2025-09-15 Educators WG: Roles-Based Access Control, Multi-Question Problem Editor, and Gantt Tracking Chart

Recording:

Video: Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing
Passcode: 05SBg.30

Minutes:

(AI Generated and Human Reviewed)

Meeting Overview

Facilitator: John Swope
Topics Covered:
- Educator Roadmap (John Swope)
- Roles Based Access Controls (Jenna Makowski)
- Multi-Question Problem Editor (Santiago Suarez)

OpenEdX Educators Roadmap Updates (00:40)

John discussed the educator roadmap, including notifications scheduled for release in December and a dashboard project for 2026. Group agreed to keep the deadline for projects as the deadline for code freeze (deadline for any changes) , not the date of release (when the feature becomes first available to users).

Roles and Permissions Framework (08:20)

Jenna presented a new Roles and Permissions framework for Ulmo, which will initially be rolled out within content libraries as a test case. The framework aims to simplify role management by allowing administrators to easily assign, remove, and view roles, with a focus on creating more granular custom roles rather than the current over-permissioned out-of-the-box roles. The design includes three main views: team members, roles, and permissions, with clear visual distinctions between different library roles such as admin, author, and collaborator. The framework will be tested in October-November, with plans to expand to other platform areas like studio roles and course creation, though prioritization is still needed. Marco mentioned ongoing work on converting the instructor dashboard to MFE, and John inquired about bulk role privileging, which was confirmed as a future feature. The team will post documentation in the wiki and welcome testing contributions for the upcoming release.

Multi-Question Assessment Interface Discussion (25:15)

Santiago Suarez led a discussion around a proposed interface for creating multi-question assessments, which would improve both single and multi-question setups. Mary raised concerns about the student experience, noting that separate submit buttons per question might be better than a single submit button at the end of a long assessment. Marco suggested that the problem editor could be updated to allow for either single or multiple submit buttons, depending on the specific needs of the assessment, while maintaining the ability to configure problem settings appropriately.

John explained that the current analytics system requires separate submit buttons for each question to enable proper data tracking.

The conversation shifted to keeping per-question configuration as minimal as possible, and moving configuration items to per-block (that would apply to all questions in a multi-problem block). No concrete decision was made here.

Sarina emphasized the importance of consistent behavior across problems, suggesting that different functionalities should be gated behind different submit buttons rather than varying by individual problem. Mary and John highlighted the need for quiz-level settings to streamline functionality, such as show answer settings, and warned about potential design challenges, including the need to reset attempts or rescore all questions when changes are made. Santiago’s team (Schema) agreed to create mock-ups for different configuration options to protect specific use cases while exploring interoperability between modes.

John suggested sharing feedback in the Educator's Working Group Slack channel. Since this project is not yet funded or in progress, it will not be added to the Educators Roadmap yet.