Currently to provide varied instructions for a lab based on its use case a lab author is required to make additional (likely child) lab profiles, the use of "Sections" to override large chunks of content, or some combination thereof. One of the big shortcomings of sections, is they are visible in the DOM as they are meant for minor things - not major. So if you have a lab that has a "Hard" and "Easy" mode differentiated by sections, someone taking the "Hard" mode could inspect the page and view all the "Easy" instructions. This adds a lot of complexity to building these sorts of labs as well as accessing them over the API.
Instead, it would be beneficial for labs to have multiple "instructions sets" so that you can create things such as different "Modes" of the same lab. Using Skillable Challenges as an example - having "Guided", "Advanced", and "Expert" all be the same lab profile but defined as a different instructions "sets" that can be defined by the user, the API, or a Rule. These should have the ability to utilize different activities so that scenarios such as a user picking between "CentOS" and "Ubuntu" may be accomplished with activities that need to target different VMs.
With the addition of instructions in multiple languages, each of these instructions sets should be able to have all available languages as well.
| Who would most benefit from this idea? | Lab Developers or Lab Authors |
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What is the problem you are trying to solve?
Simplify the process to build labs with user choice or multiple use cases. |
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Thanks for taking some time to send along this suggestion! Our Product Group has given this an initial review... we love it. We cannot yet commit to a specific timeframe, but we've assigned this as "Likely to Implement," so stay tuned to this thread for updates over the next few weeks or months.
If you have additional context or would like to generate more demand, feel free to edit your original post and/or invite your peers to upvote your Idea.
I'm wondering how Automated Activities (questions and scripts) would be handled in this situation. The instructions might be different enough to only include a subset of the activities. Would the scoring engine know which activities should be scored based on the instruction set used?
Challenge Labs, and now Custom Labs, are using sections extensively to switch between Guided and Advanced modes of instruction. We are also starting to see customers doing similar things in their MD which is great. However, having the ability to simply include multiple instruction sets and be able to switch between them at will would be a very large improvement to the experience.
This is a good idea and is analogous to similar proposals that have been suggested in the past. We need this functionality for localization and for the ability for the lab user to select or have chosen for them (based on some criteria) a particular set of instructions.
This would be a great feature for the reasons mentioned. In addition:
This week I have built several labs using sections and whereas it is ok the experience is not great when you want to start to include separate pages (it causes blank pages to be displayed). This feature would make a big impact on being able make the authoring process simpler. What would be another cool extension would the ability to pull some additional instructions in based on a variable or outcome setting. I could see this being used in Guided labs. As mentioned because sections are in the DOM it does mean people can see hidden sections that are only displayed based on an activity outcome.
What would also something to think of is a way to switch between instructions sets as an option. Think of a user that starts the Hard and is struggling then there might be some way to switch to a simpler instruction set so that they are able to succeed within the same session. Or the user picks the simple and there are a few questions at the beginning, and it is determined that the user knows the content that the instructions would now flip to more challenging.
A large customer would leverage this all over the place. Localization is a big thing for a few of their current programs and this would simplify it. Additionally, the fast upcoming program on their credentialling platform would leverage this for both skill level and localization.