional details coming soon - “Game outside the game”
Comparative mobile experiences (Activity Feeds)
- Duolingo
- Strava

Scope & Approach

Our current focus is on gathering known existing tools that are connected to learner activity data to help identify common data patterns and needs across these tools.
We also plan to further specify the mobile app proposal for an Activity View as well as a Learn with Others v1 project, as these are two examples of tools we think would leverage this activity service.
From here, we hope to identify a set of broadly useful activity feed statements and identify the data helpful to aggregate and store to power other tools. Some example of this include:
- Streaks
  - Daily, Weekly, Monthly active
- Milestones (Course)
  - % Videos Watched in Course
  - % Assignments Completed in Course
- Thresholds
  - Active in Discussion, 10+ Discussion Engagements
- Designations
  - Community TA, Video Completer, etc

Value & Impact

Moving beyond the basics (completion, effort, grades) of learner activity status in our learner experience should hopefully expand our ability to build learner motivation tools, improve our learner outreach messaging, and encourage deeper learning engagement and continuity while learning on Open edX.

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:TBD

More details coming soon here based on early community interest.

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, focused on community input next.

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.