Configuring Applications & Resources

Configuring Applications & Resources#

As a best practice, you should avoid changing the visibility of your course pages after the course starts. For example, your course includes the Wiki page when it starts. A learner adds a page to the course wiki, and adds a browser bookmark to that page. If you later hide the Wiki page, the learner’s browser bookmark will continue to provide access to the entire course wiki.

Included below are detailed instructions for the configuration of applications and resources that have additional settings and options.

Configuring the Discussions application#

There are several configuration options available to the Discussions application. Many basic configuration options are provided within Studio’s Pages & Resources area, and moderation capabilities are available to instructors, moderators, and community TAs directly from the Discussions application. Included below are details about both the configuration options and management tools.

To change how the discussion experience is configured, follow these steps:

In Studio, from the Content menu select Pages & Resources.
Click the gear icon on the Discussion card shown on this page.
From the Configure discussion modal, adjust any of the configuration settings as described below to fit your course needs.
Select Apply to save your configuration changes.

The discussion configuration experience is comprised of two steps: provider selection and provider configuration. By default, courses are created with the Open edX discussion experience and its default configuration. Other providers and configuration options can be selected to fit the needs of courses.

Step 1: Provider Selection

In this step, educators can select to use the default Open edX discussion experience or LTI based integrations with other providers. Below the grid of available providers is a table summarizing the features each integration provides.

Step 2: Configuration Options

Each provider supports its own set of features depending on the discussion features they support. The default Open edX discussion application has various settings and controls that are described below. All integrations use LTI 1.1 configuration, and may additionally support platform settings from the list below. Any special instructions or details specific to a given provider are described in this step as well.

Anonymous Posting

If this setting is enabled, learners can create posts that are anonymous to all users.

Allow Anonymous Discussion Posts to Peers

When enabled learners will be able to post anonymously to other peers but all posts will be visible to course staff.

General Discussion Topics

It is possible to include general topics not associated with the course content structure. All courses have an initial general topic by default to start that can be renamed.

Discussion Blackout Dates

Course teams can specify one or multiple times during which the discussion forums are not available for new content additions. This can be helpful during exam periods or other course time periods.

Configuring the Wiki application#

For instructions on how to enable the wiki application see 11.3.2.3 Enabling the Wiki Application.

You can control access to the wiki in various ways: by changing access to the wiki as a whole, by changing the read/write permissions settings of articles within the wiki, or by locking articles.

To change access to the course wiki, follow these steps.

In Studio, from the Content menu select Pages & Resources.
Click the gear icon on the Wiki card shown on this page.
From the Configure wiki modal, check or uncheck the toggle of the Enable public wiki access setting.
Select Apply to save your configuration changes.

The Enable public wiki access wiki setting is disabled by default, meaning that only course team members and enrolled learners can see the course wiki. If you enable this setting, then any registered user on your site can access the course wiki, even if they are not enrolled in your course. However, public users would have to explicitly navigate to your wiki via the site-wide wiki structure, or a link that has been provided to them.

Configuring the Teams application#

Additional management and configuration of the teams application can be done through the main Team application tab in the learner experience, and is detailed in Using the Teams application.

Configuring Course-level Open Response Assessment Settings#

To simplify the management of Open Response Assessment (ORA) problems, a card on this page provides a way to enable certain course-wide overrides. Rather than going through each ORA in a course individually, these overrides allow course staff to enable certain new features course-wide.

Flexible Peer Grading

This setting enables Flexible Peer Grade Averaging for all peer-graded ORA assignments across the course, without needing to manually edit each individual problem.

To learn about Flexible Peer Grading and the course override setting, see Flexible Peer Grade Averaging

Review Date	Working Group Reviewer	Release	Test situation