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October 7, 2014
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The following information reflects what is new in the edX Platform as of
October 7, 2014. See previous pages in this document for a history of changes.

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edX Release Announcements Mailing List
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These edX Course Staff Release Notes are always available and are updated with
each release of the edX Platform on `edx.org`_ and `edX Edge`_.

You can also sign up for the `edX Release Announcements mailing list`_ to get
an email message when we update the edX Course Staff Release Notes.


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edX Learning Management System
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* The private discussion cohorts feature has been released! When this optional
  feature is enabled for a course, the course team defines smaller communities
  of students within the larger, course-wide community. This feature allows
  course teams to divide students into cohort groups using either distinctive
  group characteristics or automated, random assignments. When the cohorts
  feature is enabled for a course, most discussion topics are divided so that
  students can only read and contribute to posts made by other members of the
  same cohort. However, course teams can create some open, or unified,
  discussion topics so that all students can read and contribute to that topic.
  Additionally, if the cohorts feature is enabled for the course, the CSV file
  that contains student profile data now includes a **Cohort** column.

  If you want to use the cohorts feature in your course, we strongly recommend
  that you implement the feature before your course is released. We do not
  recommend enabling cohorts in a running course.

  For more information, see `Cohorts`_.

* In the Instructor Dashboard, downloading student profile data is now a
  background task. You can leave the **Data Download** page after you
  begin downloading students' profile information and return when the download
  is complete. Additionally, the **Download profile information as a CSV**
  button and the **List enrolled students' profile information** button have
  been moved to the **Reports** section of the **Data Download** page. (TNL-453)

* Course discussions have several new features:

  * Students can now change the topic of a post after they post it. Discussion
    administrators, moderators, and community TAs can edit the topic for any
    post.

  * Users no longer have the option to add comments to closed threads. (TNL-150)

  * When a user selects a topic for a post, a link to the unit that contains
    that discussion topic in the body of the course now appears immediately when the
    post is created. (TNL-404)

  * Users who have the discussion admin role can now remove their
    own or other users' discussion admin status. (TNL-315)

  * For some users, a list of posts did not appear in the left sidebar when
    the user clicked **Posts I'm Following**. This bug has been fixed. (TNL-469)

  * Pinned posts now always appear at the top of the list of posts, regardless
    of the way that the posts are sorted. (TNL-90)

* In some browsers, if a student clicked a word in a transcript to move to that
  point in the video, the video began playing from the correct point, but the
  transcript stopped following along with the video. This bug has been fixed.
  (TNL-235)

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edX Studio
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* In HTML text components, the default font now appears as an option in the
  **Font** menu. (TNL-147)

  .. image:: /images/HTMLDefaultFont.png
    :width: 300
    :alt: HTML component editor with Font menu open to show Default option

* When a Problem component contained a custom JavaScript display and grading (JS
  Input) problem and at least one other problem, the JS Input problem was scored
  incorrectly. The additional problem in the component could be any type of
  problem. These problems are now scored correctly. (TNL-269)

* When you exported a course, the setting for **Video Download Allowed** in a
  Video component changed from **False** to **True** in the exported course.
  This bug has been fixed. (TNL-324)

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edX Documentation
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All guides now include a section that lists browsers supported for use with the
edX platform.

The following documentation is available:

* `Building and Running an edX Course`_

  Click **Help** in the upper-right corner of any page in the edX Studio
  user interface to access relevant sections in this guide. You can also
  download the entire guide as a PDF.

  Recent changes include:

  * Full documentation for the new cohorts feature is available in `Cohorts`_.

  * Documentation for a new `molecule viewer tool` has been added to `Creating
    Exercises and Tools`_.

    .. image:: /images/MoleculeViewer.png
       :width: 500
       :alt: Image of molecule viewer tool showing a ciprofloxacin molecule

* `Using edX Insights`_

* `EdX Guide for Students`_

  This new guide is written specifically to help students get started with edX.
  This initial release of the guide includes information about certificates,
  entering formulas into the response field for math and science problems, and
  open response assessments. We encourage course teams to share this guide with
  students and to let us know what else you'd like the guide to cover.

* `Creating Peer Assessments`_

* `edX Research Guide`_

* `edX Developer's Guide`_

* `edX XBlock Documentation`_

* `Installing, Configuring, and Running the edX Platform`_  

* `edX Open Learning XML Guide`_

  The edX Open Learning XML (OLX) Guide is a new manual for course teams who are
  working with XML courses. We'll release updates to this preliminary version of
  the guide over the next several months. For more information, see `Open
  Learning XML (OLX) Format`_.

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Other edX Resources
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You can access the `edX Status`_ page to get an up-to-date status for all
services on edx.org and edX Edge. The page also includes the Twitter feed for
@edXstatus, which the edX Operations team uses to post updates.

You can access the public `edX roadmap`_ for details about the currently
planned product direction.

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