Push Notifications in Mobile Apps

Push Notifications in Mobile Apps

Summary

Our vision is to enhance user engagement and retention by implementing a comprehensive push notification strategy for the edX mobile app. This strategy aims to deliver timely, relevant, and personalized notifications to learners, encouraging them to complete courses, engage with content, and stay updated with platform updates.

Opportunity

Currently, the edX mobile app lacks any push notification functionality, resulting in missed opportunities for increasing user engagement and retention. Push notifications can significantly enhance user interaction by providing timely reminders, updates, and personalized content. Implementing a push notification strategy aligns with our goal to improve the overall user experience and engagement on the mobile app.

Expected Impact:

  • Learners: Increased motivation to complete courses, engage with content, and stay informed about updates.

  • Educators: Higher course completion rates and improved engagement metrics.

  • Platform: Enhanced user retention, increased course enrollments, and potential revenue growth.

Key Evidence Summary

Having push notifications in apps is a very common engagement & retention strategy that the edX mobile app misses out on.

  • User Engagement: Studies show that push notifications can increase app engagement by 88%. (Source)

  • Retention Rates: Apps with push notifications see a 3x higher retention rate compared to those without. (Source)

Major competitors such as Coursera (source) and Udemy utilize push notifications effectively to boost user engagement and course completion rates.

From our recent user study, users have expressed a need for timely reminders and updates to help them stay on track with their courses.

Approach

Our approach toward implementing push notifications and keeping learners engaged with the edX mobile app includes dividing the notifications in 2 categories.

  1. Learning Experience

    • Notifications that directly benefit learners, such as course reminders, new content alerts, discussions updates, and motivational messages.

  2. Promotional Messaging

    • Notifications that nudge users to upgrade their courses or take advantage of promotional campaigns. 

The implementation adopts a plugin-based approach aligned with Open edX extensibility practices. Site operators can configure their own notification providers using the ACE_PUSH_CHANNELS setting. This ensures flexibility and supports integration with tools such as Braze, Firebase, or custom-built solutions.

We are prioritizing category 1 over 2 in the short term, owing to the majority of the learning experience being native as compared to course discovery, promotions are seasonal, and mobile stores (Apple/Google) take a store fee cut in the upgrade transactions.

Secondly, based on our user study, notifications linked with the learning experience also ranked higher.

Milestones

Milestone 1 - Learning Experience: Discussions Notifications

Focuses on enhancing learner engagement through push notifications related to discussions, aligning with existing web notifications under the "Activity" preference. Notifications include updates on new responses, comments, endorsements, and posts the learner is following.

Milestone 2 - Learning Experience: Learner Motivation Notifications

Targets re-engaging learners through mobile-specific notifications that prompt continued course interaction. These notifications are centered around motivating course completion, celebrating milestones, encouraging streaks/goals, reminding of course upgrade deadlines, and re-engaging dormant learners.

Proposed Solution for Milestone 1

Notifications Screen

In order to allow users to access their notifications when they log in to the app, we will introduce a notifications screen that can be accessed from the Learn tab. The notifications screen will replicate the behavior of the notification tray, similar to the web. 

image-20250508-095017.png

Preference Settings

In order to simplify the preference management of push notifications for mobile users we plan to introduce a simple and easy UX.

Instead of choosing a course and then changing preferences, as compared to the web, a single preference toggle should control notifications for all enrolled courses related to discussions. This unified preference simplifies the experience for users and ensures consistent settings across all courses.

Preference Groups

  • Course Activity - Link to “Activity”/”Forum” preference group present in the notification center.

  • Learning Reminders - Notifications related to learning experience and learner motivation.

  • Promotions - Promotional notifications

Future state – Milestone 1 will only have course activity toggle

 

Notifications

As part of our first milestone, Discussions notifications. We will introduce the following notifications as they link with the existing notifications created by the Infinity Squad (Notifications for learning activity + Architecture - Notifications for learning activity ).

Example Notifications (as implemented by 2U using Braze)

These notifications represent the initial set implemented by 2U using Braze. However, the implementation is fully pluggable and not dependent on Braze. Other providers can be integrated by configuring ACE settings.

Preference Center Notifications

Copies for Braze Mobile Push Notifications

New response on my post

Title: [Course Name]

Body: [Username] has replied to your post. See what they said and keep the conversation going!

New comment on my post

Title: [Course Name]

Body: [Username] shared their thoughts on your post. Jump back in and reply!

New comment on my response

Title:  [Course Name]

Body: A comment has been added to a post you follow. Tap to see the discussion.

New response on post i'm following

Title: [Course Name]

Body: A response has been added to a post you follow. Tap to see the discussion.

New comment on post i'm following

Title: [Course Name]

Body: A post you follow has a new comment by [Username]. Keep the discussion going.

 

Appendix

Integration Flexibility

The mobile push notification system is implemented using the pluggable architecture of the Open edX ACE (Automated Communication Engine). Operators can configure the ACE_PUSH_CHANNELS setting to integrate any notification provider. While 2U currently uses Braze, the implementation is agnostic to the provider, ensuring broad compatibility.

[Additional technical integration details to be contributed by backend team based on this comments on this PR.]