TL;DR

The Open edX platform needs a robust, user-friendly notifications system. Adopting the notifications feature developed by 2U would provide a strong foundation. As such, the first phase of the project will focus on achieving feature parity with the existing implementation (Ulmo release), with the addition of a notifications tray in the Studio banner (Verawood release).

Problem

Learners, instructors, and course staff often miss important course activity such as discussion replies, grading updates, and instructor announcements as there is no in-context notifications feature in the platform. Without a centralized notifications delivery mechanism, important information may be missed or overlooked.

Overview

The 2U Notifications feature that exists on edx.org provides timely updates about course activity through two main channels: an in-app notification tray and email. The tray, accessible via a bell icon, displays unread counts and organizes updates into tabs for discussions, grading, and course updates. Email notifications can be delivered immediately or as daily or weekly summaries, each including unsubscribe options for user control.

Users manage their preferences in a centralized Preferences Center, where they can toggle tray or email delivery on or off and set the cadence of email updates. By default, high-value notifications such as replies, endorsements, instructor posts, and course updates are enabled, while high-volume notifications such as all new discussion posts are disabled to avoid overload. Some notifications are restricted to specific roles: for example, grading tasks are visible only to staff, while reported content notifications are limited to users with moderation privileges.

To reduce clutter, high-volume notifications such as new posts or ORA submissions are grouped together, with notification text and links updated to reflect multiple related activities. Notifications automatically expire after sixty days to preserve storage, and event tracking is in place to monitor creation, reading, preference changes, and unsubscribes. Finally, the system is designed to be extensible, with feature flags controlling rollout and support for adding new notification types.

Approach

The Community will approach the addition of a notifications feature to the Open edX platform in an incremental manner. The first step will be to implement the 2U notifications feature as is, making only the necessary adjustments. Once that’s in place, we will monitor usage of the feature, and ask our users for their feedback. Based on these insights, we will explore improvements and extensions to make the feature even more valuable for course teams and learners.

UX/UI Approach

• Collect feedback from users once the notifications tray has been added to the LMS and Studio

• Explore ways to improve the user experience

• Gather insights of potential additions or extensions to the feature

Phases

1. Add the 2U Notifications Feature to the LMS and Studio

2. Conduct user interviews and usability testing

3. Determine how to improve or extend the feature

4. etc…

Usability Testing

Usability testing will take place at key stages throughout the implementation. Feedback will be gathered, reviewed, and shared with the Community, and any necessary adjustments will be made to enhance the feature based on those insights.

Competitive Research

Notifications in other learning platforms:

• Canvas

  • Although Canvas has a number of tools for instructor-to-learner communication, it doesn't seem to offer platform-to-instructor notifications within the admin interface.

• Moodle

  • Moodle has various tools for instructor-to-learner communication, but doesn't appear to have platform-to-instructor messaging within the admin interface.

• Coursera

  • Although Coursera offers a few tools for instructor-to-learner communication, it doesn't seem to provide platform-to-instructor communication within the admin interface.

Other notification examples:

• WordPress

  • WordPress displays a newsfeed on the homepage dashboard.

  • Notification Master (WordPress plugin)

• Mailchimp’s Campaign Builder

• Slack, Mattermost

• Pushwoosh

• Oracle Cloud Service Notifications Administration

• Further examples to be researched during the design phase (Jira / Confluence / forums / e-commerce notifications)

Implementation Plan

• OpenCraft to implement the 2U Notifications Feature as is with only the required adjustments for the Ulmo release

• Notifications Tray to be added to the Studio header for the Verawoord release

• Future phases TBD

Long-term Ownership/Maintainership

TBD. Once the proposal is approved and resourced, we’ll determine who will be responsible for the ownership and long-term maintainership of the features outlined in this proposal.