Open edX® Programs and Credentials from Raccoon Gang

Open edX Program is a structured collection of online courses, allowing both separate course completion and program completion as a whole. This provides the learners with possibilities to master knowledge in the field of their interests and gain separate certificates – one for the course completion and the other one for the program completion. The program examples include:

• XSeries
• MicroMasters

This system is very flexible and provides immense benefits:

1. Courses of different authors can be combined to cover any given topic in full
2. Consistent grading system helps measure student’s success throughout the program, as well as during single course completion
3. Uniting the courses into programs helps create a bigger picture of the topic, better identify possible course errors and correct them, leading to better course performance and students’ satisfaction

However, Open edX programs require some time and effort for precise configuration due to such reasons:

1. As Open edX is an open-source project, developed by a huge community worldwide and different courses include various custom features and third party modules, developer’s documentation is spread across a variety of sources (GitHub, Open edX docs, other locations)
2. Combining a set of courses into a program requires deep  understanding of their architecture, interaction and compatibility
3. Configuring analytics and grading tools for multiple courses takes more time, as compared to configuring them for separate courses.

Raccoon Gang addressed these challenges, as we recently created Open edX Programs deployment and setup script for one of our customers. Here are the benefits it provides:

1. After using Open edX Program setup script by Raccoon Gang all configuration data for the instance, Program and credentials is stored in a single file. This makes maintenance and reconfiguration (like password updates) much easier as compared to standard installation.
2. Course admins can create custom curriculum page, showing the range of topics covered by the program, their contents and timeframes.
3. Program creation is largely automated, so that course admins have only to specify the courses to be included, the rest is done by the script. This ready program list can be shown both inside and outside the instance under different URLs for the ease of access and administration
4. Course admins can create custom marketing page (a modified Details page) – Program title, description, promo video, images.
5. Programs can be adjusted on the go, courses can be added and/or removed without disrupting the grading structure.

We tested the script intensively and are ready to provide it to our customers.

New Credentials functionality from Raccoon Gang

Open edX Credentials is a replacement to certificates, boasting more robust functionality and removing a significant load part off the main Open edX instance. Credentials are run by a separate instance (much less expensive), so that when hundreds of thousands of external requests (when potential employers check the candidate’s Open edX credentials in LinkedIn or other social networks and follow these links) are processed – the main instance does not receive any additional load.

Thus said, following standard Open edX Credentials setup instructions leads to a situation when credentials work in parallel with certificates, which results in functions duplication. Raccoon Gang created and tested Credentials deployment script, allowing to fully replace certificate functionality with Credentials and use them with 100% efficiency. Full Open edX Credentials deployment and configuration by Raccoon Gang takes only around 30 minutes (instead of several days) and our customers have guarantees of receiving a fully working latest Open edX functionality.

Should you like to experience the Open edX programs and/or Credentials benefits – feel free to contact us, we are always ready to help!