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August 28, 2014
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The following information reflects what is new in the edX Platform as of August
28, 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 Studio
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* This release further expands the recently redesigned Studio publishing
  process. These features are available on the **Course Outline** page.

  * You can now publish all unpublished content in an entire section or
    subsection in a single step: on the **Course Outline** page, click the
    "Publish" icon.

     .. image:: images/outline-publish-icons.png
       :alt: The Course Outline page showing an expanded section and subsection
           with a unit that contains unpublished content.

    The "Publish" icon is also available for individual units on the **Course
    Outline** page.

  * You can now hide all of the content in an entire section or subsection on
    the **Course Outline** page. To ensure that students cannot see a part of
    the course, select the "Settings" icon and in the dialog that opens select
    **Hide from students**. The same feature is available for individual units.
  
  For more details, see our most recent `edX Product and Engineering
  Newsletter`_.

* You can now build content experiments (also known as A/B tests or split
  tests) entirely within edX Studio.  With a content experiment, you show
  different course content to different groups of students. Research teams can
  compare the performance of students in different groups to gain insights into
  the relative effectiveness of course content.

* A defect in the drag and drop feature for course content on the **Course
  Outline** page has been fixed. Dropping a unit into a collapsed subsection
  now adds the unit without changing any existing content in that subsection.
  (TNL-56)

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edX Learning Management System
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* When you click **Sent Email History** on the Instructor Dashboard **Email**
  page, a new **Sent By** column in the list of messages identifies the sender
  of each message.
  
* The Instructor Dashboard no longer displays instructions for accessing the
  older version of the dashboard. However, users can still select **Revert to
  Legacy Dashboard** to access the older version.
  
* The computations for demographic distributions that are reported on the
  **Analytics** page of the Instructor Dashboard have been updated. The level
  of education and gender distributions are now computed for currently enrolled
  students only. Previously, these distributions were computed for all students
  who were ever enrolled in the course. (LMS-11228)

.. * Bulk email now available for all courses? Instructor Dashboard, Email page

.. **************************
.. edX Data & Analytics
.. ************************** 

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Coming Soon
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We're pleased to announce these changes, which will be released in the next few
weeks:

* In addition to the existing Discussion post type, course discussions will
  soon include a new Question post type. Students and course teams will also be
  able to filter posts to find unanswered questions easily.
  
* A new design for course discussions is coming! New controls will provide
  consistent ways to take action on posts. Additionally, a set of colorful
  badges will make identifying posts easier.
  
* To make the process of registering faster and easier, students will soon be
  able to both register and log in to the edX.org and edX Edge web sites with
  their existing Google or Facebook accounts.

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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`_ 

  Update your bookmarks and links! To prepare for some upcoming additions to
  the edX documentation set, we recently changed the location of this guide
  and its URL changed as a result. You can always find `Building and Running an
  edX Course`_  and the rest of our documentation set at `docs.edx.org`_.

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

  Recent changes include: 

  * The `Developing Your Course`_ chapter has been updated to include the new
    capabilities for publishing and hiding multiple units on the **Course
    Outline** page.

  * A new `Add Content Experiments to Your Course`_ chapter is now available.

  * An additional sample email message for students, announcing a new run of a
    course, is now available. See `New Course Run Announcement`_.

  * Messages about the effect of changes to the grading policy, graded
    subsections, or graded components in a live course are now included in
    relevant sections throughout the guide.

* `Creating Peer Assessments`_

* `edX Research Guide`_

   Recent changes include: 

   * The `Tracking Logs`_ chapter now includes a section that describes open
     response assessment events.

   * The "Course Grading" and "XML format of drag and drop input" chapters were
     removed. These topics are covered in the `Building and Running an edX
     Course`_  guide.

* `edX Developer's Guide`_

* `edX XBlock Documentation`_

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

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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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