The marketing group is currently working on optimizing and expanding the openedx.org website and its content. In the course of the discussions, we realized we are providing a lot of information that concerns the platform core, but only a few that go beyond that. For example, the extensions and plugins that are available for Open edX.
We would like to encourage the discussion if it makes sense to provide a list of all available 3rd party tools, extensions and plugins which are compatible with Open edX.
Therefore, we should collect the existing tools to get a first overview. Here we have prepared a document in which tools can be listed: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18WZccVuSxgR7addSn29Q5TPygEPQ79jASmGcAkq-3sI/edit#gid=819032388
(Please avoid duplications.)
Afterwards we want to discuss where on the website it makes sense to publish this list, etc.
I notice that the spreadsheet speaks very broadly about services like Zoom without touching the specifics about how one integrates with the service, e.g., LTI, Xblock, something else. I also suspect that for a number of these services we will have more than one community or edX implementation. How should that data be captured?
We have added a column with its. We hope to collect now more values about the extensions in general. This will be made the process on how to use the feedback easier. Thank you for your improvement.
This is an awesome initiative but I want to make sure that LTI integrations are properly captured and noted where possible.
The reason for this is that essentially services like Zoom aren’t actively supporting their integration with Open edX specifically as far as I’m aware, they’re just ensuring LTI works. Notionally, any service that supports LTI integration should work with Open edX in some way, but frequently it requires providers to do some weird work to actually make it work with the LTI consumer XBlock in Open edX.
The reason I’m being picky here is there’s a frankly insane amount of tools online that sport an LTI integration, to the point where there are many catalogs out there that barely scratch the surface, which could overwhelm any true integrations on the list (i.e. ones where the software is specifically integrated with Open edX, which tend to be much higher value). Similarly there are XBlocks that simplify the LTI consumer process for course staff, but are at their core “just” LTI integrations wrapped in a separate XBlock. Sneaky LTI XBlocks.
If something changes about the way a provider integrates with LTI, it can be problematic resolving that if other LMSes they care about more don’t have the same problem. Open edX is a bit of a snowflake when it comes to how LTI works on a per-course basis.
Ideally we could just say “It’s compatible as an LTI consumer, go nuts with thousands of LTI tools!” but that’s almost never the case.
TL;DR - I would strongly recommend splitting LTI integrations from native integrations and extensions in an extremely clear way, because despite using a standard they’re more inherently fragile due to the likely lack of specific commitment from the provider to support Open edX. They support the standard, not us.
Thanks, you make some really good points. We want LTI in the plugin catalog, because it’s a rich world of tools for the people looking for extensions. But we’d like to be sure to surface the truly well-integrated.
I’ve never seen this page before, a collection of Analytic Tools to use with Open edX. We really have a big ecosystem and we should try to bring information on one page and update the details: