Need better ways to get feedback?

[antoviaque]

Recently several initiatives have expressed difficulty in getting feedback/reactions from the core community:

• @mariajgrimaldi in the last retrospective: _"I’m gathering data using a form to improve developers’ experience with the Hooks extension framework, but I’m having trouble getting people to fill it out. If you, or any of your team members used the framework, please share it, or fill out the form and help us improve!"_
• @ali-hugo @cassiezamparini with the core contributors survey

Do we need better ways to reach out to our core community? Establish better rituals/process to allow us to collect it?

Ticket created based on the May 24th retrospective

[mariajgrimaldi]

Thank you for creating this. As far as I'm aware, there's no process for getting feedback from the community on contributions, only for edx-platform with the post-merge survey. I regret not thinking about this earlier. That might be why I'm not getting enough participation because a lot of time has passed since people's contributions. So I wonder:

• Is the post-merge survey useful for getting feedback in edx-platform?
• Should we implement a similar mechanism for other repos? But on a smaller scale.
• Where is the best place to post a feedback survey to maximize visibility?

[cassiezamparini]

@jmakowski1123 and @crathbun428

To your knowledge, do we have any way of getting feedback from the community on their contributions? Is this tracked in any way?

@ehuthmacher perhaps the Marketing Working Group has better ways to reach out to our core community for feedback? Or perhaps you have user data that can inform how the community contributions are "performing"? Any tips would be wonderful.

cc. @mariajgrimaldi @antoviaque

[ehuthmacher]

@cassiezamparini Thank you for following up on this. The Marketing WG has proposed to leverage a SF integration called IdeaExchange to gather detailed metrics around the community contribution process and to ensure that critical stakeholders' ideas are accurately reflected as part of our roadmap priorities.

The Marketing WG has also leveraged the conference to gather critical pain points from the community, as it relates to the contribution process and will generate a report that will be shared in discourse, as well as with the Open edX TOC for review and strategy discussions (to be posted within a week or 2).

Furthermore, the Marketing WG will integrate website & YouTube surveys, as well as external event surveys to ensure that we are capturing as much feedback from the community as possible.

[ehuthmacher]

@cassiezamparini These are my notes so far: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v2R199F9uDp6aGF-w0DJyt-tQ5fiLR3QFdyChtUXAdQ/edit

I am waiting for Stefania's and Douglas's notes and then we will compile all data into a report for a prioritization review by Axim, the TOC, and the community.

[cassiezamparini]

Amazing! Thanks @ehuthmacher. This sounds like a great initiative!

It will be great to see the resulting metrics as and when you capture them...

[ehuthmacher]

Yes, indeed @cassiezamparini ! I will keep you posted. Thank you again for checking in on this process. :)

[angonz]

Hi! Loved that SWOT analysis. I think some point should be reclassified. If you let me edit I can add some comments.

[ehuthmacher]

Great, thank you @angonz . I updated your permissions to edit the doc.

[angonz]

I have added a couple of items in green. To me, most of the threats sounded more as weaknesses.

[antoviaque]

@ehuthmacher I love that idea of using IdeaExchange! I have been wanting to see this kind of feedback gathering in Open edX for a veryyyy long time. Is there anything we can do to help?

Also, have we thought of a way to push Open edX project news to Open edX instance users? Maybe a "news counter" like this?

There could even be a different feed in the LMS and Studio -- one aimed for instructors, one for end users?

Happy to contribute work on this.

[ehuthmacher]

@antoviaque Thank you for your support! Regarding IdeaExchange, I have asked our Salesforce vendor to provide me with a quote and will then circulate it internally for approval.

I love the idea regarding the news feed. I will discuss this internally as well and get back to you, as soon as I have feedback. Many of our team members are currently on vacation, but I am hoping to have feedback for you within the next two weeks.

[ehuthmacher]

@antoviaque I have created an executive summary related to community feedback that may be relevant to the TOC specifically and emailed it to you. Please provide feedback, when you get a chance. I will follow up regarding the notification settings by the end of this week.

[ehuthmacher]

@antoviaque @cassiezamparini Regarding the roadmap voting tool, I have created this ticket on the marketing board. Kindly share your feedback there. It would be great if you are able to assist in the discovery phase. :)

[ehuthmacher]

@antoviaque for the operator news feed proposal, could you be so kind and add it as a ticket on the product roadmap? Once we have the voting tool integrated and live, people may upstream your ticket and add additional feedback. So far, people think that it is a great suggestion! :)

[antoviaque]

@ehuthmacher Just getting back from vacation - I am glad to see your enthusiasm to develop ways to collect more feedback, let's do this! : )

• Open edX News feed in Studio & LMS: For creating a ticket on the product roadmap with the product description, it's a good idea. @ali-hugo @cassiezamparini is this something you would like to help fleshing out? If you're already full with your core contributors hours I'll create the ticket, but you would do a better job :)
• Roadmap voting tool: I already see a lot of activity on this thread, which is nice! I'll follow-up the development there - happy to help if we can.

[ehuthmacher]

Great, thank you @antoviaque !

[ali-hugo]

@antoviaque I'd love to work on the Open edX News feed in Studio & LMS! My time should open up in about 2 weeks, at which stage I can create the Roadmap ticket and the related Product Proposal. I'll ping you and @ehuthmacher for your reviews before sharing it with the wider Community for feedback.

Have you thought about who would be responsible for writing the content of the updates, or is that TBD?

[cassiezamparini]

Thanks @antoviaque I'll leave this in Ali's amazing hands. I currently don't have CC capacity for the next while 😅

[ehuthmacher]

Great, thank you @ali-hugo ! Regarding the content, it is my understanding that it should be set-up as an rss feed, leveraging existing news feeds from discourse, GH, and Slack. Is my understanding correct in that regard? If so, we may want to disable comments to avoid spam and minimize moderation efforts.

[ali-hugo]

@ehuthmacher An RSS feed sounds like the right approach, and looking back at @antoviaque's comment, it looks like this is what he had in mind too (@antoviaque please correct me if I'm wrong).

...we may want to disable comments to avoid spam and minimize moderation efforts.

Good idea. I'll make a note of that in the product proposal.

I'll let you know when the proposal is ready for review.

[ehuthmacher]

Great, thank you @ali-hugo !

[antoviaque]

@ali-hugo It could use RSS as a technology yes, but it might be worth unpacking what we mean by that. If that means using RSS to retreive the news from blog.openedx.org, great. But we are also talking about integrating the news within the LMS & CMS interface as a news ticker, right? With content catering to either students for the LMS news ticker, or teachers/instance managers for Studio?

It would also be important to point to the forum for discussing individual items - the goal is to develop feedback and communication with the community through it.

[ali-hugo]

@antoviaque

With content catering to either students for the LMS news ticker, or teachers/instance managers for Studio?

100%. Users should only see the news/updates that pertain to them, and in the right context.

It would also be important to point to the forum for discussing individual items

Thanks for highlighting this. It will be an interesting UX challenge to figure out how to link users both to the news article, and to the forum (should they wish to discuss the article's contents).

But we are also talking about integrating the news within the LMS & CMS interface as a news ticker, right?

I'd like to make sure I understand what you mean by "news ticker". To me, a news ticker is a scrolling news feed that appears on the page itself. It's usually used to present time-sensitive news (like stock prices and the like). I think a better choice for our needs would a notifications drawer - a bit like the one on the wiki. Is this in line with your thinking? (I think so, based on your comment here.)

[antoviaque]

@ali-hugo Thank you! Sounds good :+1:

And for the news ticker, you have the better name :) I did mean a notifications drawer yes - now I know how this is called ;p

[ali-hugo]

Hi @antoviaque @ehuthmacher

When doing research for the notifications drawer proposal, I came across a similar proposal by the 2U team. I dug a bit more, and found out that the "notifications tray" has already been implemented on edx.org.

Although the notifications tray we are proposing for Open edX would be a bit different, I was wondering whether we could leverage some of the existing work that was done by 2U. I'm not sure how this normally works. Could we potentially use the existing design (and code) of the tray as a starting point

[antoviaque]

@ali-hugo Good find - it looks like something much broader (user notifications from LMS apps like the forum), but it might allow to do some of what we want to do here. The latest roadmap item I can find about this is https://github.com/openedx/platform-roadmap/issues/274 and this looks like the feature in the documentation? https://edx.readthedocs.io/projects/open-edx-learner-guide/en/latest/sfd_notifications/managing_notifications.html If you don't already have access to one, it might be worth getting a dev to setup a sandbox which has the feature activated for you so you can fully test it. It could be worth talking to some of the people involved on this ticket, too.

[angonz]

Hi all, Regarding the news ticker, isn't it similar to the announcements feature? Although it might be improved, it seems to me very similar to a news feed.

I came across a similar proposal by the 2U team.

This proposal is about forum notifications, which is a feature largely requested by customers (that used to be present and now we miss a lot). Although it could be implemented for the announcement or news feature, I think it has a broader scope.

[ali-hugo]

@antoviaque Thanks for sharing the documentation and Roadmap ticket about the forum notifications. I dug around a bit, and found the related product proposal. You'll see at the very bottom - in the "Next Milestones" section - there's a sentence that says:

New feature announcements: We're considering the development of an announcement system for new releases and updates within the edX platform, ensuring that all users are notified of these updates.

This sounds very similar to what we have in mind, doesn't it? If so, does it make sense to create a separate product proposal?

@angonz Thanks for sharing that information! Do you know where I could find a screenshot of the announcements feature? I looked around but didn't find anything. I'd like to understand how the announcements feature works.

[antoviaque]

@ali-hugo Thanks for digging! Yes, we need to see what we can already do with the existing feature. But given that the feature of announcements of new features is only mentioned in passing, it might not have got a lot of attention, so it will likely be worth doing an iteration on the product specs to match with what we have discussed above.

[ali-hugo]

@antoviaque Got it. I'll start by asking the CC's at OpenCraft if one of them can set up a sandbox for me. Once I have a better idea of how the feature works, I'll contact the people involved on #274 and figure out how we can flesh out the product specs together.

[ali-hugo]

@antoviaque I took a closer look through the product specs, and the feature we've been discussing is mentioned a second time in the doc:

Notification preferences will be either general or course-specific. General preferences refer to notifications about platform updates, marketing and promotional messages, progress updates etc...

This sounds like what we're looking for, and does appear to be on everyone's radar.

This is where I'm at at the moment:

• I'm trying to find out whether the notifications tray that is on edX is planned to be added to Open edX
• Jill (whose username I can't find in Github) has set up a sandbox for me with the notifications feature enabled. It's not the same as the notifications tray in the product spec linked above, but I think its goal is more or less the same. Unfortunately, we can't get notifications to show up in the sandbox, so it's difficult to know for sure
• I have asked around for a screenshot of the "Announcements Feature" that @angonz mentioned (no luck yet)

I feel like I'm going around in circles. Hopefully the way forward becomes clearer once I've managed to collect more information.

[angonz]

Hi @ali-hugo! Sorry for the late reply.

@angonz Thanks for sharing that information! Do you know where I could find a screenshot of the announcements feature? I looked around but didn't find anything. I'd like to understand how the announcements feature works.

It is in the maintenance application. You can test it in the Studio sandbox.

Here are a couple of screenshots:

It used to work In the old, html, learner dashboard. It was right bellow the search box:

Now in the learner-dashboard MFE both the search box and the announcements are gone. They were replaced by a sidebar widget plugin slot. But the only widget available is the looking for a challenge:

[ali-hugo]

@angonz Thank you very much for taking the time to put those screenshots together for me. Now I understand what the Announcements feature is, and how it is intended to be used. 🙌

Regarding the news ticker, isn't it similar to the announcements feature? Although it might be improved, it seems to me very similar to a news feed.

I'm in two minds about whether we should work on improving the Announcements feature so it can be used as a news feed, or whether we should rather push to have the Notifications Tray added to Open edX and use that. @angonz @antoviaque Which approach do you think would make more sense? I'm leaning towards the Notifications Tray. For reference, I've added some screenshots and links about the various ways of delivering updates to users below...

---

There seem to be at least three ways to deliver updates to users:

1. edX Notifications Tray: Product Spec

   

   • Only available in edX. I am trying to find out whether there is a plan to add it to Open edX

---

2. Forum Notifications: Issue #274

   

   • It looks like this feature might be merged with the Notifications Tray (here is a list of forum post types that will be supported in the first release)

---

3. Announcements Feature: PR #16496

   

   • No longer available in the learner-dashboard MFE