[Proposal] Improvements to Taxonomies
Overview
This proposed project aims to extend the capabilities of the MVP of tagging and taxonomies towards the product direction defined in Content Tagging Strategy for the Open edX Platform . As part of this project we plan to make improvements to both taxonomy authoring and alignment workflows with changes to the Studio Taxonomy listings page and the introduction of Taxonomy pages in Courses and Libraries. These proposed changes are made with a focus on optimizing manual alignment, but also incrementing the feature to enable future efforts for programatic or AI assisted alignments.
Problem
As Content Libraries continue to advance and with Competency Based Education (CBE) initiatives coming into focus, increased utilization of tagging will be necessary to enable these efforts. To grow the utilization and unlock the utility of the feature, the MVP must be improved upon to allow easier authoring, more optimized alignment, and a pathway to programatic or AI assisted alignments.
Use Cases
As a course author, I’d like to:
quickly tag content in my course
identify content that has not been aligned to a taxonomy
more easily review alignments within my course
As a taxonomy author, I’d like to:
have more control over created taxonomies
author taxonomies in-platform and edit these taxonomies
Approach
These proposed improvements to taxonomy and authoring are agnostic of specific use cases. Instead, we aim to first improve the usability of the feature in order to first:
increase adoption, leading to a better understanding of the use cases. This will, in turn, enable more targeted improvements
unlock future work introducing programatic tagging flows
By improving the feature without committing to specific use cases, we can adapt to requirements that will arise from strategic, platform-level shifts and from user research.
Deliverables
As part of this project, we plan the following stages of work.
Stage 1 - Product / Design Concept Exploration (This Proposal) Conduct a review of the current implementation against features outlined in the Content Tagging Strategy document. Identify incremental improvements aligned to this direction for short term consideration. Includes draft sketches of new proposed Taxonomies Home page, Course Taxonomies Page, and Content Library Taxonomy page [sketches to be added later].
Stage 2 - Authoring Improvements for Taxonomies
Introduce in-platform taxonomy authoring tools and editing workflows within Studio. Expand taxonomy settings to introduce taxonomy team access and general settings (license, name overrides, etc).
Outcome: Increased ease of authoring and control of taxonomies
Stage 3 - Improved Course Content Tagging Workflows
Redesign the course tagging flow and introduce patterns to enable faster tagging. In this redesign, selecting a tag would allow users to then click multiple content elements within the current Studio Outline and Unit pages to more quickly align content. Part of this effort will include taxonomy sort features either by recently used or other more context aware methods.
Outcome: Quicker alignment flows will result in more tagged content.
Stage 4 - Introduction of Course and Library Taxonomy pages
These pages will allow users to view taxonomy relevant information such as taxonomy and tag statistics and current alignments. Instructors and instructional designers will have a central place to view alignments for review. This page will streamline review for manual and programatic alignments (future). In the future, these pages can be adjusted to respond to key use cases.
Outcome: This will introduce the ability to view alignments to a taxonomy. Currently, users can select an object and view its tags, but they cannot select a taxonomy and view content aligned to that taxonomy.
Stage 5 - Improved Taxonomy Listing Page In this stage, we plan to improve the taxonomy listing page with the introduction of taxonomy search, sort, and filtering methods. Sort tools may include recently used, alphabetical, or more sophisticated options. We will also introduce a list view option as an added alternative method of viewing taxonomies.
Outcome: A more fully featured taxonomy page.
Stage 6 - Suggested Alignments & AI Auto-Alignment and Import (Future Initiative)
As part of a future scope, we will explore the rollout of both programatic and AI assisted workflows in collaboration with technical teams. We will explore and document necessary changes to APIs and limitations as part of a requirements document.
Future work will also require adjustments to the review screens from Stage 3 to support optimizations such as sorting by alignment confidence and by alignment method.
Features and Requirements
Stage 1 - Product / Design Concept Exploration (This Proposal)
The output of Stage 1 is this document. Design sketches to be added.
Stage 2 - Authoring Improvements for Taxonomies
Course Authors will be able to visit the Studio Taxonomy page and select Import or Add New Taxonomy
If authoring in platform, users will be able to quickly name a taxonomy and define tags
Users will be able to also set authoring teams and access rules, organizations, descriptions, license.
A choice need not be made on flat vs hierarchical taxonomies
Users will also be able to lock taxonomies from edits
Stage 3 - Improved Course Content Tagging Workflows
These improved flows will allow for improved taxonomy selection and tag visibility for alignment workflows
Educators would be able to click a page level action for tagging which would open a alignment sidebar
This sidebar will have two steps, the first of which is taxonomy selection, the second of which is tag selection.
Step 1: Taxonomy Selection - This step will be skipped if taxonomy was previously selected or only one taxonomy is available for the course.
Step 2: Tag selection - Authors will see tags for selected taxonomy, consider sorts / views to show all tags or previously used tags, etc. In this step, author may change the selected taxonomy
These workflows will support faster alignment for content through the new alignment sidebar
While alignment sidebar is open, after authors select a tag in the sidebar, the main content areas will gain a “Add Tag” button to the right side of the blocks, replacing all other current actions.
Educators can see when their main content area is in alignment mode (which happens when you select a tag in the sidebar OR when you select a component in the main content area and the alignment sidebar is open)
Content will retain tag counts with the ability to also view current alignments without exiting the flow
Other optimization methods will be considered, such as enabling tags to cascade up or down (ie: when adding a tag to a block, users may have the option to auto-apply the tag to all parent levels, or when adding a tag to a structural block, applying the tag to all children).
Stage 4 - Introduction of Content Alignment pages in Course and Library Authoring
These pages will allow for improved visibility into connected taxonomies and current alignments
Users will be able to view taxonomy statistics reflecting usage
Users will also be able to view alignments by taxonomy in a centralized place in a list view that allows sorting and filtering within taxonomies.
Filtering options will also be available at the taxonomy level
Sort and filtering options should be flexible to allow future improvements which may include alignment confidence (for programmatic or AI assisted alignments).
This view should allow for streamlined review of content to allow users to verify alignments
In future work, this page will allow viewing of in-context analytics by taxonomy and tag.
Stage 5 - Improved Taxonomy Listing Page
In this stage, we plan to introduce a list view to allow an alternate method of reviewing taxonomies.
With the introduction of a list view, we plan to include sort and filtering options
These sort and filtering options should allow:
Sorting by: Alphabetical, recently authored, recently used, most used
Filtering by: license, organization
Other Approaches Considered
We also considered more advanced features aimed at optimizing for specific use cases. These features included:
taxonomies categorizations to allow for context dependent visibility or functionality,
batch alignment on import,
improved sort, search, and visibility by tag
linked or directional taxonomies
in-context analytics on taxonomy pages
Though we still think this type of work will be useful in the future, we want usage to drive any changes or requirements that shift how taxonomies are defined or constrained.
Competitive Research
As part of this review, we looked into different LMS, CMS (content management systems), and DAM (digital asset management) products.
Object Type Linking Prior to Alignment
Many websites and tools that use tags and/or taxonomies require users to link taxonomies or tags to object types prior to alignment. As an example, CMSs Contentfuo, Drupal and http://Kontent.ai all require users to associate taxonomies with a content type before that content type can be aligned to that taxonomy.
The LMS Moodle has “tag areas” which are types of objects a particular tag can be associated with. Tags areas must be added to a tag before it can be used for that particular type of object.
Takeaway: There may be benefits of a similar pattern in the future once usage is better understood. Whether the implementation is “tag areas” or a different name and UI for different uses.
Taxonomy→Tag display
Contentful utilizes tags that can be grouped on creation by adding a term following a colon. For example, Biology: Molecular and Biology: Genetics would result in a grouping as shown below.
Similarly, SmarterU utilizes the colon pattern for their version of Taxonomies/tags (called Tags/values).
Takeaway: There may be benefit within Open edX to simplify taxonomy/tag display using a similar format. Currently nested tags are additive meaning within Taxonomy 1, if Tag Z is nested under Tag 3 which is nested under Tag A (Taxonomy 1: Tag A > Tag 3 > Tag Z), tagging content with Tag Z would increase the content’s tag count by 3 instead of 1. Exploration of simplified displays may be helpful in managing tag counts and various views.
Note on Taxonomy Usage
Throughout the research for the proposal and in conversations on potential other applications of taxonomies, we think there should be a discussion around the boundaries of use for taxonomies within the platform.
The idea of using a structured vocabulary to organize content and conduct actions based on that organization is powerful. We believe the current implementation of taxonomies can support many powerful use cases such as, potentially, managing complex RBAC requirements or to create student cohorts. However, we feel that the current UI should only support a subset of the use cases of the back-end.