###################################
September 30, 2014
###################################

The following information reflects what is new in the edX Platform as of
September 30, 2014. See previous pages in this document for a history of changes.

****************************************
edX Release Announcements Mailing List
****************************************

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.

*******************************
edX Insights
*******************************

The initial version of edX Insights, our new course analytics product, is now
available. In this release, edX Insights provides data for student enrollment
activity, geographic location, and engagement with course content.

Team members who have the Instructor or Course Staff role can open edX Insights
from the Instructor Dashboard. A banner announcing this new product displays at
the top of every page: click the **visit edX Insights** link to view data about
your course.

EdX Insights uses visualizations, key metrics, and tables to present data about
who your students are and what they do while interacting with your course. 

For example, the Weekly Student Engagement chart displays the number of
students who engaged in different activities over time.

.. image:: images/Engagement_Chart.png
   :alt: A line graph with three lines showing ongoing, differing levels of
         student activity of any kind, students who watched a video, and
         students who tried a problem.

To report where your students are, edX Insights shows a color-coded map.

.. image:: images/Geography.png
   :alt: A world map; countries with darker shading have a higher number of 
         students than those with lighter shading.

You can use the data that is available from edX Insights to monitor activity,
validate choices, reveal unexpected patterns, form hypotheses, and inform plans
for your course. For information about edX Insights, see `Using edX Insights`_.

**************************
Coming Soon
**************************

We're pleased to announce the following upcoming changes:

* EdX will soon release a fully supported cohorts feature that allows course
  teams and TAs to assign students to different cohorts in class discussions.
  Students in different cohorts will be able to see the discussions for their
  individual cohorts, but cannot see discussions for other cohorts. Course
  teams can also open some course discussions to all students.

**************************
edX Documentation
**************************

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.

* `Using edX Insights`_

* `Creating Peer Assessments`_

* `edX Research Guide`_

* `edX Developer's Guide`_

* `edX XBlock Documentation`_

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

**************************
Other edX Resources
**************************

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.

.. include:: links.rst