Mobile @ edX

A technical engineering presentation on mobile development at edX, with challenges, solutions, and open questions in bringing a legacy, open source, monolithic server app into the mobile landscape.

Transcript

1. mobile @ edx Nimisha Asthagiri (nimisha@edx.org) Akiva Leffert (akiva@edx.org)
2. Outline - What is edX - Challenges + Solutions - Where we are today - Where we’re going
3. Questions Welcome
4. Outline - What is edX - Challenges + Solutions - Where we are today - Where we’re going
5. What is edX? • A non-profit venture • A web site: edx.org • A platform: Open edX
6. edX the venture Founded by MIT and Harvard
7. edX goals • Expand access to quality education ◦ Goal: 1 billion students! • Improve on-campus education ◦ 80 members so far • Advance research in online learning ◦ How can we make MOOCs better and better?
8. Quick history • November 2011: dev started • March 2012: first MOOC • January 2013: 20 MOOCs, 500k students • March 2014: 160 MOOCs, 2.3M students • Sept 2015: 500 MOOCs, 5M students
9. http://edx.org the web site What is edX?
16. Open edX an open source platform for teaching and learning to foster innovation in education What is edX?
17. Open edX impact • >150 sites running Open edX • >1500 courses • 18 languages
23. Demo Time
24. Outline - What is edX - Challenges + Solutions - Where we are today - Where we’re going
25. Fundamental Shift - edX was a desktop website - Content from course staff on desktops - For students on desktops - Building things for desktops - Had a major investment in desktops
26. Where to start? - What features? - Videos, Course Content, Social? - For students, researchers, professors? - How to build? - APIs, Infrastructure, Open Source - Who should build? - Resourcing, growing and training a team - How to migrate content?
27. Baby Steps - Users: Focus on Students - Content: Start with Videos - Engineering: Basic APIs, Responsive - Resources: 1 developer & outsource - Migrate: Video Pipeline
28. Change is hard
29. Challenges + Solutions - Designing Mobile - Engineering Mobile - Open Source Apps - Creating Content - Building a Team
30. Challenges + Solutions - Designing Mobile - Engineering Mobile - Open Source Apps - Creating Content - Building a Team
31. Sweating the Small Stuff - Onboarding Users
32. Sweating the Small Stuff - Social Sharing - Wants different credentials - Doesn’t want to use popups windows
33. Sweating the Small Stuff - Social Sharing - Wants different credentials - Doesn’t want to use popups windows
34. - Course Discussion Posts - HTML content - Weird formatting - Large Inline Images - Do we: - Have all content - but have it be awkward - Introduce a new future compatible format - Support reduced experience - just text Sweating the Small Stuff
35. Mobile is Global - Developing world is more mobile - Different user base - Older devices - Unreliable connections - Different educational goals
36. Localization is hard - Lots of rules - Has to be maintained - Developers have to be educated
37. Challenges + Solutions - Designing Mobile - Engineering Mobile - Open Source Apps - Creating Content - Building a Team
38. Building APIs - API conventions and standards - Generic or mobile-specific? - Guidelines/process for extending - Guidelines for deprecation - Dogfooding - Documenting PATCH
39. Course Blocks - Examples: - Basic assessments: checkbox, multiple choice - Drag and Drop - Interactive Circuit Simulators - Submitting Essays - Submitting Code Snippets
40. Course Blocks Framework - Platform extension point - Runtime abstracts storage, i18n - Python backend - HTML + CSS + JS frontend - XML serialization (OLX)
41. Course Blocks on Mobile - Initial approach - HTML in webview - Tag as responsive - Native support - “Learn once, write anywhere” - Model versioning - Export as JSON
42. Course Navigation - 3-tier hierarchy - Completely Linear - Adaptive pathways - Choose your own adventure
43. Platform Differences - UX - Logout experience - Back button - Touch and gestures - Push notifications - Swiping - Software upgrade experience - App submission process
44. No Infrastructure - Web has an automation team - Web has three years of infrastructure - Unfortunately, can’t share much
45. Incremental everywhere - Some webviews up front - Course discovery - Embed course content - HTML blocks - Problem blocks - Native later where appropriate
46. Challenges + Solutions - Designing Mobile - Engineering Mobile - Open Source Apps - Creating Content - Building a Team
49. 51 forks of iOS app repository
50. Broad Community - No idea who these people are - We hear about their problems - GitHub Issues - Mailing list - But if things are working…? - open edX conference (once a year!)
51. - Always need to consider: - Extensibility - Long Term Support - Deprecation - Across unknown configurations Support Broad Community
52. Community - Lots of work - Amazing Pay Off - Best way to reach a billion people
53. Challenges + Solutions - Designing Mobile - Engineering Mobile - Open Source Apps - Creating Content - Building a Team
54. Course Authoring - Content designed for desktop experience - A lot of information → Focused content - All at once → Bite-sized content - Large Images → Responsive views - YouTube videos → Video pipeline - Large screen real estate → Singular small pages - Small drop targets → Touch targets
55. Challenges + Solutions - Designing Mobile - Engineering Mobile - Open Source Apps - Creating Content - Building a Team
56. Specialized team
57. Go Team
58. Outline - What is edX - Challenges + Solutions - Where we are today - Where we’re going
59. edX Mobile Today
60. edX Mobile Today
61. edX Mobile Today
62. edX Mobile Today
63. Mobile vs Web Usage - On Mobile - 40-60% of new visits to edx.org - 36% of registration - 25% of enrollment - 20% of learner usage - 90-95% of traffic for SaudiX
64. Outline - What is edX - Challenges + Solutions - Where we are today - Where we’re going
65. Sneak Preview
66. Push Notifications - Starting with New Course Announcements - Expecting to roll out more over time - Important long term
67. Discussion Forums
68. Discussion Forums
69. User Profiles
70. Native Course Discovery - Sorry, no screenshots - Goes through edx.org custom website - Want open source implementation - Foundation for future work
71. Badging (Achievements) - Awards for things like: - Completing Courses - Discussion activity - Extensible (of course!)
72. What the Future Holds
73. Infrastructure - Access - Offline support - Audio only mode - Latency & bandwidth optimization - xBlocks - React Native? - A/B Testing
74. Features - Social - Teams - Geospatial discovery - Classrooms - Suite of apps - Analytics - Authoring
75. Talk to us! We want feedback! Help us grow!
76. Questions? Akiva Leffert (akiva@edx.org) Nimisha Asthagiri (nimisha@edx.org)