Ability to Visually Enable Course XBlocks

[marcotuts]

Abstract

Visually enabling course blocks should dramatically increase the visibility of existing blocks already enabled at the site level. We hope this work helps encourage the usage of a wider range of existing Xblocks, and encourages instances to explore and enable more Xbocks already in existence. Advanced XBlock JSON configuration in the Advanced Settings pace would be deprecated in favor of a new Content Blocks module in the Pages & Resources view in Studio, building on the Course Authoring MFE and Paragon.

Detailed Product Proposal

https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/COMM/pages/4325900293/Ability+to+Visually+Enable+Course+XBlocks

Context & Background (in brief, if a Product Proposal is linked above)

It has been too many years that we have asked course educators to use JSON configuration entry for enabling content blocks in the course, and we can do better using Paragon and the newer course authoring MFE.

We would like to surface existing platform flexibility and configuration power (Xblocks! existing ones! ) even as we look toward larger projects that expand our ability to extend the platform.

Scope & Approach (in brief, if a Product Proposal is linked above)

The team at Schema has only just started scope and approach discovery review based on discussion from the Open edX 2024 Conference regarding Xblocks + Flexibility / Configuration themes in State of Open edX keynote.

We are interested in collaborating with the community on next steps for this project, including product and design definition, as well as eventually potential sequencing & funding options.

A new Content Blocks view in the Course Authoring MFE within the Pages & Resources area could be an location to visually summarize content blocks in the course. This wouldmake visible in a course all site level configured xblocks, and be a smaller initial increment toward a future xblock directory.

As a result of this work we would ideally be able to remove the Advanced Module List area in Advanced settings and mark that setting field deprecated.

If we wanted to make the content blocks page action of enabling a block also add the JSON value to this hidden advanced setting field we could do that as well if that helps with migration / portability in the medium term.

Value & Impact (in brief, if a Product Proposal is linked above)

We should be able to remove the painful experience of configuring xblocks through a JSON block in advanced settings, and recognize that course educators deserve to spent time in an easy to use authoring environment not an administrator like tool experience.

We hope this encourages broader review and use of existing XBlocks and encourages educators to explore other blocks already enabled at the instance level that they may not know exist because of the advanced settigns configuration pre-requisite to seeing these blocks on Unit pages.

Milestones and/or Epics

While no milestones exist for this, some quick sketches are included in Confluence as a quick timeboxed exercise. :)

Named Release

S

Timeline (in brief, if a Product Proposal is linked above)

TBD, depends on community feedback and product review

Proposed By

Schema

Additional Info

No response

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[marcotuts]

Note - it came up in conversation that it would be helpful to consider recent work exploring LTI block exploration and simplified configuration at the course level.

We will try to find that work and consider similar patterns in the UX work but if anyone sees this and has pointers to files or docs about this let us know!