1. Juniper release notes: Learner Experiences#

1.1. Course Experience#

1.1.1. Primary Content Experience#

Course Home Experience#

Course Outline Depth: For some time the course outline was shifted to rendering sections, subsections, and units. The resulting outline was long and provided detail that learners could navigate once in a subsection (aka learning sequence). The course outline has been updated to once again show only sections and subsections. As a part of this change we have made sure graded subsections show an icon to better highlight that they are graded.

Graded Question Count: The course outline now highlights the number of graded questions included in a subsection. The additional information added to the outline will allow learners to understand at-a-glance, and better plan for, the effort of a given graded assignment or exam.

Learning Sequence Experience#

New Course MFE: A major platform change for the learner experiences comes in the form of a new micro-frontend application to modernize the course learning experience. The primary Juniper focus of this application is an overhaul of the learning sequence experience, though we anticipate other views like Course Home will eventually also make their way into this new application.

Content iFrames & Security: This new micro-frontend is easier to update and configure than our previous experience, helping support lower development times and easier configuration and extension. The new experience uses iframes to render content into the application, as a side-effect does limit the ability to use Javascript on the page to interact with elements outside of the content frame, like the navigation or other areas of the page. The use of iframes here improves site security and code sandboxing, helping ensure stability for learners on the new application.

Course Home Clarity: A home icon was also introduced to the breadcrumbs to reinforce the Course tab as the main home page for the course. Learners will still be able to click the top level course tab as well to get back to the Course Home.

Responsive Sequence Bar: The learning sequence bar is now a bit smarter in how it responds to screen size and length of learning sequences. When learning sequences have too many items to properly render the icons and completion status, or when you are viewing the course on a mobile browser, we replace the sequence bar with a dropdown that retains the unit type icon and completion status.

Next & Previous Action Clarity: The next and previous buttons at the bottom of the page will be easier to spot and click, focusing on the “Next” action. Additionally, a message is shown to learners when they have reached the end of the course rather than show the next button at the bottom of the page.

Visual Course Progress#

In the new course experience, visual completion is more obvious for learners with the elevated use of green checkmarks to convey progress. A recent completion logic change also reduced the time necessary to trigger completion on HTML only pages, an issue that was limiting some learners from being able to trigger completion rules.

Course Dates & Milestones#

Personalized Schedules: Though self-paced courses offer the significant advantage of being available on-demand when a learner wants them, they lack the supporting structure of schedules and timelines. We’ve introduced some of this structure and accountability by creating personalized schedules for each learner, and clearly showing the suggested dates and timeline in the course. These schedules are based off of the course’s expected duration, and customized for each learner’s unique start date. We’ve also retained the advantages of flexibility — should a learner fall behind, they are able to adjust their schedule.

Full Page Dates View: To improve visibility into dates for both instructor-paced and self-paced courses, we have also introduced a dedicated full page view of critical course dates. Each relevant milestone will also link directly to the subsection, to provide easy and quick access. In the future, we will also add the ability for learners to add these dates to their calendars.

Content Search Tools#

A key improvement to the learner experience is course content search and the ability for learners to find results within their courses. This existing feature has been updated to support improved scaling and performance for larger courses and instances.

Course Welcome & Updates#

The visual height of welcome messages has been capped, adding a “Show More” action for longer posts that might have previously obscured view of the course outline for new learners visiting a course.

1.1.2. Learning Apps: Individual Support#

Bookmarks: Bookmarks were updated to also work in the new learner sequence experience.

Notes App: The Notes tool that enables / disables notes in a learning sequence was updated to work for the new course micro-frontend.

Calculator: The Calculator experience has been updated to work in the new course micro-frontend, making the markdown help tools easier to use and read as well.

1.1.3. Learning Apps: Peer & Community#

Discussion Forum Application#

Discussion Forum Daily Digests + Notifier Service: We have marked this service as deprecated and disabled the discussion forum daily digest feature. We may revisit or reimplement this in the future but the experience was used by few learners, and the service that powered this capability was prone to instability and needed many upgrades to remain viable.

Teams Application#

Team Assignments: Educators can now create team assignments, enabling a team of students to collaborate on the assignment and submit a team response through a linked Open Response Assessment problem. (Additional details in the Open Response Assessment updates section).

Private Teams: In addition, new “private team sets” allow for teams that are not viewable to non-team members and which automatically create discussion forums for these teams that are visible only to team members and course staff.

Multiple Team Support: It is now possible for learners to join more than one team in a given course.

1.2. Identity and Account Tools#

1.2.1. Learner Profile#

A complete rewrite of the learner profile experience was completed during this time. The new experience is powered by a new micro-frontend and the latest version of our Paragon component library. If configured, this new experience provides improved visibility controls and new optional fields that can be shown on the profile.

One aspect of the earlier learner profiles that was not migrated to the new experience is the badges experience section of the profile. We are hoping to update our credentials infrastructure which will enable us to add these back into the updated learner profile in the future.

1.2.2. Account Settings#

New Account Experience: A new Account micro-frontend now also powers an updated account settings experience on the platform. The account settings page can now be more easily extended with plugins, and all features available on the previous account settings page were migrated over to this updated experience.

Beta Language Support: Learners can now go to their account settings to see a longer list of languages including both fully supported languages and any languages enabled as beta languages. When learners select a beta (aka partially supported) language they are shown a message letting them know the language is partially translated. Additionally there are buttons to quickly switch back to their previous language or head to Transifex to join the open community that helps us translate the platform if they would like to contribute. Included below are visuals of the language dropdown as well as an example message shown for partially supported languages.

Recovery Email Address: A new field was added to the account settings allowing learners to specify a recovery email address, which also needs to be activated to be set fully. When this feature is enabled, learners also see a message on their learner dashboard notifying them that their recovery email address has not been set or fully activated yet.

Order History#

A new micro-frontend was created for ecommerce related views, and the Order History page experience was added to this new tool. The new experience shows all ecommerce orders with links to the order detail pages.

1.3. Credentials#

1.3.1. Assignment Badges#

As called out in the Learner Profile section, this feature has not been migrated to the new learner profile experience and is thus no longer visible to learners on their profile. We hope this feature will be supported again in the future once we have completed infrastructure investments into our Credential service, but we do not plan to make future changes to the current badge related edx-platform code.

1.4. Upgrade Messaging & Payment#

1.4.1. Course Upsell Messaging and Payment#

New Payment MFE: A new micro-frontend has been created and scoped just to the checkout experience for those using the ecommerce tools and services built into the platform. This application supports Apple Pay, PayPal, and Cybersource credit card payment types. The improved checkout flow should improve checkout conversion rates and provide avenues for other plugins or integrations as well.

First Purchase Discount is a configurable time-limited offer to extend to first time purchasers. In our experimentation, we have found a meaningful impact to initial purchase rate.

1.5. Mobile Applications#

The first Mobile app release to be packaged from the start of Juniper was version 2.18, and version 2.22 was released May 13th, 2020 before Juniper was cut. Additional details about Mobile App changes can also be found in the Mobile Versions / Releases page.

1.5.1. Mobile App Discovery#

Deep-Linking Integration with Branch.io: Our applications can optionally be configured now to integrate with Branch.io, a tool that can deep-link new or existing app users directly to the app store listing and then through to the specific view screen from the app, improving retention especially for new users.

Journeys Integration with Branch.io: Additionally through Branch.io, we are using their Journey banners to let learners on mobile web browsers quickly jump into the application or discover that mobile apps are an option for new learners.

Mobile Application Login & Registration: A number of improvements were made to registration and login including the addition of Microsoft Login, reflecting updated branding requirements for Google and Facebook, as well as some updates around the mobile app refresh token that was forcing learners to log back in when not expected.

1.5.2. Mobile Course Experience#

My Courses Mobile View#

iPad Experience for My Courses Screen: Layout improvements to the My Courses view now show course cards in a grid, taking advantage of the iPad screen size in both portrait and landscape viewing modes.

Mobile App Upgrade Experience#

Subsections and components within the content experience now provide clarity on when certain content is not visible in the currently active learner enrollment track. Similarly for courses that use feature based enrollments where content access is set to expire some time after enrollment, this date is now more clear for learners within the courses and on course cards in the My Courses view.

Mobile App Video Experience#

Chromecast Support: We have added support for Chromecast to the videos across both the iOS and Android applications. You can cast your videos now to other displays that support chromecast, including many Smart TVs.

In-App Youtube Player: We also now have the ability to render Youtube videos within the application experience thanks to a major contribution. Previously learners would be redirected out of the application to view videos on Youtube.

Removed Legacy Videos Support: We have removed the code for the legacy My Videos page, instead shifting to a new videos tab view within the course experience.

Increased Video Playback Speed Options: We have added the ability for the mobile applications to adjust playback speed for videos, allowing for adjustments between 0.25x and 2x video speed.

Video Rewind and Forward Controls: Additional rewind and forward controls have been added to the video screen when learners tap on the video to expose play pause and video settings actions. A rewind action takes learners back 10 seconds and they can also jump forward 15 seconds at a time.

Offline SD Card Storage Support: You can now choose to have your videos stored on an SD card if you have one, with a new setting shown in the settings area if an SD card is detected on your Android device.

Mobile App Video HLS Delivery: Through our video pipeline, mobile app videos now support HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), enabling learners to view videos at the quality level that fits their current network bandwidth for the and mobile application video experiences.

1.5.3. Mobile Content Discovery#

Program & Degree Discovery: You can now search programs and degrees using the mobile application, additional views added to our existing discovery experience that loads webviews for each of these discovery facets.

1.5.4. App-Wide Learner Improvements#

Expanded Language Support: Across both iOS and Android applications, you can now view the app experience in French, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Turkish. iOS also additionally includes support for Hebrew. The application uses your device language to specify this setting.

Firebase Analytics & Push Notifications: The application has removed its support for the now deprecated Fabric analytics tool, and we have made it easy to toggle on Firebase as an analytics and push notification provider.

iOS Dynamic Type Support: In support of improved text accessibility our iOS application supports dynamic type across the application, helping with legibility of text for learners with varying text sizes configured on their iOS devices.

Webview Performance: Discovery + Content Views: We have done some work to improve xBlock caching and preloading for the mobile web views rendered in the application. For Android this also includes hardware acceleration for Mobile App web views.