New Discussions Experience - edX Global Staff Preview
TL;DR:
We have enabled an internal edX global staff preview of our new edX Discussions experience, demonstrating new navigation and moderation tools to improve engagement and reduce moderation costs for courses. This preview is visible only to edx global staff accounts as we continue to build improvements in preparation for the educator preview rollout and eventually the learner-facing rollout. A feedback capture tool is also included in this effort.
Release date: Feb 23, 2022
Product owner: @Marco Morales (Deactivated) @Aamir Ayub
What is it?
We have enabled an edx internal preview of the new application experience, allowing global staff to compare the discussion experience for courses using the new and existing experiences. A Share feedback button is available to capture feedback during this period of continued development. The new discussion experience is the culmination of many months of partner research, UX team discovery, and development team infrastructure and application development and we look forward to an upcoming educator rollout, an extended preview period, then a learner-facing rollouts.
Key talking points for internal testing
Who will notice the change, and where (LMS/Studio)?
All edx global staff will be able to preview this experience for an estimated week or two after which we hope to begin our educator preview period. The same preview bar we have enabled today for edX global staff accounts will soon also be available for educators to switch between the existing and new experiences.
Is there anything a user needs to do to enable the feature?
edX team members with global staff access will see the new experience when in the Discussion tab and in discussion xblocks. This rollout is an opportunity for internal team members to explore the new discussions experience and report back feedback in advance of the broader educator preview period. The new Share feedback tool is a way to report any issues you see within the experience, though you can of course always report issues via the existing Customer Request ServiceDesk if the feedback tool isn’t working as expected.
How would you sell it to customers, partners, or businesses?
We will be publishing a product pulse and partner portal post with additional details as part of the educator preview coming soon. Additional improvements are being developed each week to improve the experience but enough exists to enable educator preview and comparison between the discussion experiences for early feedback and input.
How does it connect to existing or future features?
As described above, next is the educator preview rollout to be followed by a learner rollout. In parallel, continued development of this experience includes additional moderator updates, an improved in-context discussion experience and more. Additional milestones will roll out incrementally from this point forward into mid-2022.
Link(s) to additional details: Original Approach Memo for Discussions, Jira Initiative & Milestone Details
Credits:
A huge thanks to the Infinity squad and our OpenCraft blended development team as they have been working on this milestone for many months in addition to other discussions related milestones. Additionally, Jon Fay’s exception UX design and definition efforts have been a critical part of this effort.