[Proposal] Timeline XBlock
See Github ticket. Please provide feedback before Jan 9, 2026.
TL;DR Summary
Many subjects have an element of history to their instruction. There is no current tool for displaying timelines of events. We plan to introduce an official, optionally enabled timeline block.
Problem
Many, and perhaps most subjects, have an element of history to them. Understanding how a discipline has been founded, or the chronological distance between important historical events, gives a clearer picture of both the trajectory of a subject and the context in which its critical founding events emerged. A listing of dates can be dry and give little understanding of the human effort required over history.
There is, as yet, no good tool for displaying a timeline of events available to the Open edX platform, aside from custom developed HTML.
Use Cases
As an instructor, I want to impress upon my learners the order of historical events so that they can gain greater context into a subject’s development.
As an instructor, I want to mark certain timeline events as milestones, so that learners can focus on what matters most.
As a learner, I want to know when things occurred relative to each other so I can better remember them.
As a learner, I want to expand the details of specific timeline items, so that I can get more context about an event.
Proposed Solution
Visual interactive timelines make understanding chronology much more intuitive. Anchoring historical events to a spatial analogue brings clarity to numbers which are normally abstract.
We (OpenCraft) propose the contribution of an XBlock for timeline creation. This block will allow authors to add an arbitrary number of historical events that learners can then browse through.
The authoring experience starts by asking the author to set some basic information:
Hitting Continue allows the author to set some styling options to apply to events in the timeline:
…scrolling further shows additional styling options to apply to milestones on the timeline:
After styling, the author can add and remove specific events on the timeline:
Scrolling down the fields on the timeline event shows:
The resulting timeline can then be visited in the LMS. Milestone events are highlighted, with other events marked in more muted (by default) tones:
Long-term ownership and maintenance plans
We anticipate that several teams will need this functionality, and core contributors from OpenCraft will be actively involved in its development. These contributors will continue to assist with maintenance. If needed, one or more point persons can be designated as the primary contact for this code after its release.
Contact Person
Fox Piacenti (fox at opencraft.com )
Other Approaches Considered
It is possible to create similar timelines using custom HTML. However, these are difficult to maintain and require expertise most authors do not possess.
Authors could also use a dry table of dates and information. However, this does not give (as much) a sense of scale or chronologically relative gaps between events.
Another alternative would be to embed H5P content. However, this creates additional problems with maintenance, consistency with the user experience, and control.
Competitive Research
Neither Moodle nor Canvas has built-in support for timelines. Open edX would be leading here by having them first.
Open Questions About Rollout or Releases
None, at present.