Possible improvements in FUN-MOOC interface user experience

[lesteve]

There are a lot of things that could be better in FUN-MOOC, but maybe there are things that we could improve with a bit of work if we find the right trade-offs (not that easy I know)?

Pain points

1. working on wrap-up quizzes is a huge pain you scroll up and down a lot to switch between working in the notebook and looking at the quiz question or solution. Slightly related to Consider having plots as part of the quiz solution #333 and one beta feed-back https://mooc-forums.inria.fr/moocsl/t/consider-having-plots-as-part-of-the-quiz-solutions/528. Working on wrap-up quizzes has been improved a lot with the "Open notebook" button but still you need to click a lot if you go back and forth between the notebook and the quiz.
2. for quizzes where you need to test some code (e.g. https://inria.github.io/scikit-learn-mooc/tuning/parameter_tuning_manual_quiz_m3_01.html where you need to get the get_params syntax right) sandbox notebook is some kind of improvement (better than nothing) but this is far from great. You have to switch between two browser tabs to use it.
3. scrolling when clicking on a module in the left-hand-side module needs to be fixed and improved see https://mooc-forums.inria.fr/moocsl/t/unexpected-fun-automated-vertical-scrolling-when-navigating-modules-by-clicking-on-the-left-hand-side-panel/494/6 for a reproducer. This is really horrible 💔💔💔 even 💯💔 This has been fixed 🎉
4. is there a way to search in the full course (I haven't thoroughly looked but none jumped to mind). So basically you have to click in a lot of different places where you don't remember where the information was displayed, this is at least 💔💔 maybe more. This was noted in https://mooc-forums.inria.fr/moocsl/t/leaveonegroupout/4480/2 too. It looks like some recent versions of OpenEdX can have search enabled, see https://edx.readthedocs.io/projects/open-edx-building-and-running-a-course/en/named-release-birch/developing_course/workflow.html#making-course-content-searchable. Note: the FUN-MOOC OpenEdX version is not recent enough and even so this would probably not work for us since most of the content is in notebooks outside of FUN ... Add search tab (same level as glossary) for easier searching through the course #420 could be a way to address this in a reasonable fashion.
5. subtitles are not available yet for videos but looking at the Reproducible Research MOOC this is not great (or something is not working for me) ... I could not click on the words does not seem to go to this time in the video. I think searching subtitles and going to this particular time in the video is well done in the Google ML crash course see this video for example:
   https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course/ml-intro
6. feed-back from Guillaume (which I agree 200%) that when he gave the course on FUN-Campus he gave the JupyterBook to the students. Navigating in FUN is slow and also you have two-levels (left-hand-side and horizontal tabs within a sequence) which makes finding some content in a previous notebook very painful. Personally although there is some added convenience (JupyterHub mostly), I am not planning on using Fun-Campus for Inria Academy sessions at all in the foreseeable future.

Possible solutions

• for 1. and 2. it seems like having a float element for the notebook may work (I don't know the technical term exactly). When you scroll down the notebook would still be visible everywhere, maybe you can minimise it to see the quiz better. Or maybe it is more the quiz question that you can pin and it stays in float when you go back to the notebook not sure
• for 2. in particular maybe from any FUN page you can have access to the sandbox notebook in the same tab while still seeing the content you are on
• for 1. and 2. maybe a wide view without all the FUN stuff with side-by-side the notebook and the quiz. This may not work on mobile or small screens so not sure this is a good idea ...

An example that shows what I mean by float element (sorry this is not a great website but only the last one I remember with a similar pattern)

When I scroll down I can still see the header ("Quel type d'accès", "Accès préparatoire", etc ... on the top)

• for 6. if we can have similar to Google ML crash course without too much work why not but I don't think this is a priority:
  https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course/ml-intro

Things that depend on the FUN-MOOC team

and so not likely to be fixed very soon

• for 3. maybe some hope to convince them than even the "fixed" or "old" behaviour is really surprising. When I click on a module on the left-hand side I don't want to have an automated vertical scroll that tries to put me on the first sequence (and failed in most cases) I just want the module content to be expanded not an automated vertical scroll ...
• for 4. probably no hope if such a full-course search does not exist
• for 6. probably hopeless i.e something inherent to FUN

[lesteve]

Someone had a similar comment about 1. https://mooc-forums.inria.fr/moocsl/t/suggestion-for-the-wrap-up-quiz/2221/4 about being able to see both quizz and wrap-up notebook at the same time. Not that super clear how to do it technically, UI (e.g. on a latptop probably not enough space to show both side-by-side), FUN constraints, etc ...

[lesteve]

Let's close this one, it is quite unlikely that these aspects are tackled in the medium term.