Welcome to online learning with edX! At edX, we are glad to welcome new learners to the edx.org website, and to all of the other websites that use the Open edX platform to deliver courses around the world. We hope that you are as excited about online learning as we are.
The purpose of this guide is to help with your transition to online learning. The guide answers common questions about topics like getting started in an online course, earning certificates, participating in course discussions, and completing some of the exercises you may see in your course.
This guide is continuously being updated and expanded, so we encourage you to let us know what was helpful, and what was not, by selecting Feedback on any page or by sending an email message to docs@edx.org.
A massive, open, online course (MOOC) typically uses videos and text to present course content, although you might also encounter other types of reading assignments, such as textbooks and online articles. A MOOC also includes assessments, in the form of practice questions, homework assignments, and exams. To help you share information, ask questions, and collaborate with other learners and the course team, course discussions are available.
Videos and other types of course content, assessments, and discussions are used in virtually every MOOC on the edx.org website. These course components are also used to create the courses on websites that use the Open edX online learning platform. Everyone is welcome to review examples of these components, and practice using them, by enrolling in the edX Demo course.
Depending on the course, a variety of enhanced components might also be included, from team problem-solving exercises and lab work to live demonstrations and ask me anything (AMA) sessions. Every course has a unique design, and course teams are continuously looking for new ways to engage learners and teach more effectively. Course teams typically include instructions for how to use any enhanced components right in the course.
MOOCs bring learners from all over the world together. The people who you take a course with have a wide variety of educational backgrounds and educational goals. One part of the MOOC experience that everyone shares is encountering new ways of learning. As a result, most learners occasionally have questions about what is expected, how to complete an assignment, or what a word, phrase, or abbreviation means.
If you have a question about something you encounter in an edX course, try these options for getting an answer.
The dates and times that new materials are released, and when homework assignments and exams are due, are included throughout your course. It is important to be aware that edX lists all times in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). When you see a time in your course, edX recommends that you use a time zone converter to convert the UTC time to your local time. You can use any converter that you want, including one of the following time zone converters.
This topic describes your dashboard, account settings, and profile.
After you create an edX account, you can view a list of your current courses, change your course or account settings, or create a profile. You can access course, account, or profile information from any edX page, whether you are in a course or browsing the course catalog.
When you create an edX account or enroll in an edX course, you automatically go to your dashboard. You can also access your dashboard by selecting your username on any edX page. You can find information about your courses and change course settings on your dashboard. For more information, see Find or Change Course Information.
You can complete the following actions on your dashboard.
Access your current and archived courses.
To access a current or archived course, select View Course or View Archived Course next to the name of the course. Note that archived courses do not always provide access to all content.
See when courses start or end.
Course start and end dates appear below the name of the course.
Change your course email settings.
Select the Options icon for the course, and then select Course emails. The Options icon resembles a gear and appears next to View Course or View Archived Course.
Select or clear the Receive course emails check box, and then select Save Settings.
Note
If you clear this check box, you will not receive any of the email messages that course teams send to communicate with enrolled learners in the course.
Unenroll from a course.
To unenroll, select the Options icon for the course, select Unenroll, and then select Unenroll in the confirmation dialog box. The Options icon resembles a gear and appears next to View Course or View Archived Course.
View your grades in courses that you have completed.
Your final grade appears under the name of the course.
Download a course certificate.
To download a course certificate, select Download Your Certificate (PDF) or Download Your ID Verified Certificate (PDF). You can then print the PDF certificate.
Your edX profile allows you to share information about yourself with the edX community. Course teams and other learners in your courses can view your profile. You can share either a limited profile or a full profile.
Your profile always includes your username. Optionally, and if you are over 13 years of age, you can also share a profile picture, your location, and other biographical information.
A limited profile shares only your username and an optional profile picture.
Note
If you are under 13 years of age, you can only share a limited profile and you cannot share a profile picture.
A full profile includes biographical information in addition to your username and profile image.
A limited profile includes only your username and, optionally, an image.
Note
If you are under 13 years of age, your limited profile only includes your username. You cannot add a profile picture.
To create or edit a limited profile, follow these steps.
On any edX page, select the arrow next to your username, and then select Profile.
On your profile page, locate edX learners can see my, and then select Limited Profile.
(optional) Add an image that you want to associate with your edX username. Your image must be a .gif, .jpg, or .png file. The image must be between 100 bytes and 1 MB in size. If you do not add an image, the placeholder image appears as your profile image.
To change or remove your profile image, move your cursor over your image, and then select either Change Image or Remove. When you remove your profile image, the placeholder image appears as your profile image.
EdX saves your changes automatically.
Note
You must specify your year of birth on the Account Settings page before you share a full profile. If you are under 13 years of age, you can share only a limited profile.
A full profile can include the following information. Your username and country or region are required.
To create or edit your profile, follow these steps.
On any edX page, select the arrow next to your username, and then select Profile.
Locate edX learners can see my, and then select Full Profile.
On your profile page, move your cursor over the information that you want to add or change.
If you have not added information to the field, the field appears highlighted and surrounded by a dashed line.
If the field already has information, the field appears highlighted, and a pencil icon appears.
Move your cursor inside the field, and then either enter text in the field or select a different option from a list.
EdX saves your changes automatically.
Note
If you change the profile type selection from Full Profile to Limited Profile, your location, language, and descriptive paragraph are not visible on your profile page. However, this information is saved. To make this information visible again, select Full Profile.
You view other learners’ profiles through the course discussions.
The following image shows a learner’s username in a post, the learner’s username on the Active Threads page, and the learner’s profile page.
Your Account Settings page has three tabs.
You can view this information at any time. You can also add or change some of this information.
Basic account information includes the following information. This information is required for every account on edX.
To view or change this information, follow these steps.
Note
You cannot change your edX username.
EdX saves your changes automatically.
Additional account information is optional and includes the following information.
To view or change this information, follow these steps.
EdX saves your changes automatically.
You can link your edX account to social media and other accounts, including Facebook, Google, school, and company accounts. When your accounts are linked, you can sign in to edX automatically by signing in to your other account.
To link your edX account with another account, follow these steps.
On any edX page, select the arrow next to your username, and then select Account.
On the Account Settings page, select the Linked Accounts tab.
Under Linked Accounts, select Link Your Account under the name of the account that you want to link to your edX account.
If you want to unlink your edX account from another social media account, select Unlink This Account under that account name.
The Order History tab contains information about any purchases you have made on edX. This information includes the following details.
To view information about your edX purchases, follow these steps.
To view information about a specific purchase, locate the transaction that you want, and then select Order Details.
This topic answers questions about how you can use the edX mobile app on an Android smartphone or an iPhone to take edX courses.
You can use the app to download course videos so that you can watch them whenever you want to, even without an Internet connection. When you have an Internet connection, you can also read course announcements, participate in course discussions, and get started on homework and other assignments. To complete an entire course, you use a web browser on a computer.
Not entirely. With the edX mobile app, you can download course videos to watch when you do not have an Internet connection. When you have an Internet connection, you can also read course announcements and content, participate in course discussions, and do some, but not all, of the problems in your assignments. To complete an entire course, you use a web browser on a computer.
You can read and contribute to course discussions in the edX mobile apps whenever you have an Internet connection. In your course, select Discussion. You can then browse through different topics or search for words or phrases that interest you. For information about course discussions, see Overview of Course Discussions.
To download videos, you must be connected to the Internet. Select the “download” icon that appears to the right of a subsection or video name.
This example lists subsections in a course and shows how many videos that will download when you select the icon.
To download videos, you must be connected to the Internet. After you download a video, you can watch it at any time.
Course videos are optimized for mobile playback, but watching or downloading any video can result in heavy data use. EdX recommends using a Wi-Fi connection if you intend to watch or download a lot of videos. The edX mobile apps have a Download only on Wi-Fi setting that is enabled by default to help you avoid using your cellular network accidentally.
The number to the right of a subsection name indicates the number of videos in that subsection.
Rotate your phone until the video changes to landscape mode, or select “full screen” in the bottom right corner of the video player.
You can change video speeds on the iPhone app. While a video plays, select Settings (the “gear” icon) at the lower right, and then select Video Speed.
On the Android app, videos currently play only at their original speeds.
On the My Courses page, select the menu in the upper left corner.
Select My Settings.
Change the Wi-Fi only download setting.
Note
By default, the apps are set so that they only download content, including videos, if you are on a Wi-Fi network. If you change this setting, you might exceed the data allowance for your cellular plan.
Each circle indicates whether you have already played a video. A blue circle means that you have not started playing the video. A half-filled circle means that you played part of the video. A gray circle means that you played the entire video.
Many course teams send notifications to remind you when assignments are due or make other announcements. However, each course team decides what to announce and when, and whether to send notifications to the mobile app.
You can use the edX mobile app or a web browser to visit the Home page and read all of the announcements.
You can turn notifications off, or on, for each of your courses. In the edX mobile app, select the course and visit its Home page to change the notification setting.
You can turn off all notifications for the edX mobile app. To change the notification setting on an Android smartphone, visit the App info page for the edX mobile app. On an iPhone, visit Settings and then select the edX mobile app.
You can use the edX mobile app to do some, but probably not all, of the problems in your assignments. EdX courses include a variety of problem types. Currently, you can read questions and submit answers only for problem types that require a simple action as a response.
For example, you can use the edX app to answer multiple choice questions, but you cannot use it to draw molecules or design circuits. To complete problems that require complex actions, you must use a web browser.
Note
EdX recommends that you complete all of your graded assignments in a web browser on a computer.
The edX mobile app is best suited for completing ungraded, practice problems.
In the edX mobile app, you can do problems that you answer in one of these ways.
EdX is working to add more types of problems to this list.
No. After you select the Full Course option, the list includes every section in the course. After you select a section, a “readable” (piece of paper) icon or a “web only” (PC) icon appears next to each piece of content.
When you select a readable assignment, you can read and answer questions in the app. For graded assignments, edX recommends that you review the entire assignment in a web browser to make sure that you read and answer all of the questions.
When you select a web only assignment, you can follow a link to open that part of the course in a web browser. The question does not appear in the app.
If you have problems viewing videos, make sure that you have an Internet connection and then try to view or download the video again.
If problems persist, let us know. On the My Courses page, select the “menu” icon, and then select Submit Feedback.
This topic describes how to check and understand your progress in a course.
As you work through a course, you can track your the scores on individual problems as well as your current overall course grade. Select Progress in any course.
On the Progress page, a chart shows how you have performed for each graded assignment in the course.
Assignments are listed along the horizontal axis, and the percentage score that you received in each lesson is read from the vertical axis.
Markers on the vertical axis reflect the grading scale for the course. For example, if the passing percentage score for the course is 60%, there is a marker on the vertical axis at 60% so that you can compare your total score with the required passing score. If the course awards a grade of B for scores of 50% and higher, and a grade of A for scores 75% and higher, then there are markers on the vertical axis at 50% and 75%, labelled “B” and “A” respectively.
Note
In the progress chart, assigments are grouped by type. For example, all homework sections are listed together, then all quizzes, then exams.
The bar for each assignment reflects your total score for all the problems in that assignment. For individual problem scores, see Grading Details below the chart.
Some courses allow some number of graded assignments to be automatically dropped from your final score. For example, out of 8 quizzes, a course might have the lowest scoring quiz excluded from all learners’ final scores. A dropped assignment is indicated in the chart by an x above the horizontal axis.
The Progress page includes your scores for individual problems within an assignment. Below the grading chart is a listing of course sections in the order that they occur in the course.
For each problem in a graded assignment, the points that you earned out of the possible points is shown with the label Problem Scores. Scores for ungraded problems are shown with the label Practice Scores. Sections that do not have any problems are labelled as having no problem scores.
Your course might be set up to issue certificates as evidence that you successfully completed the course. Different types of certificates might be available for courses you take. For information about the certificates that your course offers, contact the course team or institution that created your course.
In addition, you might be able to earn badges for achievements such as completing a course or a series of courses, or for participating in course activities. The badges that you can earn depend on how badges have been set up for the course platform that you are taking a course on.
Some courses issue certificates, which you can access from your dashboard.
The following examples show the View Certificate option on a learner dashboard on the edx.org website and on the mobile app.
To open a web certificate in your browser, select View Certificate. You can then share or print your web certificate.
To print a web certificate, follow these steps.
To print your web certificate in the most professional looking format, follow these guidelines.
If badges are available for your courses, you can see the badges you have earned in the Accomplishments section of your profile.
You can share any badge that you earned, including certificate badges, to a badging site such as Mozilla Backpack.
Most edX courses are instructor-paced: they follow a schedule that the instructor sets, with assignments and exams that have specific due dates. EdX also offers a number of self-paced courses, which allow you to progress through the course at your own speed.
On the edx.org home page, an indication next to the course start date lets you know if a course is self-paced.
Instructor-paced courses follow a set schedule. Course materials become available at specific times as the course progresses. Assignments have due dates, and exams have start and end dates. On the Course page, indicators show when you have a graded assignment, as well as the due date for the assignment.
Self-paced courses do not follow a set schedule. Course materials do not become available according to a schedule, but are completely available as soon as the course begins. Assignments and exams do not have start or due dates. The course shows indicators for graded assignments, but not due dates.
In self-paced courses, you can submit an assignment or exam at any time before the course end date.
This topic describes how to search for edX course content.
You can search much of the content of your edX courses, including the course title, description, text, and video transcripts. You can search for a term in an individual course, or you can search for that term in all of the courses that you are 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 inside the course.
Note
You can search for most content that you see on the Course page. However,course exercises and problems, including homework and exam problems, are not currently searchable.
The search engine returns not only exact matches for search terms, but also matches that contain the search term. These matches must contain the entire search term. For example, a search for “grade” returns results for “grades” and “graded”, but a search for “graded” would not return “grade” or “grades”.
To search for a term in a single course, go to the Course page for that course, enter your search term in the Search field in the upper left corner of the page, and then press Enter. Your search term can contain more than one word.
After you press Enter, your search results appear in the right pane. The search results include the following items.
To view your search term in the body of the course, select View to the right of the search result.
Note
You cannot use the Search field on the Course tab to search course discussions. To search course discussions, use the Search all posts field on the Discussions tab. For more information, see Participating in Course Discussions.
You can search for a term across all your edX courses. To do this, go to your dashboard, enter your search term in the Search Your Courses field in the upper right corner of the page, and then press Enter. Your search term can contain more than one word.
After you press Enter, your search results appear on the Search Results page. The search results include the following items.
To view your search term in the body of the course, select View to the right of the search result.
This topic describes how to complete any prerequisites that might be required in your edX course.
Some edX courses require that you have a particular set of skills or knowledge before you begin the course. Many courses include information about these general requirements on their About pages.
In addition to requiring general skills and knowledge, some courses require learners to pass a specific prerequisite edX course or pass an entrance exam.
When a course has a prerequisite edX course, you can see information about the prerequisite course on the About page for the course that you want to take.
It is possible to enroll in the course even if you have not taken the prerequisite course. When you enroll in the course, the course appears on your Student Dashboard. However, you cannot select the course to access the course content. Below the name of the course, you can see the name of the prerequisite course, as well as a link to that course.
When you select the link, the About page for the prerequisite course opens. You can then enroll in the prerequisite course.
After you successfully complete the prerequisite course, the other course becomes available on your dashboard, just like other edX courses. You can then select the course to access any available materials.
If you enroll in a course that requires an entrance exam, the course appears on your Student Dashboard. However, you cannot access all released course content immediately.
The first time that you access the course, the course opens to the Entrance Exam page. At the top of the page, you can see a message that lists your current score and the minimum score that is required to pass the entrance exam. You can begin the exam immediately.
To take the exam, answer all the available questions, and then select Check to submit your answers.
To see your score on the exam, refresh the page after you submit your answers. The message at the top of the page tells you if you have passed the exam. If you refresh the page before you answer all the questions in the exam, the message tells you your current score.
After you pass the entrance exam, in addition to the message at the top of the page, you can see all of the currently available course sections in the course navigation pane, and you can access all available course materials.
The course team can allow learners to skip the entrance exam. If a course team member allows you to skip the entrance exam, you do not see the entrance exam when you access the course.
When you begin a course, on the Course page you can see the sections of the course content in the course navigation pane. You can view the sections in the course, select each one to view its subsections, and select the subsections to view the course material .
In some courses, all of the sections of the course content are visible in the course navigation pane when you open the course for the first time. In other courses, additional content becomes available as you work, either because it was scheduled for release on a specific date, or because you completed required content that allowed you to proceed to further content.
Not all courses include scheduled course content or prerequisites. Your course might display all of the course content in the course navigation pane as soon as you begin taking it.
If you do not see the course content that you expect, you can check for information about the course schedule and content prerequisites on the course Home page or course discussions.
All edX courses include videos, and edX has its own video player. Most of the controls on the player will be familiar to you if you have watched online videos before. However, the edX video player has some extra features you may not have seen.
The following image shows the video player in the middle of a video, followed by an explanation of each option or control on the video player.
Note
The illustration that follows shows the video player for a video that has all of the possible features available. Only the controls that apply to a specific video will actually be present when you use the video player in a course.
Play/pause: You can play the video by selecting this control. Select this control again to pause the video.
Time: The first number indicates the length of time the video has already played. The second number indicates the total length of the video.
Playback bar: You can go to a different point in the video by selecting and dragging this control or by using the left and right arrow keys.
Speed: If you want the video to play faster or slower, you can select different speeds using this control.
Volume: You can use this control to change the volume of the video.
HD: You can play the video in high-definition visual resolution by selecting this option if HD quality is available for the video. This option works best if you have a fast Internet connection. Select this control again to play the video in standard resolution.
Full screen: You can expand the video to fill your browser window by selecting this control. To return to default mode, press ESC on your keyboard or select this control again.
Show or hide closed captioning: You can show an overlaid transcript of the audio portion of the file by selecting this control. If you show the captions, you can move them to different areas on the video screen by dragging and dropping them. To hide the captions, select this control again.
Note
In some cases, two sets of captions can appear when you select CC. This situation can occur if YouTube is the host service for the video and your YouTube account settings for playback are set to always show captions. As a result, YouTube and your course might both provide captions for the video. To correct this problem, select CC again or change your YouTube account setting.
Show transcript: You can show a complete, scrolling transcript of the audio portion of the file to the right of the video by selecting this control. Many course teams set video transcripts to play by default when your video starts. Select this control again to hide the transcript.
Language menu: You can select a different language for the closed captions and the transcript with this control if translations are available.
Download video: You can download the video to watch later with this option (if available for the video).
Download transcript: You can download the video’s transcript with this option. You can download the transcript as a SubRip (.srt) file or as a text (.txt) file. You can open files of both types in a text editor such as Notepad.
Transcript: You can scroll through the transcript and select any line to go to that point in the video.
License or Copyright: If the course team reserves rights or specifies a Creative Commons license for the video that is different from the course-wide license, that information appears below the video player. For Creative Commons licenses, you can select the license to open a web site with more information about your rights.
For more information, see Understanding How Courses and Videos Are Licensed.
For a demonstration of the edX video player, see Videos on edX in the edX DemoX course.
Course discussions give you the opportunity to start conversations with other students, ask questions that other students or the course team can answer, and participate in the course community. If you have not previously participated in an online discussion forum, see the introductory Anatomy of edX Course Discussions section.
This section also describes features of edX discussions that can make your participation more effective.
This topic describes how course discussions are organized in an edX course.
Discussions are made up of posts, responses, and comments. Together, posts, responses, and comments are known as contributions, and a post together with its responses and comments is an exchange.
The following conversation shows each of these contributions:
Post: "Please introduce yourself."
- Response: "My name is Lee and I teach secondary school maths in Canberra,
Australia."
- Response: "Hello everyone, I am Sumei from Hong Kong, China."
- Comment: "Hi Sumei, I am taking this course in Hong Kong too. Maybe we
should make a study group!"
- Comment: "I'd like to join the Hong Kong study group too, I think it
will help me keep up with the homework."
- Response: "Hi from Johannesburg! I am taking the course to prepare for my
matric exams."
You can see posts, comments, and responses, as well as other information about the course discussions and individual posts, on the Discussion page.
When you go to the Discussion page in your course, you see a page that looks like the following image. You can select the image to enlarge it.
When you select the Discussion page, information about how to use edX discussions appears with information about how you can interact with posts. Each of these interactions is covered later in this topic. For more information, see the following sections.
On this page, you can also specify that you want to receive an email message each day that summarizes discussion activity for the posts you are following. To receive this daily digest, select Receive updates.
After you select the title of a post, this area of the page shows the post, responses to the post, and comments on responses. The page is formatted to help you distinguish posts, responses, and comments.
These elements appear in the image below. You can select the image to enlarge it.
Additionally, there are several option icons available for every post, response, and comment. The option icons that appear depend on the type of contribution. (For more information, see Providing Feedback on Contributions.)
The icons that you see might include the following options.
This topic describes how to explore discussion posts in your edX course.
Finding out whether someone else has already asked the same question or initiated a conversation about the subject that interests you, and then reading and contributing to that exchange instead of starting a new one, helps make the time that everyone spends with the course discussions more productive. You can search for something specific, or you can browse through the posts in a single discussion topic.
To search for text, select All Discussions and enter a phrase, a word, or part of a word in the Search all posts field in the discussion navigation pane. When you press Enter, the search tries to find:
Every post in the course discussions has an associated topic. When a participant creates a post, the participant selects a topic from a list of topics that the course team has provided. You can look through topics in the discussions to find one that interests you.
Discussion topics for edX courses can be course-wide or content-specific.
On the Discussion page, you can view both course-wide and content-specific discussions. Select All Discussions in the discussion navigation pane to see all of the discussion topics in the course. To see all of the posts in an individual topic, select the topic name.
Note that course-wide topics do not have other topics indented below them, while content-specific topics are indented under a category name. For content-specific topics, you can select either the category name to see all of the posts in that category, or you can select an individual topic name.
Content-specific topics are located in specific units in the course. They typically appear below the content they apply to.
You can access a content-specific topic by viewing the unit that contains the topic. To see the discussion, select Show Discussion.
You can also use the Discussion page to access a discussion in the unit where that topic is located.
To limit the posts shown on the Discussion page, you can select one of the filter options. The Show all filter in the discussion navigation pane is selected by default.
Pinned posts appear at the top of the list of posts in the discussion navigation pane when you view all discussions. Pinned posts can contain important information about the course or any part of the course, such as a particular video or problem. The pinned post can originate from anyone in the course, including other learners or members of the discussion moderation team, but only members of the moderation team can pin a post.
You can review all the posts, responses, and comments that a specific participant has made. You can select other learners, or members of the course team. To do this, select the username that appears at the top of any of the participant’s contributions. A page opens that shows the following information about the participant.
This topic describes how to add, edit, and delete contributions to discussions.
When you add a post to a discussion in your course, you decide what type of post to make and the topic of the post. You then add the post either directly inside the course unit or on the Discussion page.
To make sure that other students and the course team can find and respond to your post, decide what type of post you want to make: either question or discussion.
If you have any difficulty deciding which type of post you want to add, think about whether you want to get concrete information (a question) or start an open-ended conversation (a discussion). If you are asking a question about the course and need an answer from the course team, be sure to create your post as a question, so that the course team sees that a response is required and responds appropriately.
After you make your post, on the Discussion page for your course, a question mark image identifies posts that ask questions and a conversation bubble image identifies posts that start discussions.
Note
You can change the post type from discussion to question or vice versa at any time after you add your post. For more information, see Edit or Delete a Post, Response, or Comment.
Every post in the course discussions has an associated topic. The course team creates the list of discussion topics for each course, and you choose a topic from that list when you create your post. Before you add a post, you should look through the list of topics in the course discussions so that you can decide which topic is the most appropriate for your post. For more information, see Exploring Discussion Posts.
After you decide on a post type and topic, you can add your post on the Discussion page or in the body of the course.
You can add a post for course-wide or content-specific discussion topics on the Discussion page.
Select the Discussion page.
In the upper-right corner, select New Post.
Select Question or Discussion to select the type of post that you want to create.
Select the most appropriate discussion topic for your post.
In the Title box, enter a short, descriptive title. The title is the part of your post that others see when they are browsing on the Discussion page or scrolling through one of the content-specific topics.
Enter the complete text of your post. To format the text or add links or images, select the buttons above the text field.
In a few courses, you can add posts, responses, and comments anonymously. If this is the case, a Post Anonymously check box appears under the field where you enter your text. When you post anonymously, the discussion moderation team can see your username, but other students cannot.
If you come to a discussion as you work through the units in your course, or if you know where in the course a particular discussion originates, you can add a post for that discussion right from the unit in your course. This only applies to content-specific discussions.
Select Course.
Open the unit in the course that includes the discussion topic that you want to add to.
Select Show Discussion to read what others have already contributed to the conversation.
You can scroll through the posts that have already been added: the title and the first sentence or two of each post appear. To read an entire post, view the responses to it, and see any comments, select Expand discussion.
Select New Post to add a post.
Select Question or Discussion to select the type of post you want to create.
In the Title field, enter a short, descriptive identifier for your post. The title is the part of your post that others see when they are browsing on the Discussion page or scrolling through one of the content-specific topics.
Enter the complete text of your post. Select the buttons above the text field to see options for formatting the text and for adding links or images.
In a few courses, you can add posts, responses, and comments anonymously. If this is the case, a Post Anonymously check box appears under the field where you enter your text. When you post anonymously, the discussion moderation team can see your username, but other students cannot.
To participate in an ongoing discussion, you reply to the initial post by adding a response, or expand on a particular response by adding a comment.
The same options for formatting the text and for adding links or images are available for responses and comments as for posts.
You can add a response or comment to course-wide or content-specific discussion topics on the Discussion page.
On the Discussion page, find the post that you want to contribute to. To help you decide where to add your thoughts, review the current responses and their comments.
For more information about finding posts by searching, sorting, or using filters, see Exploring Discussion Posts.
Add a response or comment.
You can add a response or comment to a content-specific discussion topic inside the course.
In the unit that contains the discussion topic where you want to make your contribution, select Show Discussion.
Scroll to the post that you want to contribute to. To help you decide where to add your thoughts, review the current responses and their comments.
Under the text of the post, select Expand discussion.
Add a response or comment.
- To add a response to the post, select Add A Response. When your response is complete, select Submit.
- To add a comment to a response, select inside the Add a comment field below the response. When your comment is complete, select Submit.
You can edit or delete your own posts, responses, or comments at any time. You cannot edit or delete contributions from other students.
Locate the contribution that you want to edit or delete, either in the body of the course or on the Discussion page.
In the upper-right corner of the contribution, select the “More” icon (...). A menu opens.
Edit or delete the contribution.
- To edit the contribution, select Edit, make the changes that you want in the text editor that opens, and then select Update Response. For posts, you can change the post topic and the post type as well as the text of the post.
- To delete the contribution, select Delete, and then select OK in the pop-up confirmation box.
This topic describes how to keep up with discussion activity in your edX course.
The list of posts in the discussion navigation pane on the Discussion page provides visual cues to help you distinguish posts that are new, or that have responses or comments that you have not read yet, from exchanges that you have already read completely.
Color-coded callout images appear when you sort the list of posts by recent activity or by most activity. This is the default view when you open the Discussion page.
The number in each callout image indicates the total number of contributions in the exchange (the post and its responses and comments). To see the number of contributions that you have not read yet, move your cursor over the callout image.
You can also sort the posts in by the number of votes received. To do this, select the sorting list in the discussion navigation pane, and then select by most votes.
If you sort by most votes, the number of votes that the post has received appears in place of the callouts. For more information, see Vote for Posts or Responses.
You have the option to receive an email message each day that summarizes discussion activity for the posts you are following. To receive this daily digest, select Discussion to go to the discussions home page, and then select the Receive updates check box in the right pane.
This topic describes how to provide feedback on discussion contributions.
As you read the contributions that other students and course team members make to discussion topics, you can provide feedback without writing a complete response or comment. You can:
To select a feedback option, you use the icons at the top right of each post, response, or comment. When you move your cursor over these icons a label appears.
When you select the “More” icon, a menu of available options opens. Options vary depending on whether the contribution is a post, response, or comment, and on whether you are a student or a member of the discussion team.
If you like a post or one of its responses, you can vote for it. Hover over the plus sign (+) icon for the post or response, and then select Vote.
You can sort the list of posts so that the posts with the most votes appear at the top: select the drop-down list of sorting options and select by most votes.
You can see the number of votes that each post has received in the list of posts. (Votes for responses are not included in the number.)
If you find a post particularly interesting and want to return to it in the future, you can follow it. To follow a post, hover over the star icon for the post, and then select Follow.
Each post that you follow appears with a “Following” indicator in the list of posts.
To list only the posts that you are following, regardless of the discussion topic they apply to, select the drop-down Discussion list and select Posts I’m Following.
Anyone in a course can answer questions. Just add a response with your answer to the question post.
You can indicate that a response to your own question post is the correct answer. To do this, hover over the check mark icon for the response, and then select Mark as Answer.
After at least one response is marked as the answer, a check or tick mark image replaces the question mark image for the post in the discussion navigation pane.
Note
The discussion moderation team can mark any response as correct. Students can only mark responses as correct for their own posts.
You can flag any post, response, or comment for a discussion moderator to review: view the contribution, select the “More” icon, and then select Report.
This topic describes how to enter mathematical and scientific expressions for problems in your edX course.
For some math, science, and other problems, you must enter a numerical or math expression, such as a formula, into a response field. You enter your response as plain text, and the edX system then converts your text into numbers and symbols that appear below the response field.
Additionally, some edX courses offer a calculator tool that you can use while you work through the course. If the course has a calculator, the calculator appears as a small icon on all pages in the body of the course.
To use the calculator, select the calculator icon. To close the calculator, select the X.
Both the calculator and the response fields in math problems accept a selection of characters that represent numbers, operators, constants, functions, and other mathematical concepts. You might recognize parts of this system if you have used math programs before.
Note
The calculator includes an information page that shows an abbreviated version
of the information in this topic. To see the information page, select the
circled i
icon next to the input field.
When you enter your plain text into the calculator or the response field, follow these guidelines.
mc^2
type m*c^2
, and instead of 5a+4b+3c
type
5*a+4*b+3*c
.( )
) to specify the order of
operations and to make your expression as clear as possible. Use curved
parentheses (( )
) only. Do not use brackets ([ ]
) or braces ({
}
).x^n
or x^(n-1)
.v_IN-v_OUT
. Note, however,
that subscripts cannot currently include operators or parentheses.For more information about the types of characters you can use, see below.
Note
The edX system accepts both constants and metric affixes. Be careful to distinguish between constants and metric affixes. Constants stand alone, while metric affixes must be combined with numbers.
For example, c
can be a constant representing the speed of light or a
metric affix meaning “centi”. When you use c
as a metric affix, do not
include a space between c
and the number. When you use c
as a
constant, indicate multiplication explicitly. The following examples show the
difference:
2c
= 0.02
(2 multiplied by 0.01)2*c
= 599584916.0
(the speed of light multiplied by 2)2M
= 2,000,000
(2 multiplied by 1,000,000)2*M
= 2 multiplied by the variable MFor more information, see Scientific Notation and Metric Affixes or Constants.
You can use the following types of numbers.
The largest number you can use is 1.7977e+308, which is the largest float possible in the Python programming language.
You can enter metric affixes or scientific notation to indicate very large or
very small numbers. For scientific notation, you can type either a caret (^) or
the letter e
followed by a number to indicate an exponent. You can use both
positive and negative exponents.
For example, to indicate 0.012
, you can enter either of the following
expressions:
1.2*10^-2
1.2e-2
To indicate -440,000
, you can enter either of the following expressions:
-4.4*10^5
-4.4e5
The following table shows how to enter numbers with metric affixes, with
scientific notation, and with e
notation.
To enter this number | Use this metric affix | Use this scientific notation | Use this e notation |
Other notation |
---|---|---|---|---|
0.1 | 1d (deci) | 10^-1 | 1e-1 | |
0.01 | 1c (centi) | 10^-2 | 1e-2 | 1% (percent) |
0.001 | 1m (milli) | 10^-3 | 1e-3 | |
0.000001 | 1u (micro) | 10^-6 | 1e-6 | |
0.000000001 | 1n (nano) | 10^-9 | 1e-9 | |
0.000000000001 | 1p (pico) | 10^-12 | 1e-12 | |
1000 | 1k (kilo) | 10^3 | 1e3 | |
1,000,000 | 1M (mega) | 10^6 | 1e6 | |
1,000,000,000 | 1G (giga) | 10^9 | 1e9 | |
1,000,000,000,000 | 1T (tera) | 10^12 | 1e12 |
Note
When you use metric affixes or e
notation, make sure you do not
include spaces between the number and the metric affix or the e
.
You can use several different constants in your mathematical expressions.
Note
When you enter constants multiplied by a number, make sure to
indicate the multiplication explicitly. For example, enter 2*c
instead of
2c
and -4*i
instead of -4i
.
Constant | Value |
---|---|
c |
The speed of light in m/s (2.998^8) |
e |
Euler’s number (2.718...) |
g |
Gravity (9.80 m/s^2) |
i |
The square root of -1 |
j |
The square root of -1 |
k |
The Boltzmann constant (~1.38^-23 in Joules/Kelvin) |
pi |
The ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter (3.14159...) |
q |
The fundamental charge (~1.602^-19 Coloumbs) |
T |
The positive difference between 0K and 0°C (273.15) |
To use any of the following Greek letters, type the name of the letter in the calculator or the response field.
alpha | beta | gamma | delta |
epsilon | varepsilon | zeta | eta |
theta | vartheta | iota | kappa |
lambda | mu | nu | xi |
pi | rho | sigma | tau |
upsilon | phi | varphi | chi |
psi | omega |
Note
epsilon
is the lunate version, whereas varepsilon
looks
like a backward 3.
To use a function, type the letters that represent the function, and then
surround the expression in that function with parentheses. For example, to
represent the square root of 4*a+b
, type sqrt(4*a+b)
.
You can use the following functions.
fact(3)
or factorial(3)
. You must use
integers. For example, you cannot enter fact(1.5)
.||
). For example, 1 || 2
represents
the resistance of a pair of parallel resistors (of resistance 1 and 2 ohms),
evaluating to 2/3 (ohms).This section describes timed exams and explains how to complete them.
Timed exams are sets of problems that you must complete in a limited amount of time. The score you receive becomes part of your course progress record.
Timed exams are indicated in the course navigation pane by a clock icon and the label Timed Exam.
After you begin taking a timed exam, a timer on the course page displays the amount of time that you have remaining to complete the exam. You cannot pause or reset a timed exam. When there is no time remaining, the course page automatically submits your exam.
The time limit for an exam applies to all of the units in an exam section. If an exam includes problems on multiple unit pages, you must complete the problems on each unit page before you submit the exam or before the time runs out.
You can request additional time to complete a timed exam. Course teams can increase the time allowed for individual learners if needed. You can only request additional time before you start a timed exam. For more information, see Requesting Additional Time.
To take a timed exam, follow these steps.
Open the timed exam page in the course.
Find the length of the time limit on the exam page. Make sure that you have enough time available to complete the exam.
Note
You will not be able to pause or restart the exam after you begin.
Course teams can allow individual learners to take additional time, if needed. For more information, see Requesting Additional Time.
Select I am ready to start this timed exam.
Complete the problems in each unit of the exam. Select Check to score the problems in the unit. If you do not select Check, your responses will not be scored.
Monitor the amount of time remaining in the time display at the top of the course page.
When 20% of the time remains, the time display bar darkens to alert you. When 5% of the time remains, the text on the time display bar becomes bold.
After you have completed and checked all the units in the exam, select End My Exam at the top of the course page. If you run out of time, the exam will end automatically.
Note
You must select Check to score the problems in each unit of an exam. If you submit an exam without selecting Check in a unit, your exam results will not include scores for any of the problems in that unit.
You can request additional time to complete a timed exam. Course teams and instructors can increase the time allowed for individual learners to accomodate specific needs.
You can only request additional time before you begin a timed exam. After you start an exam, the course team cannot allow more time for that exam attempt.
Course teams decide whether or not to grant additional time based on the criteria that they choose. You can get information about the availability of additional time from your course team.
If you encounter a multiple choice question that is followed by a field for an explanation, there are actually several more steps that you need to complete for the assignment. These assignments involve sharing what you have learned with other people in your online course. They give you an opportunity to learn from each other.
In a classroom setting, this type of assignment is sometimes called a “peer instruction” or “clicker” question.
This section describes how you complete these interactive assignments.
When a multiple choice question also requires an explanation, the next step in the assignment is to share your rationale for your answer with other learners, and to see the choices and explanation that other learners shared.
Names are not shown with the responses. As a result, you can focus on contributing the best answer possible, without worrying about whether your reasoning, or your spelling, is exactly correct.
Then, you get to apply what you learned from the others: you have another chance to answer the question.
In this type of assignment, you see a multiple choice question. After you select an answer you complete these steps.
Write an explanation for why you chose your answer.
This step is your opportunity to provide a persuasive argument about why your answer is the correct one. You might include references to a course video or textbook, or describe how you arrived at the choice you made.
Together, the answer that you chose and this explanation are your initial response. When you select Next, your initial response is added to the collection of initial responses by all of the other course participants.
Review the initial responses that other participants in the course submitted. The course team decides how many you see. You might see one response for each of the possible answer choices, or a set that is chosen completely at random.
This step gives you a chance to learn from the explanations that other learners submitted, and reassess your own understanding of the topic.
Because they are part of the collection of initial responses, your answer and explanation are likely to be shown to other learners when they get to this part of the assignment.
Decide whether you want to change your initial response by selecting a different answer choice, revising your explanation, or both.
This step is optional. You can submit a final response that is the same as your initial response, or change it completely. When you select Next Step, you learn the correct answer.
Review the correct answer choice and the explanation provided by the course team.
Use the graphs to compare the percentage of your fellow learners who selected each answer. The first graph shows the percentage of learners who selected each answer initially, and the second graph shows the percentage of learners who selected each answer after they had the opportunity to review the explantions that other learners provided. Compare your own choices, and the correct one, to your peers’.
This step might be just as thought provoking as the other steps.
Note
The graphs appear after 10 learners submit their final responses. If the graphs do not appear, give the others taking the course some time, and then refresh your browser page.
This topic describes how to work with open response assessments in your edX course.
In an open response assessment, you provide written responses to questions that might not have simple or definitive answers. For some open response assessments, you can submit an image or other file to accompany a written response.
In addition to your own responses to the questions in the assignment, open response assessments have several steps that can include assessment training steps, peer assessments, self assessments, and staff assessments.
In training steps, you perform assessments of sample responses that the course team provides. The goal is to give the sample response the same grade that a member of the course team would have given. For more information, see Learn to Assess Responses.
In peer assessments, you perform assessments of responses that other learners in the course have submitted, and other learners in the course also assess your responses. For each assignment, your course team decides the number of peer assessments that you have to perform. For more information, see Assess Peer Responses.
In self assessments, you assess your own responses. For more information, see Assess Your Response.
In staff assessments, members of the course team assess your responses. For more information, see Staff Grade.
Note
Course staff can grade your open response assignment even if a staff assessment step is not included in the assignment. This might happen if, for example, you receive peer assessments of your response that are inappropriate. In such cases, course staff can perform an assessment of your response that overrides any peer assessment grades.
Every open response assessment has a rubric that the course team provides, to be used as guidance for grading. The rubric is a list of expectations that the responses should meet. Grading for all the types of assessments in an open response assessment is done by comparing each response against the same rubric.
Rubrics consist of criteria and options.
The following image shows a rubric with two criteria. Each of the criteria has several options.
When you assess a response, you select the option that best describes how well the response met each of the criteria.
Some open response assessments provide a Top Responses section that shows the top scoring responses for the assignment and the scores that these responses received. If it is provided, this section appears below your score after you complete each step of the assignment.
When you come to an open response assessment in the course, you see the questions you must answer, with a response field for each question in the assignment. After you enter and submit your responses, you assess some of your peers’ responses, your own responses, or both, depending on the assignment. Below the final response field in the Your Response step, you can see the steps that your assignment includes.
The following topics describe how you complete an open response assessment that includes a learner training step, a peer assessment step, a self assessment step, and a staff grade step.
At any time during an assessment, you can see your progress at the bottom of the page under Your Grade. A message indicates the steps that must still be completed before you can receive your final grade for the assignment. For example, you might see the following message.
Not Completed
You have not completed the peer assessment step and self assessment step of
this problem.
To submit your response, follow these steps.
Read each question carefully. Some course teams include important information in the question, such as how long a response must be, or specific topics that your response must cover.
Note
The total word count for all responses within the assessment cannot be more than 10,000 words (approximately the equivalent of 20 pages of 8.5x11 inch paper, with text single-spaced).
For each question, enter your response into the field under Your Response.
When you have completed responses for all the questions, select Submit your response and move to the next step.
If you need more time, you can select Save Your Progress to save a draft of your responses, and then come back and submit them later.
After you submit your responses, the next step, usually either an assessment training step or a peer assessment step, starts immediately. However, you do not have to start the next step right away. If you want to stop working and come back later, just refresh or reopen your browser when you come back.
Note
You can view your own responses at any time after you submit them. To do this, for the response you want to view, select the Your Response heading to expand the response field. Your response appears, along with the status of your response, and information about additional steps you have to complete before you receive your grade.
For some assignments, you might be asked to submit a file along with your text response. Those assignments include Choose File and Upload your file options below the response field. Note the following requirements.
To upload your file, follow these steps.
The name of the file that you selected and uploaded appears below the response field.
You can replace the file that you uploaded with a different one until you submit your response. To do so, follow steps 1-3 again.
As part of an open response assessment, you learn how to assess responses effectively by reviewing and assessing sample responses provided by the course team. You then try to give the sample responses the same scores that the course team selected.
Note
Not all course teams provide sample responses for training. If the course team did not provide sample responses, this step is not included in the assignment.
After you submit your own response, a sample response appears along with the rubric for the assignment. Read the sample response and the rubric carefully, select the options that you think best reflect the response, and then select Compare your selections with the instructor’s selections.
Learning to Assess Responses
Your assessment differs from the instructor's
assessment of this response. Review the response and consider why the
instructor may have assessed it differently. Then, try the assessment again.
For each of the criteria, you see one of the following two messages, depending on whether your selections matched those defined by the course team.
Selected Options Agree
The option you selected is the option that the instructor selected.
Selected Options Differ
The option you selected is not the option that the instructor selected.
In the following example, the learner chose one correct option and one incorrect option.
You continue to assess the sample response until the options you select for all criteria match the options defined by the course team.
When you have successfully assessed all of the sample responses, you move to the next step in the assignment.
When the peer assessment step starts, you see each original question, another learner’s responses, and the rubric for the assignment. Above the responses you can see how many responses you are expected to assess and how many you have already assessed.
You assess other learners’ responses by selecting options in the rubric. This process will be familiar to you if your assignment included the learn to assess responses step. Additionally, this step has a field below the rubric where you can provide comments about the learner’s responses.
Note
Some assessments might have a Comments field for one or more of the assessment’s individual criteria. You can enter up to 300 characters in these fields. In the following image, both criteria have a Comments field. There is also a field for overall comments on the response.
After you have selected options in the rubric and provided additional comments about the responses, select Submit your assessment and move to response #<number>.
When you submit your assessment of the first learner’s responses, the next set of responses opens for you. Assess these responses in the same way that you assessed the first learner’s responses, and then submit your assessment. You will repeat these steps until you have assessed the required number of responses. The number in the upper right corner of the step is updated as you assess each set of responses.
If there are no new submitted responses available for grading, a status message indicates that no peer responses are currently available for you to assess, and that you should check back later.
If you have assessed the required number of peer responses, the peer assessment step “collapses” so that only the Assess Peers heading is visible.
If you want to, you can assess more peer responses than the assignment requires. To assess more responses, select the Assess Peers heading to expand the step, and then select Continue Assessing Peers.
When you have completed the required number of peer assessments, your self assessment opens. You see your responses along with the same rubric that you used in the peer assessment step. Assess your responses, then select Submit Your Assessment.
In some assignments, a staff assessment step is included for a member of the course team to grade your responses. You do not need to take any action for this step. The status of the Staff Grade step changes to Complete when a member of the course team has completed grading your response.
If a Staff Grade step exists in your assignment, you receive your final assignment grade when staff grading is complete, even if your response has not been assessed by the required number of peer reviewers.
Note
Course staff can grade your open response assignment even if a staff assessment step is not included in the assignment. This might happen if for example you receive peer assessments of your response that are inappropriate. In such cases, course staff can perform an assessment of your response that overrides any peer assessment grades. If a member of the course staff has graded your response, a Staff Grade section appears in the grading details for your assignment.
After you submit your self assessment, if other learners are still assessing your responses, you see the following message under the Assess Your Response step.
Your Grade: Waiting for Peer Assessment
Your response is still undergoing peer assessment. After your peers have
assessed your response, you will see their feedback and receive your final
grade.
If you see this message, keep checking back periodically until the peer assessments of your work are complete.
When peer assessment is complete, and if the assignment does not include a staff assessment step, you can see the scores you received from all of the peers who scored your work, as well as your self assessment. You can also see any additional comments that your peers have provided.
If you want to, you can provide feedback on the peer scores that you received, under Provide Feedback on Peer Assessments.
If the assignment included a staff assessment step, you receive your final grade when a member of the course team has graded your response. If a staff assessment step is included in the assignment, peer assessment grades and comments are included in the assignment grade details, but the staff grade becomes the final grade.
Note
If a staff grade is provided in the assignment, either because a staff assessment step was included or because a member of the course team graded your response to override inappropriate peer assessments, peer assessments are not taken into account in the grading. If a staff grade exists, it is always your final grade.
Peer assessments are scored by criteria. An individual criterion’s score is the median, not the average, of the scores that each peer assessor gave that criterion. For example, if the Ideas criterion in a peer assessment receives 10 from one learner, 9 from a second learner, and 5 from a third learner, the score for that criterion is 9 (the median), not 8 (the average).
Your final score for a peer assessment is the sum of the median scores for each individual criterion.
For example, a response might receive the following scores from peer assessors.
Criterion Name | Peer 1 | Peer 2 | Peer 3 | Median |
---|---|---|---|---|
Ideas (out of 10) | 10 | 7 | 8 | 8 |
Content (out of 10) | 7 | 9 | 8 | 8 |
Grammar (out of 5) | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
To calculate the final score, the system adds the median score for each criterion.
Ideas median (8 out of 10) + Content median (8 out of 10) + Grammar median (4 out of 5) = final score (20 out of 25)
Note, again, that your final score is not the median of the scores that each individual peer assessor gave the response.
If the course team included a Top Responses section, you can review the highest-scoring responses submitted for each question. This section appears only after you have completed all the steps of the assignment.
If a member of the course team deems a response that you have submitted to be inappropriate, she can cancel that response and remove it from peer grading. In the open response assessment you see an indicator that your submission was canceled, with the date and time of the cancellation, and a comment by the course team member about the reason.
The course team member might allow you to submit a replacement response for the canceled one, or she might not. If she does not allow you to submit a replacement response, your grade is zero for the assignment.
If you want to try an example open response assessment problem, check out the edX demonstration course, edX Demo course. In addition to giving you a tour of a typical edX course, the edX Demo course contains information about open response assessments and an example peer assessment.
This topic describes how to work with files and calendars in your edX course.
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.
Note
Google services are not available in some regions and countries. If Google services are not available in your area, you might see an “image unavailable” message in the place of the Google file or calendar. The course team might provide alternative resources if Google services are not available for you.
Your course might include the following types of Google Drive files.
For example, your course might include a spreadsheet that resembles this one.
You can interact with these Google Drive files in your course. For example, you can complete forms, look through the slides in a presentation, and enter different values in a spreadsheet. However, you cannot save changes that you make to the Google Drive file.
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.
By default, the view that opens in the course calendar is the view that the course team set. You can change the view by selecting the Week, Month, or Agenda tabs in the upper-right corner.
When you view the calendar in your course, the dates and times on the calendar automatically adjust to your local time. Your time zone information appears in the lower-left corner of the screen.
If you have your own Google calendar, you can add the Google calendar from a course to it. After you add a calendar, you see that calendar whenever you view your personal calendar, even if you are not signed in to your edX account. The course information appears together with your own information.
To add the course calendar to your own calendar, view the course calendar in the course, and then select the Google Calendar icon in the lower-right corner of the course calendar.
For more information about Google calendars, see the Google Calendar website.
In some courses, you might be assigned activities or projects that require working in small groups, or teams. Course staff will create topics that you can choose from. You choose a topic that interests you, and join or form a team with other learners who have the same interest to work on the group activity or project together. You can join only one team in your course.
If your course includes teams, your instructor or course staff will provide information about how you should work in teams, guidelines for joining and creating teams, and using discussions within teams.
If your course uses teams, there is a Teams page where you can see the list of topics that the course team has created, and their descriptions.
You can browse the topics to find one that you are interested in working on. Then, view the list of teams that exist within that topic. Teams are always associated with a specific topic.
For each team, you can view the team members, team details, and discussions to help you decide whether you want to join a particular team. If you do not find a team that you want to join, you can create a new team in the topic. For more information, see Browse Topics and Find a Team to Join.
You can belong to only one team at a time. For information about joining and leaving teams, see Join a Team and Leave a Team.
To browse topics and find a team to join, follow these steps.
In the course, select the Teams page.
Select the Browse tab.
On the Browse page, view the list of available topics.
You can sort the topics alphabetically by name, or by the team count in each topic.
When you have found a topic you are interested in, select the arrow button to see the teams that exist in that topic.
You can sort by teams that showed the most recent activity, or by teams with the most open slots.
You can also use keywords to search for teams within a topic. For more information, see Search for a Team.
Each team’s name and description are shown, as well as the number of team members, letting you know whether there is space for you to join.
![]()
To get a better sense of a team’s members, discussion, and communications, select View for a team.
On the Team Details page, you can browse the team’s discussion posts, but you cannot participate unless you are a member of the team.
Note
You can navigate from the Team Details page back to the list of teams in a topic or back to the list of all topics using the breadcrumb links at the top of the page.
You can use keywords to search for teams within a topic that match your interests.
To get a list of teams that match your search keywords, follow these steps.
In the course, select the Teams tab.
On the Teams page, select Browse, then select the topic in which you want to find a team.
In the search field, enter one or more keywords, then press Enter or select the search icon.
Teams within the topic that match your search are displayed.
To clear the existing search term, select the X in the search field.
Note
You can only use whole words for searching teams.
When you have found a team you want to join, select Join Team.
Note
If a team is full, or if you already belong to a team, the Join Team button is not available.
You are added as a member. Your profile is added to the list of team member profiles, and you can participate in the team’s discussions. The team that you joined appears on your My Team page.
Note
You can only belong to one team at a time. If you belong to a team, but find another team that you want to join, you must leave the first team before you can join a new one. For information about leaving a team, see Leave a Team.
Note
EdX recommends that you do not change teams after work in a course has started without carefully considering the impacts to your work and that of your fellow learners.
If you must leave a team, make sure you communicate with your fellow team members and let them know why and when you are leaving. This is especially important if you are part of the way through your course, and you and your team have been working together on a project or activity.
To leave a team that you belong to, follow these steps.
After you leave a team, you are no longer visible in the team membership profiles list, or in the membership count. Although you can still view the team’s discussions, you can no longer participate in them.
If you do not want to join any of the existing teams in a topic, you can create a new team. When you create a new team in a topic, you are automatically added as a member.
Note
You cannot create a team if you already belong to a team.
To create a team, follow these steps.
On the Create New Team page, add a name and description for the team.
In the description, include details about your proposed project or activity to help other learners to decide whether they want to join your team and work with you.
(Optional) Include some optional details for your team. You can specify a language that members would primarily use to communicate with each other, and a country that members would primarily identify with. Keep in mind that if your team details make the team membership seem too selective, other learners might be discouraged from joining.
Note
Be careful in entering your team details. After you save the details for your new team, you cannot change them, and you cannot delete your team.
When you have finished adding your team details, click Create.
Your new team appears in the list of team under your selected topic. You are automatically added as a team member.
After you join a team, you can participate in discussions on your team page with other members.
Although you can view discussions in any team, you must belong to a team to add new posts and responses to the team’s discussion.
Team discussions work in the same way as your course discussions. For information about course discussions, see Anatomy of edX Course Discussions.
If you leave a team, you can view posts that are made, but you can no longer participate in that team’s discussions.
To mark course content so that you can come back to it later, you can bookmark any course page, up to a limit of 100 bookmarks for one course.
The course material that you bookmark is identified in the unit navigation bar on the Course page, or you can see a list of all of your bookmarks on the My Bookmarks page.
Note
You can add up to 100 bookmarks in a course.
For more information, see the following topics.
You can bookmark any page in the course. To bookmark a page, select Bookmark at the upper right of the page.
After you add a bookmark, the Bookmark control changes color, and an indicator for the bookmark appears in the unit navigation bar at the top of the page.
To remove a bookmark from a page, select Bookmark again.
After you remove a bookmark, the Bookmark control changes back to its original color, and the bookmark indicator disappears from the learning sequence.
As you go through the course, you can see which pages are bookmarked in the unit navigation bar on the Course page. You can also see a list of all of your bookmarks on the My Bookmarks page.
To access the My Bookmarks page, select Bookmarks above the course navigation pane.
The My Bookmarks page lists all of your bookmarks in the course, with the most recently created ones at the top. The page includes the location of the bookmark in the course and the date that you added the bookmark.
To go to any bookmark in the course, select View for that bookmark.
This topic describes how to work with notes in your edX course.
As you work through an edX course, you may want to highlight a particular passage or make a note about what you have read. In some edX courses, you can highlight passages and make notes right in the course.
Note
You can create notes for most text in the body of the course. However, notes are currently not available for exercises, videos, or PDF textbooks.
When a course includes the notes feature, every page has a Notes page at the top and a pencil icon in the lower right corner.
Your notes can contain text as well as tags that help you organize and find your notes. You can see individual notes inside the course content, or you can see a list of your notes on the Notes page. For more information, see The Notes Page.
You can use either the mouse or keyboard shortcuts to create, access, and delete notes. For more information about using keyboard shortcuts, see Keyboard Shortcuts for Notes.
To highlight a passage or add a note that includes text and tags, follow these steps.
Select the text that you want to highlight or make the note about. You can select as much text as you want.
When a pencil “edit” icon appears above the selected text, select the icon to open the note editor.
When the note editor opens, enter your note and any tags that you want to add. You can also save the highlight for the passage without entering a note or tag.
To highlight a passage without adding a note or tag, select Save or press Enter. When you move your cursor over the highlighted text, the note field contains the words “no comment”.
To enter a note, select Comments, and then type the text of your note. Your note can contain as many words as you want.
To add one or more tags, select Add some tags here, and then type any tags that you want to add.
Tags cannot contain spaces. If you want to add a tag that has more than one word, type multiple words as one word with no spaces, or use hyphens (-) or underscores (_) to separate words in the tag.
You can view your course notes in two places.
On the Notes page, you can see a list of the notes you have made in your course. You can also search the text of your notes or the tags that you added to your notes.
The Notes page lists your notes by the date you created or edited them, with the most recently modified first. The page shows you both the text that you selected and the note that you made. You can also see the following information next to each note.
To edit a note, follow these steps.
In the course body, move your cursor over the highlighted text until your note appears.
When the note appears, select the pencil icon in the upper right corner to open the note editor.
In the note editor, edit your note, and then select Save.
To delete a note or highlight, follow these steps.
By default, you can see all of your notes. You can hide your notes, and show them again, by selecting the pencil icon in the lower right corner. When the pencil icon has a dark gray background, notes are visible. When the pencil icon has a light gray background, notes are hidden.
Note
If you hide notes, you cannot make new notes. To make new notes, select the pencil icon to show notes.
To search your notes, follow these steps.
You can use keyboard shortcuts to create, edit, and delete your notes.
Note
These keyboard shortcuts are for both PCs and Macintosh computers. However, you can only use these keyboard shortcuts on browsers that support caret browsing.
Before you use the following keyboard shortcuts, you must make sure that notes
are visible. To show or hide notes, press Ctrl + Shift + left bracket ([
).
To create a note using keyboard shortcuts, follow these steps.
]
) to open the note editor. The
note editor opens with the cursor in the text field.To close the note editor without creating a note, press Tab to move to the Cancel button, and then press Enter. You can also press Esc to close the note editor.
To edit or delete a note, follow these steps.
To close the note editor without making any changes, press Esc.
Some courses include a wiki, which provides a public forum for both students and the course team to access, share, and collaboratively edit information about the course. If your course includes a wiki, you access it by selecting the Wiki tab at the top of any page. (If your course does not include a wiki, this tab is not present.)
The instructional team for your course might use the wiki for the following purposes, among others.
As a student, you can perform the following tasks, depending on the permissions that are set for the wiki.
When you add an article to the wiki, be aware of what level you are currently viewing, to make sure that you add your new article to the correct level in the course wiki.
To move down a level in the wiki, select See all children; to move up, select the appropriate level in the wiki breadcrumb trail links at the top of the page.
To add a wiki article at your current level, follow these steps. If you do not have permissions to add an article, when you select Add Article, a message indicates “Permission Denied” .
To add a child article to your current article, follow these steps. If you do not have permissions to add an article, when you select Add Article, a message indicates “Permission Denied” .
If you have permissions to edit an article, you see an Edit button and icon to the right of the article content.
To make changes to a wiki article, follow these steps.
A Filter field is available only if any level of the wiki contains multiple articles.
Enter a text string in the Filter field to find a list of all articles with that text string in their titles.
The wiki includes a change history for each article. You can view each past version of the article, roll back to a selected earlier version of the article, or merge the current version of the article with a selected earlier version.
The wiki for each course is a “child” wiki of the edX-wide wiki. From within any course wiki, selecting the top level Wiki link in the breadcrumb trail in the upper-left corner of the page takes you to the edX-wide wiki. To get back to your course wiki, select the Wiki tab at the top of the page.
This topic describes licenses in your course and restrictions on using course content.
The course author can specify licensing options for course content as well as for each video in the course.
The course and video licenses specify whether and how you can reuse course content.
All Rights Reserved indicates that the course author owns the copyright but reserves all rights for sharing copies of course content or videos. You cannot reuse or republish course content or videos that have All Rights Reserved licenses.
The Creative Commons license indicates that the course author owns the copyright but is granting certain permissions for reuse, depending on the license options selected by the course team.
A Creative Commons license has one or more of the following options.
License Option | Description |
---|---|
Attribution | This option allows you to copy, distribute, display, and perform copyrighted work but only if they give credit the way you request. This option is always selected for edX courses and videos under a Creative Commons license. |
Noncommercial | This option allows you to distribute, display, and perform work–and derivative works based upon it–but for non-commercial purposes only. |
No Derivatives | This option allows you to distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based upon it. This option cannot be in use with the Share Alike option. |
Share Alike | This option allows you to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the work. This option cannot be in use with the No Derivatives option. |
For more information, see the Creative Commons website.
If the course author has set a license for the course, you see the license a the bottom of the page when you view content in the Course tab.
If a video has a different license than the course as a whole, you see the license at the bottom right of the video player.
For a license that reserves some, but not all, rights, you can select the license to get see information about your rights.
The Open edX Learner’s Guide is created using RST files and Sphinx. You, the user community, can help update and revise this documentation project on GitHub:
https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/docs/en_us/open_edx_students/source
To suggest a revision, fork the project, make changes in your fork, and submit a pull request back to the original project: this is known as the GitHub Flow.
All pull requests need approval from edX. For more information, contact edX at docs@edx.org.
Course teams, researchers, developers, learners: the edX community includes groups with a range of reasons for using the platform and objectives to accomplish. To help members of each group learn about what edX offers, reach goals, and solve problems, edX provides a variety of information resources.
To help you find what you need, browse the edX offerings in the following categories.
All members of the edX community are encouraged to make use of the resources described in this preface. We welcome your feedback on these edX information resources. Contact the edX documentation team at docs@edx.org.
The edX Partner Portal is the destination for partners to learn, connect, and collaborate with one another. Partners can explore rich resources and share success stories and best practices while staying up-to-date with important news and updates.
To use the edX Partner Portal, you must register and request verification as an edX partner. If you are an edX partner and have not used the edX Partner Portal, follow these steps.
After you create an account, you can sign up to receive email updates about edX releases, news from the product team, and other announcements. For more information, see Release Announcements by Email.
EdX partner course teams can get technical support in the edX Partner Portal. To access technical support, submit a support ticket, or review any support tickets you have created, go to partners.edx.org and select Course Staff Support at the top of the page. This option is available on every page in the Partner Portal.
The Open edX Portal is the destination for all edX users to learn about the edX roadmap, as well as hosting, extending the edX platform, and contributing to Open edX. In addition, the Open edX Portal provides product announcements, the Open edX blog, and other rich community resources.
All users can view content on the Open edX Portal without creating an account and logging in.
To comment on blog posts or the edX roadmap, or subscribe to email updates, you must create an account and log in. If you do not have an account, follow these steps.
To receive and share product and release announcements by email, you can subscribe to announcements on one of the edX portal sites.
You will now receive email messages when new announcements of the types you selected are posted.
For system-related notifications from the edX operations team, including outages and the status of error reports. On Twitter, you can follow @edxstatus.
Current system status and the uptime percentages for edX servers, along with the Twitter feed, are published on the edX Status web page.
Course teams include faculty, instructional designers, course staff, discussion moderators, and others who contribute to the creation and delivery of courses on edx.org or edX Edge.
The courses in the edX Learning Series provide foundational knowledge about using the edX platform. These courses are available on edx.org.
The edX101 course is designed to provide a high-level overview of the course creation and delivery process using Studio and the edX LMS. It also highlights the extensive capabilities of the edX platform.
Documentation for course teams is available on the docs.edx.org web page.
Building and Running an edX Course is a comprehensive guide with concepts and procedures to help you build a course in edX Studio, and then use the Learning Management System (LMS) to run a course.
When you are working in edX Studio, you can access relevant sections of this guide by selecting Help on any page.
Using edX Insights describes the metrics, visualizations, and downloadable .csv files that course teams can use to gain information about student background and activity.
The edX Release Notes summarize the changes in each new version of deployed software.
These guides open in your web browser. The left side of each page includes a Search docs field and links to the contents of that guide. To open or save a PDF version, select v: latest at the lower right of the page, then select PDF.
Note
If you use the Safari browser, be aware that it does not support the search feature for the HTML versions of the edX guides. This is a known limitation.
To receive and share information by email, course team members can:
The edX product team maintains public product roadmaps on the Open edX Portal and the edX Partner Portal.
The edX Partner Support site for edX partners hosts discussions that are monitored by edX staff.
At each partner institution, the data czar is the primary point of contact for information about edX data. To set up a data czar for your institution, contact your edX partner manager.
Data for the courses on edx.org and edX Edge is available to the data czars at our partner institutions, and then used by database experts, statisticians, educational investigators, and others for educational research.
Resources are also available for members of the Open edX community who are collecting data about courses running on their sites and conducting research projects.
The edX Research Guide is available on the docs.edx.org web page. Although it is written primarily for data czars and researchers at partner institutions, this guide can also be a useful reference for members of the Open edX community.
The edX Research Guide opens in your web browser, with a Search docs field and links to sections and topics on the left side of each page. To open or save a PDF version, select v: latest at the lower right of the page, and then select PDF.
Note
If you use the Safari browser, be aware that it does not support the search feature for the HTML versions of the edX guides. This is a known limitation.
Researchers, edX data czars, and members of the global edX data and analytics community can post and discuss questions in our public research forum: the openedx-analytics Google group.
The edX partner portal also offers community forums, including a Research and Analytics topic, for discussions among edX partners.
Important
Please do not post sensitive data to public forums.
Data czars who have questions that involve sensitive data, or that are institution specific, can send them by email to data.support@edx.org with a copy to your edX partner manager.
The edX Analytics team maintains the Open edX Analytics wiki, which includes links to periodic release notes and other resources for researchers.
The edx-tools wiki lists publicly shared tools for working with the edX platform, including scripts for data analysis and reporting.
Software engineers, system administrators, and translators work on extending and localizing the code for the edX platform.
Documentation for developers is available on the docs.edx.org web page.
Note
If you use the Safari browser, be aware that it does not support the search feature for the HTML versions of the edX guides. This is a known limitation.
These are the main edX repositories on GitHub.
Additional repositories are used for other projects. Our contributor agreement, contributor guidelines and coding conventions, and other resources are available in these repositories.
The Community Discussions page in the Open edX Portal lists different ways that you can ask, and answer, questions.
The Open edX Portal is the entry point for new contributors.
The edX Engineering team maintains an open Confluence wiki, which provides insights into the plans, projects, and questions that the edX Open Source team is working on with the community.
The edx-tools wiki lists publicly shared tools for working with the edX platform, including scripts and helper utilities.
Hosting providers, platform extenders, core contributors, and course staff all use Open edX. EdX provides release-specific documentation, as well as the latest version of all guides, for Open edX users. The following documentation is available.
Open edX Release Notes provides information on the contents of Open edX releases.
Building and Running an Open edX Course is a comprehensive guide with concepts and procedures to help you build a course in Studio, and then use the Learning Management System (LMS) to run a course.
When you are working in Studio, you can access relevant sections of this guide by selecting Help on any page.
Open edX Learner’s Guide helps students use the Open edX LMS to take courses. This guide is available on the docs.edx.org web page. Because learners are currently only guided to this resource through the course, we encourage course teams to provide learners with links to this guide as needed in course updates or discussions.
Installing, Configuring, and Running the Open edX Platform provides information about installing and using devstack and fullstack.
The edX Platform Developer’s Guide includes guidelines for contributing to Open edX, options for extending the Open edX platform, using the edX public sandboxes, instrumenting analytics, and testing.
Open edX XBlock Tutorial guides developers through the process of creating an XBlock, and explains the concepts and anatomy of XBlocks.
Open edX XBlock API Guide provides reference information on the XBlock API.
EdX Open Learning XML Guide provides guidelines for building edX courses with Open Learning XML (OLX). Note that this guide is currently an alpha version.
EdX Data Analytics API provides reference information for using the data analytics API to build applications to view and analyze learner activity in your course.
EdX Platform APIs provide reference information for building applications to view course information and videos and work with user and enrollment data.
Note
If you use the Safari browser, be aware that it does not support the search feature for the HTML versions of the edX guides. This is a known limitation.
The EdX Learner’s Guide and the Open edX Learner’s Guide are available on the docs.edx.org web page. Because learners are currently only guided to this resource through the course, we encourage course teams to provide learners with links to these guides as needed in course updates or discussions.
All edX courses have a discussion forum where you can ask questions and interact with other students and with the course team: select Discussion. Many courses also offer a wiki for additional resources and materials: select Wiki.
Other resources might also be available, such as a course-specific Facebook page or Twitter feed, or opportunities for Google Hangouts. Be sure to check the Home page for your course as well as the Discussion and Wiki pages.
From time to time, the course team might send email messages to all students. While you can opt out of these messages, doing so means that you can miss important or time-sensitive information. To change your preferences for course email, select edX or edX edge at the top of any page. On your dashboard of current courses, locate the course and then select Email Settings.
To help you get started with the edX learning experience, edX offers a course (of course!). You can find the edX Demo course on the edX web site. EdX also maintains a list of frequently asked questions and answers.
If you still have questions or suggestions, you can get help from the edX support team: select Contact at the bottom of any edX web page or send an email message to info@edx.org.
For opportunities to meet others who are interested in edX courses, check the edX Global Community meetup group.
The edX platform runs on the following browsers.
The edX platform is routinely tested and verified on the current version and the previous version of each of these browsers. We generally encourage the use of, and fully support only, the latest version.
Note
If you use the Safari browser, be aware that it does not support the search feature for the guides on docs.edx.org. This is a known limitation.
The edX documentation team no longer maintains a change log for each guide. For a weekly summary of platform changes, refer to the EdX Release Notes on the docs.edx.org website.
For information about changes made to the edX documentation set, the edx-documentation repository on GitHub provides a complete record.
Date | Change |
---|---|
8 Dec 2015 | Updated the Getting a Course Certificate or Badge section. |
1 Dec 2015 | Added information about uploading additional file types to the Submit a File with Your Response topic. |
Date | Change |
---|---|
8 Oct 2015 | Updated the Getting a Course Certificate or Badge topic to include information about printing web certificates. |
Date | Change |
---|---|
17 Aug 2015 | Updated If You Use the edX Mobile App section to include information about using the edX mobile apps to access course discussions. |
Date | Change |
---|---|
1 Aug 2015 | Added the Enrolling in a Course or Program and Taking a Course for Academic Credit topics. |
8 Jun 2015 | Added a section for frequently asked questions about the edX mobile applications, If You Use the edX Mobile App. |
Added Searching the Course and Taking Notes in an edX Course sections. | |
Updated the Getting a Course Certificate or Badge section to include information on sharing certificates, including sharing digital badges. |
Date | Change |
---|---|
22 May 2015 | Initial version of this guide for Open edX learners. |