Learners can now use badges as a way to share their achievements of the Open edX

courses they have completed. Enable badges to allow learners to show off their

accomplishments when they receive their certificates.

Cohorts

Course teams now create and manage cohorts on the Instructor Dashboard in the LMS,

instead of on the Advanced Settings page in Studio. Course teams can use the new

Cohorts page there to add and rename cohorts, change a cohort’s assignment method,

associate cohorts with content groups, and specify whether course­wide and

content­specific discussions are divided by cohort.

Course Certificates

You can now create one certificate configuration per course. This configuration serves

as the template for certificates issued for all of the enrollment tracks available for your

course (such as “honor code” or “verified”). Honor code certificates use the organization

logo and signatory information, but do not include signature images, which are used only

for verified certificates.

Course Search

Learners can now search much of the content of your Open edX courses, including the

course title, description, text, and video transcripts. Learners can search for a term in an

individual course, or for that term in all of the courses that the learner is enrolled in,

whether the course is active or archived.

When the search engine returns results, either for an individual course or across all

courses, you can select any search result to view that result in the courseware.

Creative Commons

Course teams can now specify either “All Rights Reserved” or a Creative Commons

license for a course. Course teams can also select different license options for each

video.

Custom Courses

Course teams can create a custom course experience (CCX) to reuse course content.

By using a CCX, course teams can run some or all of an existing course for a group of

students on a new schedule.

Grade Report Enhancements

The grade report now includes new columns with certificate status and enrollment track

information. When course teams generate the grade report from the Instructor

Dashboard, they can see the following additional information for each learner.

● Enrollment track, to identify the learner’s enrollment mode as honor, verified, or

professional education.

● Verification status, to identify learners in the verified or professional track who

have completed identity verification with edX.

● Certificate eligibility status, to identify learners who have earned the passing

grade in the course at the time of the grade report generation.

● Certificate delivery status, to identify learners who have received their

certificates.

● The type of certificate, for learners who are eligible to receive a certificate.

Feedback and Hints in Common Problems

Course teams can now add feedback, hints, or both to the following problem types.

● Checkbox

● Dropdown

● Multiple choice

● Numerical input

● Text input

In Studio, course teams can use new templates to add sample problems that use the

feedback and hint syntax.

HTML Spell Check in Studio

When you edit an HTML component in Studio, an automated spell checker indicates any

misspelled words. The spell checker automatically uses the dictionary that is set for your

browser.

Learner Profiles

With the new Open edX Learner Profile feature, course teams and learners can share

information about themselves with the community. The profile can include an image that

identifies the user on the Open edX site as well as the user’s location and other

biographical information. Course teams and other learners in the course can view others’

profiles.

LTI Provider

New options that leverage learning tools interoperability (LTI) are available in this

release.

Previously, course teams could use Studio as a tool consumer: course teams could set

up an LTI component to embed external tools, such as learning applications and

textbooks, into an edX course.

Now, course teams can identify content from their edX courses to embed with other

content on their campus systems. Teams can specify the course units, videos, and

graded and ungraded problems that already exist in an edX course for launch within a

campus LMS such as Blackboard or Canvas. Student scores for graded content are

transferred to the campus system.

Authentication between the campus system and the edX system that provides the

content can be configured either to anonymously provision students or to prompt for

account creation.

New Studio Templates

This release includes new templates for HTML and problem components. These

templates provide updated guidelines and examples, accessibility information, and links

to documentation.

Original Open Response Assessment Problems Deprecated

When you access a course that contains an open response assessment created using

the original version of this assignment type (ORA 1), Studio now displays the message,

“This course uses features that are no longer supported.”

A newer version of the open response assessments feature (ORA 2) was released over

a year ago, and the ability to add ORA 1 problems was removed from Studio in May

2014.

Poll and Survey Tools

Course teams can now include two new types of components in your courses.

● Use the Poll tool to pose a question to learners and have them select an answer

from a set list.

● Use the Survey tool to pose multiple questions to learners and have them select

an answer for each question from a set list.

When polls and surveys are included in a course, course teams can analyze the

responses and also choose whether to let learners see the aggregate answers for the

class.

Problem Appearance Changes

To make the Open edX LMS easier to use on mobile devices, the appearance of

common problem types has changed. For example, a border surrounds options for

multiple choice and checkbox problems, and the entire area within the border is

selectable, making it easier for learners to select an option.

Problem Grade Report

For any course, course teams can now calculate grades for problems and generate a

report that can be downloaded from the Instructor Dashboard. This new report includes,

for each graded problem, a learner’s earned and possible points, and her total score,

expressed as a decimal.

Randomized Content Blocks

Course teams can now include a new type of component, a randomized content block, in

their courses. These components randomly draw problems from a predefined library of

components and present them to learners.

Course teams create and maintain libraries of components separately from courses. All

of an organization’s course teams can work collaboratively to develop the problems that

the libraries contain. Each library can then be referenced by randomized content blocks

in any of that organization’s courses.

Report of Not-Yet Enrolled Students

Course teams for invitation­only courses can now track enrollment status from the

Instructor Dashboard. The Data Download page of the Instructor Dashboard now

includes a downloadable report of learners who have been invited to enroll in a course,

but who have not yet done so.

Third Party Authentication

To enhance sign in options for your users, you can enable third party authentication

between institutional authentication systems and your implementation of Open edX. After

you enable third party authentication and integrate with SAML or OAuth2 identity

providers, users can register and sign in to your Open edX site with their campus or

institutional credentials.

Uploading ORA2 Files to Alternative Storage Systems

By default, the Open Response Assessment (ORA2) application stores files that learners

upload in an Amazon S3 bucket.

With the Cypress release, you can configure ORA2 to store files in an alternate system.

To have learners’ files stored in a system other than Amazon S3, you must complete the

following steps.

● Implement the BaseBackend class defined in the base.py file.

● For example, the S3.py file in the same directory is an implementation of

BaseBackend for Amazon S3. You must implement the equivalent class for the

storage system you intend to use.

● Configure ORA2 to use your alternative storage system by modifying the value of

backend_setting in init file to point to your implementation of BaseBackend.

● Add code to instantiate the new implementation to the get_backend() in the

init.py file.

● Configure ORA2 to use the alternative storage system by modifying the value of

ORA2_FILEUPLOAD_BACKEND in the Django settings to point to your

implementation of BaseBackend.

YouTube API 3.0 API Key

The Open edX Platform uses Version 3 of the YouTube API, which requires that the

application use an API key.

If you intend for courses on your Open edX instance to include videos that are hosted on

YouTube, you must get a YouTube API key and set the key in the Open edX Platform.

Embedded Files and Calendars

Courses can include files, such as documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and a

calendar. Your course team uses Google to create and maintain these files and

calendars. They appear in the body of your course just like any other course content.

If your course includes a Google calendar, you see that calendar in the body of the

course. You can also add it to your own Google calendar.

REST API Changes

EdX has built and published documentation for the following REST APIs, which are

available in the Open edX Cypress release.

● Course Structure API Version 0

● User API Version 1.0

● Profile Images API Version 1.0

Accessibility Updates

In keeping with edX’s commitment to creating accessible content for everyone,

everywhere, the Open edX Cypress release contains several accessibility

enhancements in the Open edX LMS and discussions.

● Keyboard navigation in open response assessments has been improved by restoring

keyboard focus outline indicators.

● The LMS now has a region with a role of main and a descriptive aria­label allowing users

to quickly navigate to the main content area using landmarks.

● Several accessibility problems with numerical input problem types are now corrected.

● A current status of the problem is now conveyed to learners who use screen readers

properly.

● The workflow for checking how ASCII math is converted to MathML or MathJax format

has been streamlined for screen reader users.

● Nonessential information is no longer included in aria­live regions, which improves the

experience for screen reader users.

● Improvements to the accessibility of discussion posts for screen reader users are

included in this release.

● HTML iframe elements now show meaningful title attributes that describe the content

embedded in the IFrame.

● The main blue colors used throughout the LMS user interface were changed to meet

WCAG AA guidelines for contrast.

● The LMS now includes an aria­live region to contain HTML for problems.

● Submission buttons have been removed from the aria­live div scope.

● Several accessibility fixes have been implemented in the course header.

● An aria label has been added to the LMS footer.

● The main region in the Student dashboard now includes the role and aria­ label

attributes.

● Navigation controls in the LMS now have aria­label attributes.

● Focus now changes directly to the content area after the user selects a link to a new

subsection or unit.

● Unit navigation links are reorganized into a single list. The arrow navigation is converted

from links to buttons and now includes the disabled attribute when appropriate.

● Labels to bypass blocks now use the industry standard text Skip to main content​.

● The current discussion conversation now receives focus and includes an accessible

label.

● Discussions now include defined regions and landmarks for screen reader navigation.

The focus is on the discussion when a new topic is loaded, and changes to a new post

when it appears.