Hello again from edX headquarters! With the start of June come many improvements to the edX platform that we’re excited to share with you.
Improvements for Learners
Version 2.3.0 of the edX mobile app for both iOS and Android is here! This new version allows our on-the-go learners to participate in course discussions and search for courses using their mobile devices. You can download the mobile app from iTunes or from the Google Play Store.
Along with releasing the mobile app, we’ve made several additional improvements to the learner experience. We’ve updated search so that learners can now search for terms such as “R” and “C#” in addition to terms such as “R programming”. We’ve also removed the Mailing Address field from the registration page and streamlined the password reset process.
Improvements for Course Authors
By popular demand, we’ve added a new feature to timed exams: Course teams who use timed exams can now keep the content of a timed exam hidden, even after the due date for the exam has passed. For more information, see Timed Exams in Building and Running an Open EdX Course.
We know you’re curious about your learners, so we’ve added new information to reports and data packages. The student profile report now includes columns for a learner’s city and country. For more information, see Columns in the Student Profile Report in Building and Running an Open EdX Course. Additionally, we’ve updated video events to reflect recent accessibility enhancements to the video player. For more information, see Video Interaction Events. And, to make that new information about your data package easier to find, we’ve recently reorganized the EdX Research Guide.
Accessibility Improvements
This month we’ve made many improvements to accessibility on the edX platform. Screen reader and keyboard users can more easily navigate through pages using improved Skip to Content links, and we’ve made the calculator control, video player, and wiki more accessible for learners. Additionally, we’ve enhanced the editing options for circuit schematic problems.
Improvements for System Administrators and Developers
Open edX Con 2016 is just a few days away! We’re thrilled with our lineup of speakers and contributors this year and can’t wait to meet with many of you in Palo Alto. The traditional two-day hackathon will follow the conference, and we’re looking forward to the features you create!
Users who are running the lastest version of the Open edX platform may have noted several changes over the past few weeks. In addition to removing the ENABLE_JWT_AUTH feature flag, we upgraded the JavaScript Backbone.js library to version 1.3.2. For more information about the JavaScript library, see the change log for the Backbone.js library.
We also recently changed the process for enabling and disabling the bulk email feature for the Open edX platform. This change has disabled the bulk email feature for sites that closely follow master. To manually re-enable bulk email for your site, or for more information, see Enabling the Bulk Email Feature.
Finally, on 5 May 2016, we made a change to the courseware_studentmodulehistory database table in the edx-platform repository. If you maintain an Open edX instance that follows master, you must prepare for this change before you upgrade to the 5 May 2016 version of master or a later version. You do not have to make any changes if you run the Dogwood release. For more information, see Replacing the courseware_studentmodulehistory Table.
