[2U] Course Optimizer Page is now live on edx.org

We are excited to announce that a new page called Course Optimizer is rolling out today in edX Studio 🎉. 

TL;DR

• This feature points out where broken links and images within a given course are. This will save course teams time and provide a better learning experience.

• Course authors often have broken links in their courses but are unaware of this issue.

• Now, course authors can quickly find and replace broken links so that they can be more confident that learners don't have to interact with any broken links or images. 

Supporting Data

• We have qualitative data from edx.org  partners for the previous two years asking for this feature.

• edx.org  partner support has told us that this (broken links/images) is a significant issue for some time.

How to Use the Course Optimizer

• The Course Optimizer page exists in edX Studio as another selection in the “Tools” dropdown along with Import, Export and Checklist.

• After selecting “Course Optimizer,” you will see this page

• Click on “Start Scanning” and your course will be scanned for broken links and images. The scan will go through a "Preparing," “Scanning,” and “Success” stage. For larger courses, the scan will take longer. 

• After the “Success” stage, you can see the results and whether your course has any broken links or images. You will notice 3 icons for broken links as well as a filtering capability.

  • The icon on the left shows broken links pointing to external websites, images or websites that do not exist or are no longer available. These links can cause issues for learners when they try to access the content.

  • The icon in the middle shows links that we cannot verify and our recommendation is that you check these links.

  • The icon on the right displays locked course files that are inaccessible for non-enrolled users and therefore we cannot verify if the link can access the file. 

• You can also filter the results of your scan

• In the expanded state, you can go to the block in which the broken link is located (Completion Page in screenshot below) as well as access the broken link.

Future Considerations

• A recheck functionality could be designed for users who have already scanned their course for broken links and plan to address them over multiple sessions. Instead of scanning the entire course, the recheck functionality would scan only the blocks identified during the previous scan. Implementing this feature was deemed too complex for the initial release of the Course Optimizer page. 

• Automatically Run & Warn Authors: extend this check to run in the background once for a course and have it give the user a heads up via email or Course Outline page message. When and how to do this might be tricky to define since course publishing workflows vary greatly. As an example, perhaps only run the automated check if it wasn’t run manually and if there are published Unit pages in the course with the start date N weeks away. This could help catch issues before a course goes live.

• In-Context Checks for Text + Problem Blocks: how much cost / effort might it be to run this Course Optimizer for just a singular block is certainly a question. If it was quick to run the Optimizer just in time after draft publish or draft save of any text / video components, we could show a Unit page or block level message warning for any detected broken links soon after authoring. 

• Find a way to enable authors to fix the link from the checker: rather than taking them away to the block, there could possibly be a modal that lets the authors scroll through a list of links that have updates available, and accept/deny the changes from within the same modal. 

• Additionally, there is significant opportunity in regard to how this page could grow over time. The vision for this page is that the link checker is the first feature of the page. However, I think it could also operate as a place to help course authors make their courses better e.g. videos/images that are not used in the course, duplicate content, AI summarization of unstructured data, etc.  

Credits: Bernard Szabo, Jesper Hodge, Raymond Zhou, Faraz Maqsood, Devasia Joseph, Pandi Ganesh, Pradeep Patro, Umar Khan, Hina Khadim, Saad Yousef, Jon Fay, Jeremy Ristau, Brad Brown.