2025-08-25 Educators WG: Notifications and Instructor Dashboard

Recording:

(AI Generated and Human Reviewed)

Facilitator: Ildi Morris (Learning Designer, Co-chair of Educators Working Group)
Topics Covered:
1. Notifications feature demo (Axon team: Serena & Amir)
2. Instructor Dashboard redesign (Schema team: Eddie & team)

Demo by Amir (Axim team).
Core components:
- Notification Tray (bell icon, tabs, contextual info, unseen counts).
- Emails (daily/weekly/immediate; default = daily summary).
- Preference Center (opt-in/out toggles, email cadence).
Current coverage: Discussions, upgrades, grading.
Staff-only options: Reported content, ORA submissions needing staff review.
Future ideas: assignment due reminders, grade awarded alerts, certificate notifications, better default-setting tools for instance managers.
Concerns raised:
- ORA notifications: Too many possible alerts; grouping introduced to reduce clutter.
- Ability for individuals to turn off specific alerts confirmed.
- Notify all learners option for instructors creating discussion posts.

Presented by Eddie (Schema team).
Goal: Convert dashboard into a modern MFE (micro front end) using Paragon design system.
Phase 1 (near-term):
- Direct conversion for visual/design consistency (clearer buttons, spacing, theming alignment).
- Minimal feature/functionality change.
Phase 2 (future vision):
- Dedicated Instructor Homepage, separating it from LMS “learn” view.
- Central hub for instructor tasks (enrollment, grading, student admin, downloads, etc.).
- Potential search bar for quick navigation.
- Ability to reorder or hide dashboard tiles.
- Cross-navigation from Studio → Instructor Dashboard → LMS to reduce friction.
Feedback themes:
- CCX (Custom Courses): Rarely used; unclear support needs, but important not to break.
- Multi-course management: Desire for easier switching between multiple courses.
- Usability: Interest in polls (e.g., Slack) to prioritize tile order; suppress unused tools.
- Feature requests:
  - Restore grades after zeroing (for cheating appeals).
  - Bulk assignment date extensions and more intuitive time pickers.
  - Search within dashboard settings.

Feedback channels:
- Confluence (wiki) pages for async comments.
- Slack channels (#wg-educators, notifications, etc.). for discussion
- One-on-one sessions with product managers. Project manager is @Jenna Makowski