[DRAFT] Concept Note: Overhauling the workflow to create a new course

2 min

What does the ideal course creation function look like?

 

This function/workflow needs to be re-designed, from both a product and UI perspective. This can probably be done outside the scope of the Studio Home redesign, but should be acknowledged and called out as a workflow that is connected to Studio Home in a logical way.

 

A first pass at pain points and recommendations:

 

Current pain points in the course creation function:

 

  • Users are required to create a course run at the same time a new course is created. But often the SMEs building the content and the course teams building the run logistics are different people.

  • The metadata fields for a new course are scattered in too many disparate places which makes it confusing for everyone: the new course creation page on Studio home; Schedule & Details; Django Admin; Advanced Settings

  • Schedule & Details is a misleading/vague name for the place where course and course run metadata live

  • Three types of metadata are mashed into one workflow: Course metadata; course run metadata; discovery metadata. Different persona may be responsible for creating these metadata fields

  • Much [need to quantify] of the metadata lives in the Discovery service, far removed from the course/content it represents in Studio/the LMS

 

Proposed changes to the course creation function:

 

  • Separate the workflows: 1) For creating a new course and 2) For creating a course run/re-run. This is guided by the idea that the persona responsible for courses are the instructional designers and SMEs, while the persona responsible for the course runs are the course teams, instructors, moderators. Sometimes they overlap but many times they don't.

  • Disentangle the metadata types into two distinct categories of metadata that align with those two workflows: course metadata and course run metadata

    • Course metadata: Static fields that describe the course content or course experience and do not change from run to run, for example effort, learning objectives. These are currently positioned as discovery fields but should be owned by the content SMEs.

    • Course run metadata: Dynamic fields that change for each run, for example logistics data like course dates, enrollment dates.

  • Data models and codebase home for all course and course run metadata is either Studio or LMS (not Discovery), where it lives close to the content it describes.

  • Mechanism to push course and course run metadata to external discovery/CMS services

  • Remove the concept of discovery/catalog metadata entirely from the Studio experience. Courses and course runs have metadata oriented around pedagogy, curricula and course run logistics. The source of truth for this metadata is Studio/LMS and the content owners are best equipped to define their pedagogical values. 

  • Create logical homes (dashboards?) to centralize and unify the processes for studio users to enter all course and course run metadata in one place in Studio. Cater the course processes to SMEs and instructional designers and course run processes to course delivery teams.

 

Customization/configurability concepts to consider:

 

  • Some choice in configuring whether Studio/LMS or an external CMS can be designated as the source of truth for some metadata 

  • Locking and permissions mechanisms

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