The Open edX platform is a complex piece of software and perhaps the best way to learn it is by exploring and experimenting with it directly, but often, it requires a good deal of effort to set it up.  Therefore, If you ever wanted to explore or play around with the platform, skipping the installation and configuration process, this new site will interest you. You can register for the upcoming info session here.

As part of the contribution to the Open edX community by members of the Marketing Working Group, there is now an official Open edX Sandbox, where learners and course authors will be able to play around with the platform. 

This site is an Open edX instance with only a thin layer of customizations so that newcomers can get a good idea of what they will be getting after installing and configuring the Open edX platform. One of these customizations is a set of walkthroughs to help complete newbies understand the different pieces and locate the main sections of the platform. 

Access to functionalities

The instance has been populated with a couple of freely accessible demo courses to make it easy for anyone to register and experience as a learner how most of the functionalities of the platform look and behave.

It also has a few unique configurations that will allow anyone that registers to be granted course creator permissions, so that people can log into Studio and create their own courses and play with any of its functionalities in an environment that is safe and easy to access. 

In addition, in order to keep the site clean, all the user-generated courses and content will be visible to those users that created each course, and the site will be wiped clean periodically to keep everything nice and tidy.

You are invited!

We invite people in the community to use this new tool as a way to: 

  • Learn more about the platform by experiencing some of its functionalities as a learner. There is one basic course, with a simple course outline and the most commonly used content components, and one more advanced class, that shows the advanced components in action. 
  • Play around with Studio’s native tools to explore or learn by doing.
  • Create a course whenever you need a place to demonstrate the platform to others, record a video demonstration, or take screenshots that may be needed when building documentation, or as part of a conversation in our discourse community.

Visit https://sandbox.openedx.org to get started!

This is the initial version of this initiative, and there is lots more that can be done, 

we’d love to hear your thoughts, interest, and suggestions, related to the following topics:

-Ideas for new or improved course content

-Changes to the site configurations

-Ideas for new functionality

-Extending this initiative to other components of the ecosystem, such as the Open edX mobile apps. 

-Supporting a sandbox in multiple languages.

Explore the sandbox and provide us with your feedback at our upcoming meetup!

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