Concept: Create any part of the course in Libraries for reuse

Owned by Jenna Makowski
Last updated: Jun 14, 2023
2 min read

STATUS: EARLY DESIGN AND TECHNICAL DISCOVERY

 

Key concept: All levels of the course hierarchy (components, units, subsections and sections) independent, composable, re-usable, and deliverable as stand-alone learning products

Key concept: Content libraries become the place for both 1) authoring modularly and 2) managing and organizing what is authored, whether authored in the library or in courses directly

Full user stories here.

 

Proposed expansions to Content Libraries:

*Note: This phase expands on the work undertaken in the BD-14 project.

 

Authoring capacities:

  • Create any level of course hierarchy independently in the library - components, units, subsections, sections

  • Parity with authoring experience in Studio (ie, OLX is supported but not required)

  • Capacity to create templates for units, subsections to expedite the authoring process

 

Descriptive metadata and taxonomy/tagging capacities:

  • Capacity to add structured, descriptive metadata (tags) to components, units, subsections and sections

Enhanced library/database functions:

  • Capacity to organize large amounts of content into hierarchical folders (or similar nested file management infrastructure) so I can easily find it

  • Browse, facet and search capabilities so I can search for and find stuff, using the descriptive metadata above

  • Capacity to version control what I create (active vs implicit TBD)

 

Content use capacities:

  • Options to add what I create in libraries to any course

  • Options to keep copies linked to the original with automated updates or to break the links

  • Options to author a full course and have all course components dumped into library where I can organize them to reuse later

  • Options to export what I create into any external LMS

 

Other parameters:

  • No configuration done in libraries - just content authoring

  • Flatten the current distinctions between “text libraries”, “video libraries” and “problem libraries” into just libraries. If an author wants to create a library of just videos, they can do that, but we don’t prescribe that at a platform level. Maybe we start calling them “My Libraries”

  • Private to me, my course teams or my organization - same access permissions as studio

  • Capacity for multiple libraries per person and group collaboration in shared libraries

 

Approach questions:

  • In terms of implementation: should this be built on Blockstore, Learning Core, or ?

  • How do we represent structures larger than a unit within libraries? (Both in terms of UX and technically)

  • At what point in the editing/publishing process do we need to make this decision [the decision to break links or sync between shared content] when reusing a content object?

    • Does the original content author get any say here, or is it only the reusing content author?

    • With automated updates, do we still need a UI to show the upstream changes made over time?

  • Do content libraries become the defacto way for all content to be stored, even if it’s created first in a course rather than a library?

  • If someone creates a structure, call it a section, and that structure contains 5 units, are those units  imprisoned in that structure, the section?  I understand that what a unit is is fuzzy.  It might, for example, be learning content, plus a formative assessment, because they are seen as inextricably bound together.  But if there were 5 pairs of content + formative assessment -- units -- in a section and all that was shareable was the section, that feels sub-optimal.