Open edX® Hawthorn – Latest Info

At this moment the latest information about Open edX Hawthorn is what we got to know at Open edX Conference 2018.

According to Marco Morales, edX Product Manager, there are 4 main changes that we are going to have. These changes were formulated in the following form:

1. Reach new learners
2. Drive Learner outcomes
3. Support Educators at Scale
4. Toward a Sustainable model

Reach new learners

1. Program About pages

2. Expanded Device Support

3. Overhauled Mobile Experience

4. Certificates Language Support – additional tools to add more languages

The main thing highlighted here was that over half of online learners find edX via mobile devices. It was a big lift for Open edX team to create a responsive mobile experience for learners. Big investments were spent on mobile application to make a lot of changes to the navigation throughout the application.

“One of the things we did in Hawthorne was really simplified the way that we do our front-end styling to enable us to make our web experience responsive” Marco Morales, edX

Drive Learner Outcomes

1. Adaptive Video Streaming
2. Learner Navigation & Progress
3. Inline Discussion Visibility
4. Discussion Response Notifications
5. Scheduled Nudge Emails
6. Transferrable Student Records
7. Translated Learner Certificates

The first thing highlighted here was platform changes in the learner navigation and visualization of progress. These updates were landed and merged in Hawthorn.

Another noticeable change is related to outside of the course experience, and about how it can help provide evidence of learning to employers or additional credit providers.

“We are working right now actively on a digital sort of modern form of a transcript helping you take a credential like a micro master’s credential and share it or send it for purposes of an application or a follow-on credit pathway again to those credit partners or employers” – Morales said.

Support Educators at Scale

1. Automatic Certificate Delivery
2. Cross-Course & Grade Data Visibility
3. Open Response & Proctored Exams
4. Flexible Content Gating
5. Video & Asset Management

New stuff here is the new way of uploading files and videos: now one can reuse already uploaded video in another course just by referencing to it instead of copying and pasting IDs as it was in previous releases.

Sustainable Model: Platform

1. Bundled and Group Purchases
2. Expanded SSO Support
3. Data via Email, SFTP, API
4. Data Consent Learner Flow
5. New: Support Enterprise Learners.

Some new abilities here related to ecommerce – there is going to be the ability to sell all  courses in programs with discount, and course purchases functionality for groups or businesses.

“You can buy a number of seats all at once and distribute those enrollment codes to learners as you wish”  Marco Morales, edX

Open edX for Enterprises

Marco introduced the new Open edX enterprise model and described new features from 4 angles:

• “Discovery”: creation of custom catalogs and curated learning pathways;
• “Access”: SSO for enterprise learners;
• “Learning”: improvements in the learning space; ability for learners from the same company to collaborate on specific projects or seeing specific content;
• “Data & Reporting”: comprehensive data related to employees learning activities aimed to give the understanding of learning program investments ROI

A first beta version is already released by edX, but this is not yet the official version of Hawthorn. That’s all for now. We are going to update this blog post after final Hawthorn release this summer. Live your comments down below if you are interested in getting updates of this article – we’ll keep you posted.