Week of 23 May 2016

The following information summarizes what is new in the edX platform this week.

The edX engineering wiki Release Pages provide 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.

EdX LMS

This release includes a number of improvements to the appearance and accessibility of controls in the edX LMS.

  • When learners who use high contrast mode on their systems select a page such as Course or Discussion, the selected page is now clearly distinguishable from the other pages. (AC-386)
  • The editing options for circuit schematic builder problems, including the tools to show or hide the grid display, cut, copy, and paste, now include accessible labels. Screenreaders can now properly identify these controls, and when a learner moves the pointer over any of the controls, an identifying tooltip now appears. (AC-399)
  • The Calculator control has been enhanced so that it appears for learners who use high contrast mode on their systems. (AC-405)
  • The video player now includes accessible labels for every control. Screenreaders can now properly identify every control, and when a learner moves the pointer over any control, an identifying tooltip now appears. (AC-406, AC-407)
  • On wiki article pages, a page layout error has been corrected. Previously, the options for an article, including View, Edit, and Settings, appeared in the shaded area below the article rather than next to it. (AC-474)

Open EdX

This release includes a new process for enabling or disabling the bulk email feature. You now use the Django administration console to change a setting, rather than editing different configuration files.

As a result of this change, the bulk email feature is disabled for any site that is closely following the master version of edx-platform until you manually re-enable it.

For more information, see Enabling the Bulk Email Feature.

EdX Websites

  • When learners register an account on the edx.org or edX Edge website, the optional Mailing Address field is no longer present.
  • After a password change, learners are now signed out of all browser sessions. (ECOM-4288)
  • This release includes improvments to the search feature on the edx.org website. In addition to searching for terms such as “R programming” and “supply chain”, learners can now search for terms such as “R”, “C++”, and “C#”.

Documentation

A new section, Data Security Guidelines for Data Czars, is now included in the EdX Research Guide. These guidelines are intended as a starting point for data czars at partner insitutions as they implement policies to safeguard the learner data they receive from edX.