The following information reflects what is new in the edX Platform this week.
The edX engineering wiki Release Pages provide access to detailed information about every change made to the edx-platform GitHub repository. If you are interested in additional information about every change in a release, create a user account for the wiki and review the dated release pages.
Course staff can now configure the way that learning tools interoperability (LTI) components open when learners use them. You can configure LTI components to open in a modal window, in a separate web browser window, or embedded in a course page.
To use this new LTI functionality, you must enable the lti_consumer
advanced module. This new advanced module replaces the lti module. The
lti advanced module continues to work, but does not provide the new
options for launching behavior.
For more information, see LTI Component in the Building and Running an edX Course guide or LTI Component in the Building and Running an Open edX Course guide.
This release includes the following accessibility improvements.
As of the December 8 release, new courses on edx.org can offer two types of certificate: verified and Xseries. Honor code certificates are no longer available for new courses; instead, learners can audit courses without a fee. In addition, learners who want to earn verified certificates have the option of applying for financial assistance to help cover the cost of the verified certificates.
If learners earned honor code certificates in earlier courses, they can still access their certificates on their dashboards. For more information about these changes to course certificates, see Certificates Blog.
With the release of the latest version of the edX app for iPhones, learners who access edX courses using iPhones will now have a more complete course experience. They can now use the app to view HTML and text components, and complete assignments that consist of the basic assessment types (checkbox, dropdown, multiple choice, and text or numerical input).
For more information, see If You Use the edX Mobile App.
lti_consumer) and about configuring the way that LTI components launch to
the LTI Component topic.lti_consumer) and about configuring the way that LTI components launch to
the LTI Component topic.Added the Changing the Appearance of Open edX Sites section.
This release introduces the initial version of comprehensive theming, which gives sites that are running Open edX the ability to create and use themes to change how their sites look.
Using the comprehensive theming system, Open edX site administrators can change the default branding of the system to present their own brand. Logos, page headers and footers, and other templates and assets that control the way a site looks are now organized into specifically named directories and files that can be replaced easily and without coding changes.
For more information, see Changing the Appearance of Open edX Sites in the Installing, Configuring, and Running the Open edX Platform guide.