Axim kicked off the project with a range of user interviews. They identified a handful of superusers to chat to about the proposed approach. The vast majority of the interviewees were simply excited to hear that content tagging was back in the pipeline! This was a great sign, as it suggests there will be a high likelihood of adoption of the new features when they are launched.

After the interviews were completed, Axim adjusted the project specification and handed it over to us. We were eager to get the ball rolling. Our developers got straight to work on a discovery document. While they figured out the intricacies behind the development approach, our UX team began work on the first set of wireframes.

When confronted with a new UX challenge, we start by identifying the high-touch user flows that are likely to be the most challenging to solve. For this project, finding those flows was quite straightforward - we knew that we would be dealing with taxonomies comprising not only up to five levels of hierarchy but also potentially thousands of tags on each level. We had to devise an easy way for course creators to navigate thousands of tags, locate the desired ones, and apply them to the relevant course content. We decided to tackle these requirements in the wireframe first.

We decided to use a drawer for the tagging tool to give this functionality the screen real estate it requires. The drawer also helps to keep things modular as it slides in over whichever page the user is currently viewing. Within the drawer is a list of the taxonomies that are available to the user as well as a powerful search feature. The search allows users to explore tags, find the ones that match their requirements, and apply them to the course content. In addition to searching and applying tags, the drawer also allows users to view tags that have been applied, add additional tags, and remove tags.

Besides the tagging tool, this effort also included some other major components - most notably, a taxonomy management system, and a course and library search feature.

The taxonomy management system allows content authors to import taxonomies, whether they be third party taxonomies like the Open Skills Management Network, or custom taxonomies created by the user or their organization. Once imported, the user can manage the taxonomy in a number of ways: they can edit the taxonomy metadata, reimport the taxonomy to keep it up to date, assign the taxonomy to organizations, or remove the taxonomy entirely. Users can also manage the tags that a taxonomy contains by adding new tags, renaming existing tags, or deleting tags they no longer need. Any updates made in the taxonomy management system will automatically reflect across any course content that has been tagged using the affected taxonomy.

This project also called for the addition of search functionality allowing content authors to search within a course or library using either free-text or tag-level search. The feature also makes it easy for users to filter search results according to the type of content they are looking for, whether that be a section/subsection/unit, or a specific type of component, such as a text, video, or discussion component.

With the wireframe and project requirements in hand, our developers began working on an implementation plan. Although the main focus was the requirements for this phase of the project, the technical team wanted to create a flexible foundation for expanding the use of tagging in the future. 

Taxonomies (collections of tags, optionally organized in a hierarchy) and their tags will be stored in a new core database model in Learning Core – currently in development by Axim – and aims to become the small “core” of content management functionality that powers all of the Open edX authoring and learning experiences. In addition to storing taxonomies and tags in the database, the new system can store the association between content items (like Units or XBlocks) and Tags.

The new tagging system is designed to be flexible, and can be used to tag any type of object that exists in the Open edX® ecosystem, though for now it will only be used to tag content objects like XBlocks. In the future, it could be expanded to cover forum posts, users, and more.

The tagging system uses the Hooks Framework to integrate with the rest of Open edX and automatically keep things updated. For example, when an author creates a new XBlock, an event is triggered that will be used by the tagging system to automatically apply a language tag to the new XBlock. Likewise, when an author duplicates an XBlock, an event is triggered that makes the tagging system duplicate the tags and associate the same tags with the new copy of the XBlock.

For the user interface, the new taxonomy editor and tagging drawer are being built in the Course Authoring Micro-frontend (Course Authoring MFE), and will mostly use “off-the-shelf” components already available as part of the Paragon Design System.

The Content Tagging feature became available to the Open edX® community with the release of Redwood in June 2024. Since then, it has continued to grow and improve as part of our ongoing collaboration with Axim on the Content Libraries project. We're thrilled to see course authors actively using the feature and excited to support its continued development.