We turned third-party workarounds into native authoring tools—designing nine new content blocks that give authors more flexibility, boost engagement, and reduce production overhead across the platform.
Users practice their code in this content block type and receive coaching from an AI that evaluates their code.
Course authors were limited by what the platform could support. Key features—like audio playback, branching, coding assessments, or even basic interactivity—weren’t available without third-party tools. This created inconsistency, access barriers, and version control issues. Some teams simply gave up on building what they really wanted.
I directed design, product, and vendor teams to prioritize, design, and test new content components that would improve the authoring experience and reduce platform constraints.
We analyzed authoring patterns and content gaps to identify the most critical missing features. I led the definition and design of 9 new native content components, including interactive timelines, coding assessments with AI coaching support, and audio players. We partnered with the Open edX vendor team to build and test each block with real users.
I was delighted to develop a read-aloud plug in with the components. Read-aloud was a long-requested feature by the users.
The components were adopted into the platform’s native library, reducing friction for authors and expanding what was possible without plugins or external tools. Audio and mobile-friendly features directly responded to student feedback from related research efforts—helping unify authoring strategy with learner experience needs.
The audio file block supports common audio file types and requires transcripts.
The multi-modal branching content component with formative practice and feedback or video coaching, scoring, progress marking and session saving.
The content file block supports PDFs , word documents, and slide decks. It will be used primarily for downloadable files or sample files of user deliverables to demonstrate format.
The flashcard creator can be used by content creators to make flashcard decks or calibrated by them to enable users in making their own shareable decks
The interactive timeline can scroll left or right to view chronological milestones. They can zoom in and out. Content can be added to describe the milestones. It can also be set as a formative practice in which users drag milestones onto the appropriate area of the timeline.
Users can make calculations and watch them populate the graph.
The multi-model accordion block could be set as load-opened or load-closed and customized to an organization's branded colors and typography.
