What’s on Your Open edX Wishlist?

Educators
42

@antoviaque which version of Open edX does that site run?

Edit: Actually @antoviaque could you answer in this thread? Example sites with Public Course Content setting enabled

43

In dropdown questions we cannot currently format answer options to use mathjax, HTML entities/hex codes, or formatting tags (super/subscripting). Currently, the only workaround we have (and an imperfect one at that!) is to find the symbol elsewhere, copy, and paste. It would be great to have more control over the appearance of these options!

44

To add a thought here, there has been a long-standing request at MIT to just export a section as an HTML page so that someone could view something without having to go login to the course. A use case is you want to tell another instructor about an interesting assignment or demo in your course. Enrolling is limited for those outside of your organization and a hurdle to seeing something quickly if they can enroll. So the scale of an export is even per page of course content or unit.

1 Like
45

Related to ORA (not sure if already said elsewhere), is that students who don’t click submit when writing out an ORA, lose the data when an exam ends. It isn’t in the system to grade, and instructors do go to lengths to try to find those saved answers or give a student another try at MIT. Please just autosubmit whatever is there when an exam ends if no submission too place yet. Or another way to think about it is to let the saved version appear as the version to grade if no submit was clicked.

46

It took a while to think about what is worth proposing given the range from minor to major, but given the recent MIT Digital Learning Lab conversations, here is an ask for a more significant change in how the platform functions. Specifically around the grading policy being more inclusive and less focused on the term grade that goes beyond Colin’s notes. The platform directs instructors to design and learners to earn points on assessments to get a score. Ideally, we want to encourage people to learn out of curiosity and activate motivation that goes beyond a score (grade). We think a path in this direction is the following,

We accomplish the shift toward learning and less focus on a grade by revising the Open edX grading policy to:

  • include counting the completion of other course activities (discussion forum posting, video watching, etc.)
  • allow instructors to select and weigh relevant activities for multiple learner tracks (more options for the auditor group to achieve some learning goal)
  • provide mechanisms to celebrate relevant learner achievements throughout the course
  • rename grading policy (we have an idea on a name if we get more buy-in on the concept)
1 Like
47

Thank, interesting. Other coursetools also offer the option to download a full course or module to the local computer, in such a format that the person can follow course content without an internet connection, handy for users in low internet reach areas.

48

Is there any documentation on enabling the CC Export? I only see a small mention of CC on the Teak release notes Smaller Changes (Potpourri) — Latest documentation and talks about importing CC into Open edX, and not getting a CC export file that we can use to share with others for use in other platforms.

Thanks!
Tom

49

@misilot check out the release note: Smaller Changes (Potpourri) — Latest documentation

As mentioned by @jmakowski above:

a project to support the importing of common cartridge files onto Open edX, and improvements to the cc-olx pipeline. The use case was that potential clients were looking to move off of other LMS platforms and onto Open edX, and they needed an easy way to migrate their courses off other platforms onto Open edX. We do not currently have exporting on the roadmap (moving olx files off the platform and converting them to common cartridge).

50

Ok thanks! I guess I was excited when it was stated that a CC export functionality was shipping with Teak, and that the CC import improvements were coming at a later date from the roadmap.

For Teak, we are shipping CC Export. There are roadmap items for CC Import that need to be worked on

51

I apologize, I misspoke in my post. Jenna’s post is accurate.

52

:rocket: New Feature Requests Forum Category is Live!

Thanks to everyone who shared ideas on how best to collect and organize feature requests — we’ve now added a dedicated category for them on the forum! :tada:

This post explains how to submit and discuss feature ideas. Please share it widely, and let’s get conversations going across different groups in the community!

2 Likes
53

@danbrac @abylaikhan.suev.02 @rploggen @Anh_Vu_Nguy_n @colin.fredericks @egordon @dggordon @MITxOnlineInstructor @misilot

Thanks so much for all the great ideas you’ve shared in this thread!

I know it’s a bit of a hassle, but it would be really helpful if you could repost your ideas following the process outlined in this post. Now that we have a dedicated category and clearer process, it should be much easier for everyone to share, discuss, and build momentum around feature requests.

2 Likes
54

really appreciate the new Feature Requests category… makes it much easier to track what’s being discussed across different use cases. One thing we’d love to see down the line is more flexibility around content export/import formats. Sounds like there’s movement on CC export already (which is great!), but consistent progress on import would really round things out for those managing content across instances or ecosystems..

Thanks to everyone contributing ideas - really great to see the platform evolving with community input.

1 Like
55

@scrapeops there’s been a lot of confusion because I misspoke in a previous post, which I’ve tried to edit. In Teak we shipped CC IMPORT ( Smaller Changes (Potpourri) — Latest documentation ):

The Common Cartridge standard is now better integrated into the Open edX platform. This makes it easier to migrate learning content created using Common Cartridge into the Open edX olx format. This initiative includes enhancing the existing cc2olx converter to improve its reliability and efficiency in translating .imscc files into .tar.gz formats for import onto the Open edX platform.

For more detail, see the cc2olx documentation.

1 Like
56

I have kept a running list of things I wish existed: some are small tweaks for quality-of-life improvements; others involve more fundamental changes to the philosophy of the platform. I’ll just dump all of them here — sorry if it is all over the place! Also, I suspect that many these issues only arise due to my educator perspectives, and may already have solutions that I don’t know/understand because of my lack of knowledge of how the backend of the platform works.

  1. I wish there is more flexibility with how we can use MathJax equations in xblocks. Right now, any MathJax equation is rendered as an SVG image after the xblock is loaded. This means it is not possible to dynamically change the content of typical MathJax equations using Javascript, nor is it possible to insert new MathJax equations using Javascript via DOM manipulation. Also, I don’t know how to adjust MathJax configurations inside an xblock or even inside a course, since those settings appear to be set at the platform level. Unrelatedly, at some point in the past few years, something was changed about how MathJax equations are displayed that MathJax equations in certain HTML tables would be weirdly formatted with unnatural line breaks inside each MathJax equation, which might have something to do with how Open edX determines the width of the SVG for a MathJax equation.

  2. I wish there is more consistency/clarity/convenience for doing DOM manipulation javascript as well as CSS styling. At some point over the past year, something changed about how/when the solutions to problem components are loaded when a page is loaded, such that the typical Javascript EventListener that modifies content after a page loads would no longer work for content inside solutions, and a custom observer has to be set up instead to carry out those dynamic modifications. Relatedly, the CSS selectors for HTML elements in xblocks seem unintuitive; it appears that any CSS selector (in a linked CSS file) needs to begin with the parent #main to work, but I’m not sure exact why or if this is correct.

  3. I wish the exact same xblock can be reused (rather than simply duplicated) in multiple places in the same course (or even in the same vertical). An example could be a simple raw HTML component written up as an .xml file put inside the html folder (which could include a simple message that commonly show up in the course), say my_message.xml, that could then added to multiple places in the course with the exact same url_name (i.e., not as duplicates/copies of the same xblock), i.e.,

    An even bolder ask would be to summon any content at any level of granularity, i.e., an entire vertical, anywhere and repeatedly in the course, i.e., where reusing url_name is allowed (which would however create a new problem of linking content internally in the course when using jump_to_id). Anyway, I hope this is the general direction we are heading toward with the content library idea, and the detailed design choices will take these considerations into account.

  4. I wish course organization/hierarchy can be more flexible/forgiving. At some point in the past few years, something was changed about chapters so that they can no longer be empty. This overlooked the fact that sometimes we create an empty chapter to make the course homepage appear more intuitive/readable given the specific way we structure the course. This is also an example showing how even changes that seem small and innocent may have unintended consequences on content that was already created under different assumptions of how things worked.

  5. I wish the discussion feature can mimic the good design choices of other modern educational discussion tools such as Piazza. Most importantly, I wish instructors and TAs could sign up for email digests of forum activities, with the ability to customize. For courses that are broken into closely related modules (each presented as a separate Open edX course), there are also opportunities to link the discussion forums of those modules, e.g., receive unified email digests for the discussion forums of nine modules that are really one course. There are other similar opportunities for rethinking what a “course” means, especially as Open edX continues the exploration of handling granular content.

  6. My biggest wish is for any piece of Open edX content (at any granularity, but let’s say an xblock or a vertical to begin with) to be easily embedded anywhere on the web, rather than just living inside the Open edX LMS. Basically, right now, there is no way to say “check out this Open edX problem I made and try it out here“ like how we say “check out this YouTube video” or “check out this code snippet example”! As a basic illustrative example, imagine a single Open edX problem component (hosted on some server somewhere, possibly associated with an actual course/LMS or not) that I can simply add to my personal website, or another LMS (not via a naive iframe, but as an actual HTML component). There should be an option for the problem and the grader to work even without log in, in which case no progress needs to be stored by default (or we utilize cookies, but frankly that is not the point; another option is to always give users the option to log in, and then progress is stored in association with a specific problem, not just in the context of the course it is in or the page it is on). Each piece of Open edX content should have (or be able to acquire) a DOI and a permanent URL for easy sharing, remixing, and citation. There are tremendous opportunities to propel Open edX–type assessments to the forefront of online education if this is done right since online assessments are arguably the most important and the most difficult to get right in online education, and Open edX already has a lot to offer. Assessments and other Open edX components themselves have great value even outside of the context of a “course” or merely as building blocks in the Open edX LMS. The barrier for conventional educators (think the typical university instructor) to create Open edX–style content would be lowered dramatically: it is hard to convince an educator unfamiliar with Open edX to make a full course; it is much easier to convince them to implement one trial set of open edX–style assessments, especially once they hear about the patent pedagogical benefits of these assessments over many traditional problems in conventional instruction. Moving in this direction also makes an important statement that teaching and learning should be more than running and taking a “course”; asynchronous, non-cohort-based learning resources also have their place in modern online education (think: the modern answer to textbooks, which are decidedly different from a “course” in its design intentions but undoubtedly useful for learning).

2 Likes
57

@joey.gu Thanks for sharing your detailed thoughts and wishlist — there are a lot of interesting ideas here!

Would you mind reposting your ideas following the process described here? That way, each idea can be tracked and discussed separately, and you might also discover if some of your pain points already have solutions or workarounds. Sorry about the additional admin; I should’ve asked for this thread to be closed to prevent any confusion.

@sarina If we close this thread, will people still be able to access it to view their own or others’ ideas?

58

@ali_hugo sure, I’ll lock this thread at this point. I see the solution to the thread directs people to post in this category: About the Feature Requests category if they’d like to share more ideas.

1 Like