Improve course timing and status on the course detail view

[sampaccoud]

Feature Request

Is your feature request related to a problem or unsupported use case? Please describe. Following customer feedbacks, we need to improve the possibilities for displaying a course's status.

Describe the solution you'd like Course detail view:

[EDIT]

• Replace the ~course run field~ "is_self_paced" field on the course by a choice field on the course run that can take 3 values:
  • instructor-paced ~guided~: the course is animated by a teacher and all students follow the pace chosen by the teacher,
  • self-paced: the course run is animated by a teacher but students can learn in their own time and schedule,
  • self-care: students have access to the course content and learn by themselves
• Replace "Effort" by "Total effort" as some editors are entering daily effort in this field...
• ~Duration: when the course run is declared as "self-paced", display "determined by rythm"~
• Since we remove the "is_self_paced" field from the course, all three fields "duration", "total effort" and "rythm" will always display something. Even if a course only has a self-paced session, we should still fill its duration and total effort assuming the case of a typical student,
• For a course open for registration that is self-paced or not animated: show ~today's date~ "now" instead of the "enrollment_start" date
• For an on-going course that is self paced or not animated: show ~today's date~ "now" instead of the "start" date

[jbpenrath]

Here my remarks:

• About self care and self pace course, I wonder what is better between just displaying "total effort" or suggest an optimal rhythm for which the course has been designed and therefore keep the fields "effort", "duration", "pace".

• I think it could be confusing if enrollment start date or course run start date are dynamics. Instead we could display an explicit message or for a self paced or not animated just synchronize start date with the enrollment start date.

• If some editors are entering daily effort in the effort field, I think it means that the help text below the input should be improved.

[cabralpedrofccn]

Hi @sampaccoud . for me it is not clear the 3 options:

• does "guided" means courses with a specific start date and end date but are synchronous?
• does "self-paced" means courses with a specific start date and end date but are asynchronous?
• does "self-care" means courses with no starting and no end dates, however, a person can finish at any time?

There is a fourth possibility that is related to the way Coursera has its courses and that is also a feature in Moodle:

1. A person enters a course on a specific date and has X days/weeks to finish it.
2. In Moodle, a person is kicked out of the course, after those X days. In Coursera, I’m not sure, but I will know in two weeks.

[sampaccoud]

@jbpenrath:

• the idea behind replacing "effort" by "total effort" is that some people did not understand that the time given is for the whole course and not per day, or per chapter :man_shrugging:
• the idea is that people would worry that the course has already started and would FOMO. Showing today's date removes this anxiety and we just give them the info that it starts today for them. Another way would be to replace the date by a text "start now!"?
• Yes the help text must be improved. In fact the english version was good but the french translation precisely forgot the word "total". I have already fixed the translation. Fixing the help text is not enough because, if the teachers misunderstood, then random visitors will also misunderstand... This is why I propose to also modify the string on the frontend.

Hi @cabral :wave:

• Guided is for courses that are fully paced by the teacher. Week 1 we do unit 1, then there is an quizz, then everybody works on a homework which must be submitted by the end of week 2, etc.
• Self paced is also animated by a teacher, but he teacher does not impose a rhythm. The course still has a start and an end date, but you consume it the way you want in between these dates.
• Self care is for course content that is made available without the presence of any teacher. It can also have start and/or end dates but usually on a much longer time frame than the time it takes to follow the course.

So the fourth case you are introducing could in fact be a variant of self paced or self care course. The idea being that start and end dates are different for each student. This is something we are going to do via https://github.com/openfun/joanie, the enrollment manager.

[cabralpedrofccn]

Clear @sampaccoud.

Let me provide you insight regarding the fourth case. Coursera has the option of "enroll now". By the moment you click on it you enter the course, and you have a clear pace due to the deadlines they set for each weekly assessment. I do enjoy this approach because it pushes you to keep a good learning pace. I'm not sure if edX is also moving towards this direction, but soon I'll have to do a course there to check their current business model.

[sampaccoud]

Oh I see! A personalized pace. We surely can't do this aside from the LMS. 🤔 We need to investigate.

[sandroscosta]

Let me just add a bit more gasoline into the fire. IMO we have 2 types of courses:

• Self-paced
• Instructor-paced

In self-paced courses we have those that are permanently open and those with a set date to end. Does it make sense to have a flag for permanently_open, like a model field that you can set?

Also, in the future, we might end up with scenarios like the one described by @cabralpedrofccn where you have set dates to complete the modules, according to your start date. @sampaccoud do you think there's any way for us to abstract this a bit more with something that can be extended in the future?

[sampaccoud]

@sandroscosta I think we don't need an extra field and can determine that the course is permanently open by the end date being set to null (no end means forever).

As for personnalized dates to complete a module, I can imagine an LMS that would allow this by taking into account the date of enrollment... but I don't think OpenEdX allows this out of the box. We will see but I don't think it will have any impact on richie's side.

[sampaccoud]

I have edited the issue following our discussions. @sandroscosta I still see "self-care" as a distinct type of course because it is interesting to know that it is not animated by any teacher as opposed to a "self-paced" course.

For each type of course, we will display a sentence on the course run explaining the situation to the student.

[sandroscosta]

@sandroscosta I think we don't need an extra field and can determine that the course is permanently open by the end date being set to null (no end means forever).

As for personnalized dates to complete a module, I can imagine an LMS that would allow this by taking into account the date of enrollment... but I don't think OpenEdX allows this out of the box. We will see but I don't think it will have any impact on richie's side.

So from the last Open EdX community meeting, I don't think things gonna change that much in the future. They seem to be working os MFE but just to replace the django HTML template rendering. We can think about doing the permanently open if a course enrollment end date is set to more than X years (2+ maybe). As far as I know, OpenEdX default for newly open courses is 2030.