Overview

This project aims to improve the course enrollment authoring experience in Open edX Studio by creating a dedicated authoring interface with structured fields such as Subject, Topic, Instructor, Pacing, Duration, and Competencies. By replacing the outdated reliance on raw HTML editing, this work enables consistent, metadata-rich enrollment pages that improve how learners discover, evaluate, and engage with courses—both on web and mobile platforms.

Problem

Course authors currently lack an intuitive and structured way to create enrollment pages. Instead, they rely on editing a single raw HTML block hidden within the Schedule & Details section, limiting the discoverability of course information for learners and making mobile optimization difficult.

In addition, there is a deeper architectural issue: historically, structured course metadata was considered “non-course data” and relegated to external services like the Open edX Discovery Service. As a result, important metadata, such as topics, levels, prerequisites, and instructor information has not been readily available within the LMS itself. This has left most enrollment pages as minimal, unstructured views, and has limited the ability of the platform’s built-in search and discovery features to surface relevant content to learners.

This proposal addresses both problems by treating course metadata as a first-class component of the course authoring experience, independent of whether an instance uses Discovery or any future catalog or marketing solution. Doing so enables richer enrollment pages and unlocks the potential for better in-platform discovery, even in instances that don’t deploy a full catalog service.

Current interface: Studio - Schedule & details section

Open

LMS - Student enrollment page

Open

Use Cases

• As a course author, I need to easily add structured information (like competencies, subjects, and marketing fields) to enrollment pages in order to make my courses more discoverable and appealing to learners.

• As an instructor, I need to ensure that important details like topics and competencies are visible so that students can quickly assess if a course matches their learning needs.

• As a learner, I need to see structured course information at a glance during enrollment to find the courses that best align with my skill development goals.

Supporting Market Data

The need to modernize the course enrollment pages and authoring experience in Open edX is widely acknowledged across the community:

• The current authoring interface—an HTML block buried in the Schedule & Details page—has changed little since the platform’s inception. This outdated model limits discoverability, introduces inconsistency across courses, and is not mobile-friendly.

• Many Open edX adopters with available resources already bypass the default authoring flow, opting instead for custom enrollment and discovery solutions. This suggests that the current tooling does not meet common user expectations out-of-the-box.

• Recent platform updates, including the Course Authoring MFE, the Paragon design system, and tagging/taxonomy capabilities, now make it feasible to modernize enrollment pages in a well-scoped, technically achievable effort.

• This proposal aligns with the platform-wide effort to support Competency-Based Education (CBE). According to the State of the Art CBE and LMS research conducted by Schema, one of the core challenges that CBE addresses is that “students are not mastering necessary skills.” This proposal contributes to solving that problem by enabling:

  • Clear visibility of the competencies a course targets

  • Structured metadata for filtering and discovery

  • Better alignment between course content and learner goals

Proposed Solution

We propose creating a dedicated Enrollment Page Authoring interface within the Course Authoring MFE that will:

• Move the enrollment page content authoring out of Schedule & Details and into its own structured authoring view.

• Replace manual HTML editing with a structured, form-driven experience to reduce errors, increase consistency, and improve usability.

• Even if we decide to keep an open text field, we can improve its format by switching from HTML to Markdown. This change would help prevent security, invalid HTML that can break the text display, and Markdown is also better suited for presenting content on mobile devices.
  (Update based on feedback from the comments)

• We can make this page available after enrollment to ensure students can access the information if needed, and to improve SEO. (Update based on feedback from the comments)

• Create backend APIs to expose this structured enrollment metadata to discovery engines, mobile apps, and web views.

• Support offline catalog rendering and richer mobile filtering in future iterations.

Metadata Structure Overview (Based on Mobile Discovery Research)

The proposed authoring form would include structured fields across five major sections:

Section 1: Basic Course Details

• Course Display Name

• Course Number Display

• Course Organization Display

• Course Subtitle (previously “Short Description”)

• Course Long Description (formerly HTML block)

• Course Prerequisites

• Course Staff (instructor details: name, image, title, bio)

• Course FAQs (question-answer field pairs)

Section 2: Visibility and Access

• Course Visibility in Catalog: Private / Public Outline / Public

• Course Visibility for Unenrolled Learners (TBD – to be researched further)

• Course Dates (Start and Enrollment Dates, to be integrated with UX feedback)

Section 3: Visual Assets

• Course Introductory Video Source (internal or external)

• Course Video Thumbnail Image (image selector and preview)

• Course Banner Image

• Course Card Image

This structured approach enables mobile-friendly rendering, improves accessibility for search/discovery, and facilitates greater consistency across courses and institutions.

Section 4: Relevant Skills / Outcomes

• Competencies: List of competencies the course aims to address. Each competency should be expressed as a complete, descriptive statement outlining what the learner will be able to do upon completion. As shown in this case study on transitioning to CBE, competencies are often not just keywords or tags, but full sentences that clearly communicate the intended learning outcome (e.g., “Analyze and represent the requirements of a system” rather than simply “Systems Analysis” or “Apply statistical methods to interpret real-world data sets” rather than simply “Statistics”).

• If the platform has any system-level taxonomies defined—such as standard lists of Subjects or Topics used in the course catalog—these should also be shown and selectable in this section. This ensures that course-level metadata remains aligned with global classification systems, enabling consistent tagging, easier discovery, and the future creation of topic- or subject-specific pages (e.g., /topics/data-science) that improve both navigation and SEO.

Section 5: Marketing and SEO Optimization

• Custom URL Slug: Field to define a human-friendly URL for the course (e.g., /courses/design-thinking-beginners).

• Meta Tags: Fields to set custom <title>, <meta description>, and <meta keywords> for search engine optimization.

• Custom HTML Head Injection: Optional advanced section for injecting scripts (e.g., CRM, tracking pixels).

• Structured Data (http://Schema.org ): Auto-generated or configurable Course schema markup to support rich link previews in search engines and social platforms.

These capabilities will enable institutions to better promote their courses, improve search visibility, and integrate marketing and analytics tools directly into the enrollment page.

Other Approaches Considered

• Improving documentation for HTML templates:

  Rejected because it still leaves authors manually coding, introducing inconsistency and errors, and does not provide structured metadata for discovery systems.

• Adding hidden metadata fields without changing the UI: Rejected because it would not improve learner-facing discoverability or address the authoring experience problems.

Competitive research

Moodle: Self Enrollment

Moodle supports multiple enrollment methods, one of which is self enrollment. This method allows administrators to configure basic access parameters for learners without requiring manual enrollment. However, the authoring capabilities provided for enrollment pages are minimal and purely functional—there is no support for structured metadata, custom visuals, or descriptive content. The intent of this feature is not to promote or present the course to potential learners, but simply to facilitate access once they already know which course they want to join.

Open

Canvas: Syllabus

In Canvas, the Syllabus page is commonly used as the main course landing page and allows instructors to add formatted text, multimedia, and a course summary. However, its purpose is to present course content, not to drive discovery or promote the course externally. It lacks structured fields for competencies, skills, or outcomes, and does not provide search engine optimization or catalog integration capabilities.

Open

Implementation Plan

• Who will drive it: Currently not resourced. Schema Education is exploring this as an early-stage discovery project and is seeking collaboration and funding from Open edX community members or interested institutions.

• Who would deliver: Ideally, delivery would be a collaboration between Schema and Open edX core contributors, possibly through modular work that can ship iteratively.

Proposed Stages of Work

• Stage 1 – Initial Research and Proposal Development (Funded by Schema – this proposal)

  • Conduct initial research and define the scope of the problem.

  • Draft the product proposal and feature breakdown.

  • Create low-fidelity mockups illustrating the proposed structured authoring experience for enrollment pages.

• Stage 2 – Design and Feasibility Validation (Pending Funding)

  • Develop high-fidelity mockups based on initial concepts.

  • Conduct usability testing sessions with at least three course authors to evaluate the experience.

  • Validate technical feasibility with the future development team to identify architectural or integration constraints early.

  • Refine the UI/UX based on user and developer feedback.

Product Iteration Stages

• Stage 3 – Enrollment Metadata in Studio (Pending Funding)

  • Introduce a new, dedicated Enrollment Page authoring section in Studio.

  • Migrate HTML-based enrollment content out of the current Schedule & Details section.

  • Enable course authors to input all proposed metadata fields (e.g., Subject, Topic, Duration, Competencies), even if these are not yet surfaced on the enrollment page itself.

  • Review and migrate relevant advanced settings (e.g., course name override) to consolidate metadata authoring and begin deprecating legacy advanced configuration options.

• Stage 4 – Enrollment Page Redesign and Templates (Pending Funding)

  • Redesign the enrollment page templates to support conditional rendering of metadata sections and integrate Paragon and MFE architecture.

  • Ensure improved accessibility and mobile responsiveness.

  • Build on existing funded contributions already modernizing portions of the enrollment page.

  • Explore compatibility with mobile discovery experiences (e.g., webview-based rendering within Open edX mobile apps).

• Stage 5 – Discovery Integration Planning (To Consider)

  • Define the product design and planning work needed to improve the Open edX course catalog and search features using the new metadata.

  • While development may be out of scope, this design foundation would enable future improvements in content discovery and filtering.

Plan for Long-Term Ownership/Maintainership

The new Enrollment Authoring interface would be maintained by the Open edX Studio maintainers.

Open Questions for Rollout/Releases

• What migration strategies will be needed for existing courses built using only the HTML block?