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It is the place where learners find about the online learning initiative, sign up, browse and find available courses, enroll in them, consume the course contents, interact in the course, and ultimately obtain their course certificates.

The LMS from the learner perspective

The homepage and static pages

Visitors can browse the homepage, the course catalog, and some additional static pages, to find all the general information about the online learning initiative and its offering.

The homepage normally has a very strong brand presence, some key information for all users, and a list of some or all of the courses available

The Course Catalog Page

The course catalog will display all the courses that are currently available for learners to enroll in.

Learners will be able to search by keywords or filter the courses by some criteria.

For each course, there will also be a course description page with the relevant information. These pages can be accessed by all visitors even before having a session in the system.

LMS registration and login functionality

The LMS has user registration and login functionality.

The registration can be free or restricted by the email domain.

Users can log in or sign up with their credentials through the integration with third-party identity providers such as services and social networks (Google, Facebook or Linkedin), organizational domains, using Google, Office 365 or Microsoft’s Active Directory, Identity providers that support the SAML protocol and other Oauth 2.0 identity providers.

Learner dashboard

After login, the user normally lands in the learner dashboard, where he/she sees all the courses in which he is enrolled.

The learner can see the list of courses in which they are already enrolled, see the starting date of each course, and access those that have already started.

They can also unenroll or change their email notification settings for a particular course.

The course enrollment process

Courses can be free and freely accessible. They can be configured to allow access only on certain dates, or only up to a certain number of students.

Closed courses can be configured so that they can only be accessed by the invitation of the course administrator.

You can include paid courses, both completely closed and that require payment to enter, or open access courses but that at some point require payment to continue or obtain a certificate. Here you will find more information about how to monetize your online learning initiative.

The course enrollment process

The course layout is organized into several tabs located at the top. These tabs provide access to various course components and functionalities. While specific features might vary depending on course configuration and settings, the following are the most frequently encountered tabs available in virtually every course:

Course

This is the first and main tab, and it includes the course outline, or the expandable / collapsable list of section subsections and units for the course.

Progress

it visualizes the progress of learners in each of the courses.

Dates

Important information about how long you have access to a course, its start and end dates.

Discussion

Here you will find all the information about the discussions you participate in.

The LMS from the Instructor perspective

Registering and accessing the LMS for instructors

Instructors initially create their account on the Open edX LMS as a regular learner. Upon receiving staff permissions for a specific course, they gain access to the Instructor dashboard. This dashboard provides features like course statistics, manual enrollment, gradebook management, course reports, certificate configuration, email, and more.

Navigating course contents and an instructor

Instructors also utilize the LMS for course navigation. Those with instructor privileges will notice certain distinctions:

“View this course as” bar: Allows instructors to preview the course from a student’s perspective.
LMS to Studio links: Direct access to the course authoring environment (Studio) from within the LMS.
Discussion moderation: Team members or learners can be granted moderation capabilities in course discussions.
Discussion admin role: Required for team members to moderate discussions.

Inside the instructor dashboard

The most important section the instructors will find in the LMS is the Instructor dashboard, where they can manage the main aspects of an operating course.

Do not confuse the learner dashboard of an instructor user in the LMS, (list of their courses) with the instructor dashboard for a course of a user who has instructor permissions in that course.