Project - Improved Mobile Discovery (FC-28a)
- Marco Morales
Status | DRAFT IN PROGRESS |
|---|---|
Contributing Team | @Marco Morales , @Volodymyr Chekyrta |
Earlier Discovery | Quick Discovery: Improved Discovery Experience [Mobile Roadmap] |
Linked Initiatives | Tentative Funded Contribution FC-0028 |
Overview | With this effort, we’d like to shift away from the minimalist catalog discovery capabilities on Open edX mobile to match what other services support in terms of helping learners find the right course. This effort should introduce mobile friendly course and program enrollment pages and improve the ability to provide rich, valuable metadata for these pages through the core edx-platform experience (without the need for the discovery service). |
Overview
With this effort, we’d like to shift away from the minimalist catalog discovery capabilities on Open edX mobile to match what other services support in terms of helping learners find the right course. This effort should introduce mobile friendly course and program enrollment pages and improve the ability to provide rich, valuable metadata for these pages through the core edx-platform experience (without the need for the discovery service).
Key Use Cases
As an learner, I would like to discover Open edX courses / programs from my learning site on my mobile device.
As a learner I would like to search and browse the catalog of my learning site from my mobile device.
Deliverables
Stage 1 - Course Enrollment Page Authoring
Updated experience for basic platform authoring of course enrollment pages to support improved metadata and the new MFE development patterns of the platform.
This would move the course enrollment page content of the Schedule & Details page to its own Course Enrollment page, built into the course authoring MFE. Additional metadata fields to be added to build richer enrollment pages.
Stage 2 - Updated Course Enrollment Template in edX-platform
Mobile friendly templates for use on desktop, mobile web, and for use in the mobile applications if web view based discovery is enabled.
Stage 3 -Mobile Catalog Discovery Browse Screens
Basic Catalog Browse views on mobile application experience (web / native options)
Support for mobile web views / embeds of the existing + updated course enrollment pages
Support for native mobile app enrollment page (TBD)
Stage 4 - Mobile Catalog Discovery Search Screens
Ability to search the catalog, see recent personal and popular searches as well
Stage X - Program Configuration v1
Stage X - Program Enrollment Page Templates v1
Users
Learner (Desktop, Mobile Web, Mobile App)
Course Author
Program Author
Site Administrator
In Scope / Out of Scope
Based on the above use cases, we are breaking down on high-level scope as follows:
In Scope | Out of Scope |
New enrollment page templates in edx-platform for Courses and Programs. | Updated web course discovery filtering and search experience out of the box for edx-platform |
Initial program configuration MFE for basic configuration and enrollment page authoring |
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Exploration of additional metadata fields for course and program enrollment |
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MVP Specs
Features & Requirements
In order to realize this MVP, we believe the following features will be required. Refer to the following flow chart for more details:
Feature | Requirements |
Stage 1 - Course Enrollment Page Authoring | |
Course Enrollment Page Authoring Basics | This would create a new element in the Studio Content dropdown menu called “Enrollment Page” and render a view powered by the new course authoring MFE for course authors to update enrollment page details.  Initially, replicating all existing fields with a slight update would be the initial increment of delivery, but this would be able to quickly improve in the new MFE paradigm alongside improvements to general metadata + enrollment page template improvements.  In the Initial version, the enrollment page should let you View Live across the top as the primary CTA. The fields will be grouped by section just like on the Schedule and details page today. Fields that currently exist in the Advanced Settings page denoted with an asterisk. When this authoring page is enabled, hide these fields from Advanced Settings to only render them on this page. Some minor label changes apply to these fields. Section 1 - Basic Course Details
Section 2 - Visibility and Access
Section 3 - Visual Assets
TBD Fields from Advanced Settings
|
Course Enrollment Page Authoring Improvements | Additional updates to Learning Objectives to be described here. |
Updated Schedule & Details Page (Legacy Studio Experience) | With the shift to having course enrollment page authoring on the new Enrollment page, we will remove the necessary sections from the existing view that power the enrollment pages. The following section will be removed from Schedule and Details page.
|
Course Metadata API | Ensure that the updated metadata for the course is accessible to the mobile application, confirm the plans from 2U on Studio modernization to see how this API work (and all of Stage 1) overlaps with existing plans Ability to cache catalog metadata is helpful for native catalog discovery, so being able to understand whether catalog data is current or stale will be a helpful addition to this API as well. |
Stage 2 - Updated Course Enrollment Template in edX-platform | |
Course Enrollment Page Template | New enrollment page template out of the box for edx-platform that is mobile friendly for courses. The template is organized currently into the following sections noted below. Italicized items are only shown if configured / enabled / provided by the author.
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Stage 3 - Mobile Catalog Discovery Browse Screens | |
Mobile Catalog Browse - No Subjects - Native |
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Subject Views & Workflow |
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Program Visibility | The addition of a new program card / section in catalog discovery to support an initial version of program visibility on mobile. |
Mobile Catalog Browse - Web | This addition would take the existing edx-platform UI for card rendering and allow this to be a chromeless view, embedded in the mobile app discovery tabs. (TBD on whether we want to support this over simply pushing for the native solution as the primary option). |
Stage 4 - Mobile Catalog Discovery Search Screens | |
Mobile Catalog Search Results View - Web | The ability to reference another discovery web view for catalog search on the mobile application, with the out of the box experience pointing to the existing edx-platform search feature |
Mobile Catalog Search Results View - Native | Native mobile search results page that can work for both server dependent search as well as quick offline-friendly search for small catalogs via offline catalog caching. |
Feature behavior
X
Technical Open Questions
We anticipate the following to some of the key questions that we will need answered during technical discovery.
Does the existing courses and programs information in edx-platform constitute a mobile friendly API to pull enrollment page information?
Open Tasks
Successful Rollout: UI Considerations
We believe there is some risk in … We believe that organizations will need time to …. Therefore, we want to be conscious about how ….
We are proposing the following to help drive adoption:
New User Product Tour: X
Product & UX/UI FAQ
The following represent our Product view of key questions. However, we look to the UX/UI and technical teams to validate these as needed.
Q: How ..
A:
Q: Can a ..
A:
Q: What kind of user experience for …
A:
Q: Is it possible to..
A:
Q: Will we …
A:
Q: How will ..
A:
Q: Decision on ..
A:
Future Direction
The following features are not part of the MVP but may be added during future development of this product. They are offered here only for consideration as MVP platform decisions are made that may impact future opportunities.
YYYY:
X
YYYY:
X
YYYY:
X
UI Examples
…
Original Roadmap Entry Notes
Course Enrollment Pages
Modernize template for courses + program discovery pages (mobile + mobile web)
Option to show course outline + section learning objectives on mobile enrollment pages
Direct enrollment button into course mode view
Recent / Popular Searches
Pre-Login Search and Discovery - Enable catalog search and discovery prior to account creation to improve new learner experiences
Program Catalog Discovery
Native fully offline catalog discovery