Updated versions of Open edX Software: Maple and Nutmeg - Open edX (2023)

Open edX MapleyOpen edX Nutmegbring exciting features to provide an online learning experience with more details on course dates, tracks and tutorials. Additionally, it introduces changes to Tutor, focus on Open edX events and filters, and some security updates. Olive, the latest version of the Open edX software, was released last week, and additional content will follow, updating you on new integrated features. You will learn more about Olive at the next Open edX Meetup scheduled for 26/01/2023 at 10:00 a.m. ET. (EDT). The registration link for this free virtual event will be posted on ourEvent calendar, in the next week.

This blog will tell you about some of the latest additions to Maple and Nutmeg that are sure to come in handy as you navigate the platform and build online courses. As usual, changes and improvements are organized by the experience it provides to the type of user using the platform: students, instructors, administrators, operators and developers. So let's take a look at what these latest versions have to offer!

Instructor experiences

No MFE: Standard pages and grading policies

The standard course pages now have a standardized order to ensure consistency across all courses on the platform. However, instructors can create new custom tabs and arrange them according to their preferences.

In addition, course authors will be able to set the new grading policies to set a minimum grade limit of 99 (previously it could not be higher than 97).

Course creation Import messages and validation

Although many course teams do not typically use this course import, instructors cannot proceed with course creation when it fails. In previous versions, occasional problems could occur when importing a new version of your course through Studio. The error messages did not easily identify the error and made the process more tedious as an administrator was needed to help solve the problem. Instructors will now see specific error messages in the Studio course import area. For developers, these errors are logged and can be exported to New Relic, Splunk, etc.

to. upload error

• File fragment lost during upload– When a course import file (tar.gz) exceeds 20 MB, it is split equally and uploaded to the server. Due to our server configuration, it is possible that a part is missing, which can cause the course import to fail during merge on the server.
• The file fragment could not be loaded Error– This error occurs when a file fragment is lost during the upload process. Due to this the file gets corrupted and cannot be processed.
• incompatible fil– Occurs if a user accidentally tries to upload an incompatible file. This verification is also found in the interface.

b. Unpacking error

• Invalid user -Triggered if the specified user_id does not exist.
• Access denied -This error occurs if the user does not have the necessary permissions to import the course.
• Incompatible fil –Appears if the file to extract is not in tar.gz format. This check verifies that the extraction process will not run if the file is not in a valid format.
• File not found -If the uploaded file is not available in the box or it was deleted, the error will be displayed.
• Insecure tar file –This is a system-level error that occurs when the tarball tries to extract to the root where you don't have permissions.
• Unknown exception -There may be unknown events that occur during the course import, for them more information will be recorded in the system logs, but there is no clear and user-friendly error.

c.Check step

• Check the root name:The root name for a course import is course.xml and for a library it is library.xml. If this file does not exist, this error is thrown.

d. Update failure

Errors may occur after XML validation and during data updates in the course.

• Could not parse active XML -Error parsing assets.xml
• ID of duplicate course:Cancels the import because a course with this ID already exists.
• Module import error:A course module was not imported correctly.
• Monitoring provider error:This error is generated when a Courserun.xml file contains a Proctoring_Providere.g attribute. Proctoring_Provider = "proctortrack" and this provider is not available/enabled on the server.

Open - response ratings

reusable rubrics

In course creation, it is now possible to reuse an existing Open Response Assessment (ORA) rubric in a course when creating a new ORA in the same course. Using a block ID, you can now specify which ORA rubric you want to clone to another ORA within the same course.

How to do this is very simple:

1. In Studio, go toRubricand select the category you wantclone. This is in the edit method section for published and unpublished ORAs.
2. chooseclone headerand copy the block ID for that ORA.
3. Then proceed to create a new ORA or navigate to an existing ORA.
4. Open the category section inedit modal.
5. To takethe complete block IS of the ORA that you want to clone. EITHER,
6. Enter a few characters of that block ID and select it from the drop-down menu.
7. Select Clone when the correct block ID is selected. All existing rubric values ​​will be replaced by the original ORA rubric values.

With the new updates, students can also submit comments with an extended character limit to 1k characters, add a new button to edit an ORA in Studio, and submit full-width comments.

Xblocks: Compatibility with LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage

lti-consumer-xblock (also known as xblock-lti-consumer) has been updated to support LTI 1.3 as well as the Deep Linking (LTI-DL) and Assignment and Grading Services (LTI-AGS) features of LTI Advantage. These features are now enabled by default. Information on configuring lti-consumer-xblock can be foundher.

New X blocks

• Xblock – imagen – modal:The full screen image tool is another way to allow participants to see more detail in the accompanying images. This tool is useful for large images with a lot of detail. A resized image appears on the page, but clicking the image opens a full-screen modal with the full-sized version of the image.
• Xblock-in-video-test:This XBlock allows edX components to be shown to users in videos at specific times.
• Xblock-lti consumer:This XBlock implements the consumer side of the LTI specification, allowing the integration of third-party LTI provider tools.
• Use:This is a video collaboration solution that turns static, one-way Stream/VOD video into an active, interactive group experience where participants contribute, share and learn together. Users can lean forward and become participants and not just passive, solitary viewers, making all users actively engage and return to video content, share more ideas and create more meaningful content. These interactive group experiences result in higher engagement and retention rates and are supported by comprehensive insights and analytics that facilitate dramatic improvements in content, communication and measurable results.

• PDF:Course component (Open edX XBlock) that provides an easy way to embed a PDF.
• XBlock-diagram:This XBlock provides a new XBlock for content authors that allows them to implement graphics in their course without much effort and with a user interface to make the task as simple as possible.

Currently, the charts provided are area, column, column, pie, line, and dot charts. Charts are populated from a table that is easily configured by the user and can contain values ​​or sets, depending on the chart type.

The chart display itself is powered by Google Charts, done in the colorful style of Material Design.

• SCORM X blok:This is an XBlock for displaying SCORM content in Open edX LMS and Studio. It will save student status and report results on the course progress tab. It is currently compliant with the SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 standards.

New X blocks

• vector drawing:To do vector drawing exercises.
• Blok X H5P:H5P XBlock provides the ability to host and play H5P content on the open edX platform. It has a few more features such as: the ability to mark H5P content as complete in the Open edX platform, the ability to capture H5P content scores in the Open edX environment, save student status that can be retrieved later, and the ability to host H5P -content on cloud storage such as AWS S3.

• Webhook – XBlock:This repository provides an X-Block that triggers a webhook by sending a payload with basic information about the course and student to a configurable URL.

XBlock can be configured in three modes:

– Send the payload each time the user visits the course entity.

– Only send the payload the first time the user visits the course entity (default mode).

– Allow the student to submit the application by clicking a button.

with MFE

Finally, Gradebook MFE (micro frontend) support was added, including custom themes and supported translations in right-to-left languages ​​such as Arabic or Hebrew.

Administrators

No MFE – Password Complexity

There are new complexity requirements for passwords that are PCI compliant. For more information,look at this.

• It is now possible to add optional fields to the registration form that are always visible and do not require the user to click the "Support educational research by providing additional information" checkbox. Use the new optional exposure settings inREGISTRATION_EXTRA_FIELDSsetting.
• Added an opt-in checkbox to the registration form (checked by default) to allow the user to opt-in to receive marketing communications. Marketing_emails_opt_in field is now enabled by default iRE.

Bulk Course Email Tool

First of all, the ability to filter the recipients of mass mailings was added to segment according to the purpose of the communication. This feature can be enabled by setting a value for the BULK_COURSE_EMAIL_LAST_LOGIN_ELIGIBILITY_PERIOD setting. Its value must be an integer (representing months) that represents the eligibility period from the current date to receive a message. Similarly, a simple course table bulk_email_disabled has been added that allows you to disable the bulk email tool for specific course runs so that they will not be able to see the bulk email tab on the instructor dashboard.

On the other hand, it is now possible to send emails with the user ID instead of the email address. The setting EMAIL_USE_DEFAULT_FROM_FOR_BULK was changed to EMAIL_USE_COURSE_ID_FROM_FOR_BULK. Previously, it was possible for a "from" address created from a course ID to not exist and fail. Now those who wish can do so by setting the flag to true.

learning experiences

Med MFE – User Tours

These are user guides whose purpose is to demonstrate to students the sections that they need to take into account in the platform to complete their courses.

By default, there are three designed tours:

• "Of course start tour for new users"
• "Course start existing user journey"
• "Guided tour for new Courseware users"

Dates tab

Its purpose is to allow the student to anticipate and focus on the most relevant moments of their academic journey. There, students can see the general structure of the course with its most important dates, such as the exam day, assignment submissions and the end of the education.

weekly course goals

This update aims to contribute to student success through the ability to plan and have clarity about their expected performance. Students can also sign up for weekly emails containing this information.

To use it, on the right side of the course website, there is a widget that allows you to select a weekly learning objective.

The course course page

The course progress page has been revamped and now provides students with a visual understanding of their progress through the content, with split and cumulative grades, an overview of their performance on different types of assignments, and additional links to support course development.

Special exams

Proctored exams are also possible in Nutmeg, but now the student must be registered for the course. Identity verification (IDV) is not required for this.

developer experiences

SINGLE

Maple and Nutmeg added support for customxBlock-editorer i Studio, an API to update the user's email subscription settings, and a new feature in Django plugins to return the context to the instructor dashboard template.

dependency updates

• Django 3.2We updated Django to version 3.2, the next LTS (long-term support) release. More details are availableher.
• ElasticSearch 7.10Actualizamos todos los IDA with ElasticSearch (edx-platform, Blockstore, discovery, notes, analytics-api, cs-c comments-service) and ElasticSearch 7.10.
• Mongo 4.2MongoDB version 4.0 ends in April 2022. We upgraded all IDAs using Mongo 4.0 (edx platform, cs comments) to Mongo version 4.2. More detailsher.
• core extensibility: We added a new way to extend the core via Open edX Events & Filters.You can check here.
• edX open events: which allows you to extend the functionality by listening to the event that is dispatched after a key process has completed, e.g. after registration, login, registration etc.
• open edX filters: It is possible to set a list of functions to be performed before a key process starts, e.g. before registration, login, login, registration etc.

outdated tools

Each update brings new tools and also removes tools that no longer provide the right benefits. Here are the tools that will be removed with this update:

LEARN:a tool for creating short interactive tutorials (called "explorations") that attempt to simulate a conversation with a human tutor. This functionality could be replaced by an H5P tool that includes various interactive ways of displaying content.

Involve

Let's keep working together for the future of education! Sponsor the Open edX Conference to help support our ongoing research initiatives in online education:https://con.openedx.org/

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