OEP-6: Context-scoped XBlock Fields

[Braden MacDonald]

Hi everyone,

I have opened a pull request with an Open edX Enhancement Proposal for adding "context-scoped XBlock fields" to the Open edX platform. This is the same thing previously referred to as "course-scoped fields."

Summarizing from the abstract:

There is currently no standard way for XBlocks to define data fields such that content, settings, or user input can be shared among multiple XBlocks within a particular "context" such as a course. Such "course-scoped" or "context-scoped" fields are a common requirement; for example, an author may wish to specify the default “number of attempts allowed” once for all problems in a course, or a video player XBlock may want to “remember” the user’s preferred video playback speed for videos within a particular course.

This OEP proposes a new mechanism for defining XBlock fields that are explicitly scoped to a particular context.

Please take a look at the OEP - your feedback would be very appreciated.

Cheers!

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Braden

@OpenCraft

[Braden MacDonald]

Bumping this thread since it's been a while and I want to see if anyone else has feedback.

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Braden

@OpenCraft

[Braden MacDonald]

Hi everyone,

This OEP has been accepted: http://open-edx-proposals.readthedocs.io/en/latest/oep-0006.html

In the version that has been accepted, we introduce two new XBlock field scopes, Scope.context_settings and Scope.context_preferences, which can hold course-specific data set by course authors and users respectively. The OEP also defines a new XBlock view, "context_settings_view" that can be used by course authors in Studio to edit the context_settings fields.

There was a lot of discussion on the way, which you can read on the PR if you are interested.

Next I will be working on a prototype implementation to validate this approach.

Cheers,

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Braden

@OpenCraft