After you enable content experiments and set up group configurations in Studio, you can add content experiments to your course. See:
You can add a content experiment in a unit or container page. In Studio, you create and view content for all groups in the content experiment in a container page for the experiment, as shown in Create Content for Groups in the Content Experiment.
When a student views the unit with the content experiment, she has no indication there is a content experiment in the unit, and the content experiment display name is not shown. She sees only the content that you configure for the group she is assigned to. To the student, the unit with the content experiment is no different than any other unit.
To configure a content experiment in Studio, you:
After you configure a content experiment, you can change its group configuration. See Change the Group Configuration for a Content Experiment.
In the unit page, under Add New Component, click Advanced.
Select Content Experiment.
A new content experiment is added to the unit:
You can work with the content experiment as you can any other component. See Developing Course Components for more information.
Click either Select a Group Configuration or Edit to open the content experiment component.
Next to Group Configuration, select a group configuration.
In the Display Name field, enter the name that the component will use in Studio. The display name is only used in Studio; students do not see this value.
Click Save.
The content experiment is displayed as a component that contains other components. See Components that Contain Other Components for more information.
Note
You cannot duplicate a content experiment.
You can now create content for the groups in the experiment.
After you select a group configuration, in the content experiment component, click View.
The content experiment page that opens automatically includes a container for each group that is defined in the group configuration you selected. For example, if you select a group configuration that defines Group A and Group B, you see the following page:
You add content for both groups as needed, just as you would add content to any container page. See Components that Contain Other Components for more information.
For example, you can add an HTML component and a video to Group A:
Note
It is valid, and can be useful, to have no content for a group in the experiment. For example, if one group has a video and another group has no content, you can analyze the effect of the video on student performance.
You can change the group configuration for a content experiment. When you change the group configuration, you must add components to any new groups that you create. You can use the components from the previous groups, as well as create new components.
Warning
Changing the group configuration of a student-visible experiment will affect the experiment data.
To change the group configuration:
Open the unit page of the unit that contains the content experiment.
In the content experiment component, click Edit.
Select a different group configuration.
Click Save.
You must now add components to the new groups in the experiment. Click View to open the content experiment.
You see that groups for the new configuration are empty, and any components that you had added to groups in the previous configuration are now moved to a section called Inactive Groups.
Drag and drop components from the Inactive Groups section into the new groups. You can also create new components in the new groups.
You work with multiple XML files to configure a content experiment. This section steps through the files involved in a content experiment that shows different content to two different groups of students.
You reference a content experiment in the file for the subsection, or
sequential, in the sequential
directory. For example:
...
<vertical url_name="name for the unit that contains the A/B test" display_name="A/B Test Unit">
<split_test url_name="name of A/B test file in the split_test folder"/>
</vertical>
.....
The <split_test>
element’s url_name
value references the name of the
content experiment file in the split_test
directory.
Caution
You can only define a content experiment in a unit, or vertical, in which different collections of components are associated with different experiment groups. You cannot define a content experiment at a subsection (sequential) or section (chapter) level and have different units or subsections associated with different groups.
After you define the content experiment in the sequential file, you define the
course content you want to test in the file in the split_test
directory.
This is the file referenced in the <split_test>
element in the sequential
file, as shown above.
In the content experiment file, you add elements for the experiment content.
For this example, you add two <vertical>
elements to compare the two
different sets of content.
<split_test url_name="AB_Test.xml" display_name="A/B Test" user_partition_id="0"
group_id_to_child='{"0": "i4x://path-to-course/vertical/group_a",
"1": "i4x://path-to-course/vertical/group_b"}'>
<vertical url_name="group_a" display_name="Group A">
<html>Welcome to group A.</html>
<video url_name="group_a_video"/>
</vertical>
<vertical url_name="group_b" display_name="Group B">
<html>Welcome to group B.</html>
<problem display_name="Checkboxes">
<p>A checkboxes problem presents checkbox buttons for student input.
Students can select more than one option presented.</p>
<choiceresponse>
<checkboxgroup direction="vertical" label="Select the answer that matches">
<choice correct="true">correct</choice>
<choice correct="false">incorrect</choice>
<choice correct="true">correct</choice>
</checkboxgroup>
</choiceresponse>
</problem>
</vertical>
</split_test>
In this example:
The user_partition_id
value references the ID of the experiment defined
in the policy.json
file.
The group_id_to_child
value references the IDs of the groups defined in
the policy.json
file and maps the group IDs to specific content.
For example, the value for group 0
, i4x://path-to-
course/vertical/group_a
, maps to the <vertical>
element with the
url_name
equal to group_a
. Therefore, students in group 0 see the
content in that vertical.
For information about the policy.json
file, see Set Up Group Configuration for OLX Courses.