edx-platform/docs/en_us/shared/preface.rst

.. _Preface:

############
Preface
############

.. Doc team! Be sure that when you make any changes to this file that you also make them to the mirrored file in the edx-analytics-dashboard/docs repository. - Alison 19 Aug 14

Course teams, researchers, developers, students: 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 these categories:

* `The edX Partner Portal`_
* `The Open edX Portal`_
* `Release Announcements through the Open edX Portal`_
* `Resources for Course Teams`_
* `Resources for Researchers`_
* `Resources for Developers`_
* `Resources for Students`_

All members of the edX community are encouraged to make use of any of the
resources described in this preface.

.. _The edX Partner Portal:

***********************
The edX Partner Portal
***********************

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.

#. Visit `partners.edx.org`_, and select **Create New Account**.
#. Select **Request Partner Access**, then fill in your personal details.
#. Select **Create New Account**. You will receive a confirmation email with
   your account access within 24 hours.

.. _The Open edX Portal:

***********************
The Open edX 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, you must create an account and log
in. If you do not have an account, follow these steps.

#. Visit `open.edx.org/user/register`_.
#. Fill in your personal details.
#. Select **Create New Account**. You are then logged in to the `Open edX
   Portal`_.

***************************************************
Release Announcements through the Open edX Portal
***************************************************

To receive and share product and release announcements by email, subscribe to
announcements on the `Open edX Portal`_.

#. Create an account on the `Open edX Portal`_ as described above.
#. Go to https://open.edx.org/announcements.
#. Under **Announcement Type** in the **Subscriptions** block, select the type
   of announcements that you want to receive through email.

   .. image:: ../../shared/images/Announcement_subscriptions.png
     :alt: Subscription block in the Open edX Portal Announcements page.

4. Click **Save**.
   
You will now receive email messages when new announcements of the types you
selected are posted.

.. note:: 
 EdX partners can complete the same steps on the **Announcements** page in the
 `edX Partner Portal`_.

***********************
System Status
***********************

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.

.. _Resources for Course Teams:

**************************
Resources for Course Teams
**************************

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.

edX101: Overview of Creating a Course
-------------------------------------

The `edX101`_ course was built in Studio and is available for enrollment on
edx.org. This course takes one to two hours to complete, and is designed to
provide a high-level overview of the course creation and delivery process. It
also highlights the extensive capabilities of the edX platform.

Documentation
-------------

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 clicking **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.

* `edX Course Staff Release Notes`_ summarize the changes in each new version
  of the edX Studio and LMS software.

* `Creating a Peer Assessment`_ describes features for students to provide
  peer- and self- evaluations of responses to a question. Note that this new
  feature is in limited release.

* `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.

These guides open in your web browser. The left side of each page includes a
**Search docs** field and links to that guide's contents. To open or save a PDF
version, click **v: latest** at the lower left of the page, then click **PDF**.

Email
-----

To receive and share information by email, course team members can:

* Sign up to receive monthly newsletters_.

* Sign up to receive release_ notes for every release.

* Join the `openedx-studio`_ Google group to ask questions and participate in
  discussions with peers at other edX partner organizations and edX staffers.

Course Author Support
----------------------

The `edX Author Support`_ site hosts discussions that are monitored by edX
staffers.

.. _Resources for Researchers:

**************************
Resources for Researchers
**************************

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.

Documentation
-------------

The `edX Research Guide`_ is available on the docs.edx.org web page.

This guide opens in your web browser, with a **Search docs** field and links to
that guide's contents on the left side of each page. To open or save a PDF
version, click **v: latest** at the lower left of the page, and then click
**PDF**.

Email
-------

To receive and share information by email, researchers can join the 
`openedx-analytics`_ Google group to ask questions and participate in 
discussions with peers at other edX partner organizations and edX staffers.

Wiki
-------------------

The edX Analytics team maintains the `Open edX Analytics`_ wiki, which includes
links to periodic release notes, the Open edX Public Product Roadmap, and other
resources for researchers.

.. _Resources for Developers:

**************************
Resources for Developers
**************************

Software engineers, system administrators, and translators work on extending
and localizing the code for the edX platform.

Documentation
-------------

Documentation for developers is available on the docs.edx.org web page.

* The `edX Platform Developer's Guide`_ collects information directly from edX
  platform python docstrings. The topics in this guide include guidelines for
  contributing to Open edX, options for extending the Open edX platform, using
  the edX public sandboxes, instrumenting analytics, and testing.

* XBlock_: Open edX courseware components provides preliminary documentation
  on the XBlock component architecture for building courses.

* `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 tools for building applications to view
  and analyze student activity in your course.

* `edX Enrollment API`_ provides tools for building applications to view user
  and course enrollment information, and to enroll users in courses.

* `edX Platform API`_ provides tools for building applications to view course
  information and videos.

GitHub
-------

These are the main edX repositories on GitHub.

* The `edx/edx-platform`_ repo contains the code for the edX platform.

* The `edx/edx-analytics-dashboard`_ repo contains the code for edX Insights.

* The `edx/configuration`_ repo contains scripts to set up and operate the edX
  platform.

Additional repositories are used for other projects. Our contributor agreement,
contributor guidelines and coding conventions, and other resources are
available in these repositories.

Email and IRC
--------------

To receive and share information by email, developers can join these Google
groups to ask questions and participate in discussions with peers and edX
staffers.

* For conversations about the code in Open edX, join `edx-code`_.  
* For conversations about running Open edX, join `openedx-ops`_. 
* For conversations about globalization and translation, 
  join `openedx-translation`_.

Additional Google groups are occasionally formed for individual projects.

.. note:: 
 Please do not report security issues in public. If you have a concern, 
 please email security@edx.org.

EdX engineers often monitor the Freenode #edx-code IRC channel.

Pull Requests
-------------------

The pull request dashboard_  is a visualization of the count and age of the
pull requests (PRs) assigned to teams at edX. Click the bars in this chart to
get more information about the PRs.

.. _Resources for Students:

.. _Resources for Open edX:

**************************
Resources for Open edX
**************************

Hosting providers, platform exenders, core contributors, and course staff all
use Open edX. Starting with the Birch release of Open edX, the following
release-specific documentation is available on docs.edx.org.  

* `Open edX Release Notes`_ provides information on changes in Open edX
  releases.

* `Installing, Configuring, and Running the edX Platform`_ provides procedures
  for getting Devstack and Fullstack installed and operational.

* `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 clicking **Help** on any page.

**************************
Resources for Students
**************************

Documentation
-------------

The `edX Guide for Students`_ is available on the docs.edx.org web page.
Because students are not currently guided to this resource through the
courseware, we encourage course staff to provide links to students as needed
in course updates or discussions.

In a Course
------------

All edX courses have a discussion forum where you can ask questions and
interact with other students and with the course team: click **Discussion**.
Many courses also offer a wiki for additional resources and materials: click
**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 **Course Info** 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, click **edX** or **edX edge** at the top of any page. On your dashboard
of current courses, locate the course and then click **Email Settings**.

From edX
---------

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: click **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.

.. _edX Guide for Students: http://edx-guide-for-students.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

.. _edX Open Learning XML Guide: http://edx-open-learning-xml.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html

.. _Building and Running an edX Course: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/edx-partner-course-staff/en/latest/
.. _Using edX Insights: http://edx-insights.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
.. _edX Course Staff Release Notes: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/edx-release-notes/en/latest/
.. _Creating a Peer Assessment: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/edx-open-response-assessments/en/latest/
.. _edX Research Guide: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/devdata/en/latest/
.. _newsletters: http://edx.us5.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=1822a33c054dc20e223ca40e2&id=aba723f1aa 
.. _release: http://edx.us5.list-manage2.com/subscribe?u=1822a33c054dc20e223ca40e2&id=83e46bd293
.. _openedx-studio: http://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/openedx-studio
.. _Twitter:  http://twitter.com/edXstatus
.. _edX Status: http://status.edx.org/
.. _Open edX Product: https://edx-wiki.atlassian.net/wiki/display/OPENPROD/Open+edX+Product+Home
.. _Open edX Public Product Roadmap: https://edx-wiki.atlassian.net/wiki/display/OPENPROD/Open+edX+Public+Product+Roadmap
.. _edX Author Support: http://help.edge.edx.org/home
.. _openedx-analytics: http://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/openedx-analytics
.. _Open edX Analytics: http://edx-wiki.atlassian.net/wiki/display/OA/Open+edX+Analytics+Home
.. _blog: http://engineering.edx.org/
.. _Open Source Home: http://edx-wiki.atlassian.net/wiki/display/OS/Open+Source+Home
.. _XBlock: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/xblock/en/latest/
.. _Installing, Configuring, and Running the edX Platform: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/edx-installing-configuring-and-running/en/latest/
.. _edX Platform Developer's Guide: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/edx-developer-guide/en/latest/
.. _edx/configuration: http://github.com/edx/configuration/wiki
.. _site: http://code.edx.org/
.. _edx/edx-platform: https://github.com/edx/edx-platform
.. _edx/edx-analytics-dashboard: https://github.com/edx/edx-analytics-dashboard
.. _dashboard: http://dash.openedx.org/age.html
.. _Demo: http://www.edx.org/course/edx/edx-edxdemo101-edx-demo-1038
.. _frequently: http://www.edx.org/student-faq
.. _meetup: http://www.meetup.com/edX-Global-Community/
.. _openedx-ops: http://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/openedx-ops
.. _openedx-translation: http://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/openedx-translation
.. _edx-code: http://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/edx-code
.. _edx101: https://www.edx.org/course/overview-creating-edx-course-edx-edx101#.VIIJbWTF_yM
.. _edX Data Analytics API: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/edx-data-analytics-api/en/latest/index.html
.. _edX Enrollment API: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/edx-enrollment-api/en/latest/
.. _edX Platform API: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/edx-platform-api/en/latest/
.. _edX Partner Portal: https://partners.edx.org
.. _partners.edx.org: https://partners.edx.org
.. _Open edX Portal: https://open.edx.org
.. _open.edx.org/user/register: https://open.edx.org/user/register
.. _Open edX Release Notes: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/open-edx-release-notes/en/latest/
.. _Building and Running an Open edX Course: http://edx.readthedocs.org/projects/open-edx-building-and-running-a-course/en/named-release-birch/