Open edX Sumac Release (December 2024)

Welcome to the Sumac release! This release provides significant improvements and optimizations for authors, learners, and site operators. Here’s what’s ready for you now:

🧑‍🏫 For Course Authors

Libraries: Your Content, Reimagined: Store unlimited content in one Library instead of juggling dozens, then reuse individual problems, videos, or text blocks across any course with one-click updates. Create randomized problem banks, organize with Collections and tags, and sync changes instantly across all your courses.

Compare Courses at a Glance with Aspects: Spot enrollment trends, gauge problem difficulty, and compare performance across all your courses or runs in one dashboard — complete with sortable tables, course tag filters, and quick links to drill deeper into individual course data.

LTI Certified ✅: The Open edX Sumac Release has achieved the LTI Advantage Complete certification!

🎓 For Learners

Navigate Your Way: New Sidebar Navigation: Learners can now jump to any unit, section, or subsection without returning to the Course Outline page — with visual progress indicators and completion checkmarks that update in real-time as they work through content.

Enhanced Mobile App Experience: Single sign-on, improved translations experience, a new Course Home experience, and more!

⚙️ For Site Operators

Customize Your Site Header Without Code Forks: Site operators can now swap out header elements — like removing the header Help button — using simple configuration files instead of forking the entire codebase, making customization faster and easier to maintain.

🔮 Upcoming in Teak (June 2025)

We’re working hard on even more improvements in our Teak release (out now)! You can look forward to:

Easier Content Reuse with Libraries: Using Libraries, authors will be able to create modular units that can be reused in multiple courses. Updates and changes to content can be managed centrally in Libraries, with changes syncing seamlessly.

Aspects Analytics in Studio: Studio will feature In-Context Analytics, enabling course teams to make data-driven course improvements without switching tools.

More Content Blocks Enabled by Default: A curated list of high-value content blocks (e.g., Google Docs, LTI 1.3, Polls, Surveys, Word Cloud) will be enabled by default in Studio.

Give Learners Credentials They’ll Want to Share: Via integrations with Credly and Accredible, learners will be able to earn digital badges — a more portable, shareable credential that can be added to social media profiles and email signatures.

More Flexibility To Build Custom Features: More plugin slots will be added across the platform to support easier customization and extension by your development or operations team.

⌚ Ready to Upgrade?

Have your site operations team check out the Tutor upgrading guide so they can upgrade your Open edX instance to the Sumac release!

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