I’m starting an e-learning exercise. I have experience in content creation and story-telling, but not content/story translation to e-learning platforms. Thus, I am trying to understand what can be done on Open edX.
Here’s a maximal example of what I’d like:
gamified maths: show points in R^2 (disguised as icons, possibly with animated overlays), allow placement of lines, drawing of curves, calculation of ‘scores’ based on their placement.
token collection (e.g. based on success in curve placement…)
LLM integration: to allow learner to ask questions along the way.
stable diffusion integration: spend tokens to improve avatar.
social elements (chat with other learners, share, upvote avatars).
multiple skins (e.g. different icon sets, animation overlays).
LMS tools like exercises, assessments, etc.
For items 1-5, the natural platform seems to be a game engine (e.g. Unity3D, Unreal Engine)? With no experience here, I don’t know whether it makes sense to develop exclusively in the game engine, use the game engine to export contents to Open edX…
For starters, you are certainly trying to push the platform and most of what you are looking for is not native capabilities of Open edX (or any LMS that I’m aware of).
But let’s answer them and start with the easy one: #7) The good news is you are covered here! Open edX has all of this natively, as any good LMS does.
I find it a little cheaper and simpler to work with than Unity or Unreal, but I think all could work.
Once you’ve built the game, you’ll need to integrate it with the Open edX platform. Open edX has the ability to execute and save scores for Javascript games, which is how the example I shared above is integrated. But there are limitations there around what can be shared from exercise to exercise as the learner progresses through the course. The other option is LTI, and that seems to me like where you’d need to go. You’d basically build this game out and host it somewhere, and then use LTI to authenticate users from the LMS into your game. Your game would keep track of your tokens, skins, potentially social elements (though there are some LMS options here), and send back scores and feedback to the LMS.
Lots of people are talking about this, and I’m starting to see examples of it implemented. Edx.org now has a chatbot called Xpert that I think you can use from any course at edx.org. That feature is not available to Open edX, though. @Dean with ABC Courses has developed a ChatGPT x-block that I haven’t had a chance to try yet: Meet the ChatGPT XBlock for the Open edX® LMS
Raccoon Gang as well: AI GPT ORA.pdf - Google Drive
A challenging project, for sure, but sounds fundamentally feasible and I think the open source and flexibility of Open edX LMS will suit you well here.
