The post Axim Collaborative and Open edX Project Announce New Partnership With the National Skill Development Corporation appeared first on Open edX.

This change supports the focus of project leadership over the last 3 years to create avenues for broader and more inclusive leadership of the project.  The TOC, which includes elected members from the community,  is one example of this.  Our investment in working groups, and open processes like the product proposal review process, has also been focused on increasing transparency and opportunities to lead and contribute.  

Specifically, the TOC have recommended adding additional seats to the committee for organizations that: 

• Are current users of the Open edX platform
• Are committed to increasing access to high quality learning opportunities that create impact in learner’s lives;
• Are willing and able to commit substantial and ongoing resources to advance the Open edX platform.

Because this recommendation requires changes to Section 2 of the TOC Charter, the TOC’s recommendation must be approved by the Axim Board of Trustees.

The full text of the proposed changes are highlighted in this draft of the TOC Charter.  

MAOs will be identified and reviewed by the TOC separately from this announcement and evaluated based on the criteria set out in the charter.

The post TOC Membership Changes appeared first on Open edX.

Hatim Eltayeb

Hatim Eltayeb, the Chief Executive Officer of the African Leadership Academy,  has been instrumental in nurturing Africa’s future leaders through his stewardship of the Academy’s mission. From overseeing the Diploma Program to representing ALA’s work globally, his leadership has been pivotal in shaping the next generation of African leaders. 

Hatim Eltayeb first joined the African Leadership Academy in 2009 as a Teaching Fellow in the African Studies Department. There he was recognized as an exemplary teacher being named the ALA “Teacher of the Year” in 2011.  In 2012, Hatim founded Symposium, a school services and consulting company. Symposium’s supported hundreds of students at 15 leading schools in Cairo, Egypt. In 2016 Hatim returned to ALA as the Dean of the Academy and became the Academy’s Chief Executive Officer in 2022.

Professor Jonathan Jansen

Professor Jonathan Jansen is a distinguished professor of education at Stellenbosch University and president of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He is a luminary in the field of education with over 30 books to his name, including the acclaimed Leading for Change (Routledge, 2016), As by fire: The end of the South African university (Tafelberg, 2017), Song for Sarah: Lessons from My Mother (Bookstorm, 2017), and The Decolonization of Knowledge (Cambridge, 2022).  He is known for his seminal contributions over four decades to the advancement of education scholarship through advanced research and publication, scholarly teaching, university management, science leadership, school improvement, educational innovation, capacity development, public engagement, and science advocacy.

Professor Jansen’s insights into race, leadership, and personal growth as well as his tireless advocacy for tolerance and human rights has earned him accolades including a Lifetime Achiever Award for Africa at the Education Africa Global Awards in New York, and the University of California’s Spendlove Award for his contribution to tolerance, democracy, and human rights.

Together, Hatim Eltayeb and Professor Jansen bring a wealth of knowledge, experience, and inspiration to the Open edX Conference 2024, promising an enlightening and transformative experience for all attendees. We eagerly anticipate their keynote addresses and the invaluable insights they will share with us! Register today at https://con.openedx.org/!

The post Announcing Our 2024 Keynote Speakers appeared first on Open edX.

While auditing the voting data we noticed that voter turnout for the Instructor and Learner categories was very low.  In the case of the instructor category, 15% of registered voters voted in the election.  In the case of the learner category, 0% – not a typo – voted in the election.

In the course of investigating what might have happened, we discovered that, unrelated to the election, changes were made to Axim’s email configuration to enable enforcement of industry spam reduction best practices, DKIM and DMARC.

However, the system that we use for email campaigns was not added to the domain allow list.  As a result, emails to voters were redirected to spam folders or quarantined.

You may have an email related to the election in your spam folder with the tell tale header:

DMARC: ‘FAIL’

We had originally considered electing two representatives from the Core Contributor category, but given the extremely low turn out and this new information, we are going to reopen voting for one (1) week starting on Dec 4, 2023.

If you have already voted, there’s nothing to do.  Your vote is secure and will be counted.

For those who registered, but have not yet voted, we will email you instructions now that we have corrected the DMARC configuration issue.

I want to take the opportunity to apologize again for the messiness of this process.  We’ve learned quite a lot and am confident that we have plans in place to prevent a recurrence of any of the issues that we saw during this election.  We very much value your participation, please take a few minutes to register your vote for the excellent slate of candidates running this year.

The post TOC Election Update appeared first on Open edX.

Voter registration for the 2023 Open edX Community TOC elections is open! To be eligible to vote this year you must either be:

• An Open edX Core Contributors or Open edX Maintainer
• An Instructor using the Open edX platform to deliver a course, including Teaching Assistants (TAs) and course content authors

Only instructors are required to register at this time. Core Contributors and Maintainers are already registered because of their status in the project and will receive ballots directly. Instructors may register here.

The community is called to elect 3 members of the new core decision-making body of the Open edX project – the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC). The 3 elected community representatives will join the TOC, along with the 3 members from Axim Collaborative and the 3 members from 2U.

The 3 elected community representatives have the mission to represent the community as a whole, but with each a specific focus:

• Operators & core community representative, which is elected by the project’s core contributors and maintainers
• Instructors representative, which is elected by all individuals producing or running a currently active course on Open edX 
• Learners representative, which represents everyone using Open edX to learn; for this election round, it is elected by the instructors, but the representative will be responsible for reaching out to the learners, and helping to involve learners in the project & its elections.

If you are running a currently active course on Open edX, please register to vote! This includes any form of contribution to the authoring of a course, and particularly Teaching Assistants (TAs).

Voter registration is open until September 30th, and the election will be held in October.

Help reaching out to eligible voters!

We also need the whole community’s help to let all eligible voters know that they can vote. Since we are an open source project, our community is spread over many individual Open edX sites. Many learners, instructors, TAs and operators will not be following the news here – so if you know any, or have any way to get the news of the election registration published where users of Open edX will see it, please help! 

Blog posts on Open edX related sites or educational news sites are of particular relevance. Reach out to oscm@axim.org.

Become a candidate

If you would like to apply as a candidate for the election, see the forum thread for candidates nomination. 

Note that in order to qualify for becoming a TOC member, if you aren’t already a core contributor, you will need to go pass the core contributor review process, which takes about 2 weeks. In order to complete the review on time, you will need to submit your candidature for core contributor by September 12th – please reach out now without waiting though, to help prepare you.

Learn more

For more details about the election, see the TOC Community Election Charter which has been recently enacted by the TOC, after community review. This is still an experimental process, which the TOC might adjust based on the experience gained running the elections.

The post Announcement: 2023 Open edX Elections appeared first on Open edX.

The addition of community members is an important step in establishing a more inclusive and open leadership for the Open edX project. I am personally humbled by the wisdom, expertise, and commitment this group will bring to the TOC.

Catherine Mongenet, CEO of France Université Numérique

Catherine Mongenet is professor in Computer Science. From 2009 to 2012, she has been vice-president of the University of Strasbourg in charge of the digital strategy. In May 2013, she was appointed Policy Officer at the French Ministry of Higher Education in charge of the digital strategy. Since September 2015, she is the CEO of France Université Numérique. The objectives of this public organization are to manage the FUN MOOC platform and its evolutions, to develop new partnerships and activities, especially in the context of life-long learning education and continuous professional development, and to increase its Francophone and international visibility.

Ignacio Despujol, MOOC Initiative Coordinator at Universitat Politècnica de València

Ignacio Despujol holds MsE. Telecommunication Engineer and MsE. Aeronautical Engineer degrees from Universitat Politècnica de València and an Executive MBA from Catholic University of Valencia. He has the exciting task of incorporating the 2.0 philosophy into the UPV and implementing new Internet tools for teaching, especially network video platforms and MOOCs. He is the MOOC initiative coordinator of UPV. UPV has its own MOOC platform (upvx.es), presence on the edx.org platform and has made more than 450 editions of more than 100 courses since January 2013, with more than 3,700,000 enrollments. In former jobs he was the technical director of the University’s radiotelevision and the telecommunications infrastructure manager of UPV.

He also teaches Airport Engineering to 130 students in flipped mode in the Aerospace Engineering Bachelor of the same university, is an IEEE senior member, is part of the board of Valencia Telecommunication Engineering Guild and holds a commercial pilot license.

Xavier Antoviaque, Founder and CEO of OpenCraft

Xavier Antoviaque is an Open edX developer and contributor. He is also the founder of OpenCraft, which is the largest contributing organization to Open edX besides edX/2U, as a provider of development and hosting services on the Open edX platform. The projects and clients involve many key actors of the Open edX community, including Harvard, MIT, edX/2U, ASU, UBC, Cloudera, as well as state projects like the ones initiated by France and Israel. He is a long-time contributor of free software communities: he co-created the free software game Card Stories, initiated the Ryzom.org campaign, and is a former board member of April, the main free software advocacy organization in France.

The post Introducing the Open edX Technical Oversight Committee Community Members appeared first on Open edX.

Many have asked, “what can we do to support Raccoon Gang?” 

One critical thing we can do is to help the team execute their business continuity plan by moving forward with projects, accelerating work, and squaring our accounts.  I have exchanged messages with the Raccoon Gang leadership recently and know that they have a strong business continuity plan that was developed in advance of the invasion.  They are executing the plan now.  Their wise reliance on cloud-based infrastructure will ensure the continuity of their technical operations.

The Open edX team will continue to work closely with Raccoon Gang and asks you to do the same.  Their ability to support their staff and their staff’s families in this time of crisis depends upon reliable sources of income.  In these extraordinary times, we must repay the commitment and resilience of our colleagues with our patience and steadfastness. 

A Ukrainian colleague recently shared that he, paraphrasing, “was safe, but definitely not OK.”  I hope that soon our friends and colleagues will be both safe and OK.

The post Supporting Raccoon Gang appeared first on Open edX.

It is our distinct pleasure to be joined by three education thought leaders from the worlds of learning science, academia and industry. This year’s speakers are Paula Marques, Tobie Langel, and, as always, the opening keynote will be from the founder of edX and Chief Open Education Officer at 2U, Anant Agarwal.

Meet our keynote speakers!

Paula Marques

Executive Director for Business Transformation, Executive Education at NOVA School of Business and Economics and the Head of Innovation at MERCER.

Paula’s work focuses on how humans learn, bringing together research in neuroscience, anthropology, psychology and biology in order to adapt learning methodologies in the executive learning arena. She is also co-author of the book The Age of Super Humans.

Anant Agarwal

Chief Open Education Officer at 2U, Inc.

Anant Agarwal is the Chief Open Education Officer at 2U, Inc., guiding and furthering the company’s mission to increase access to high-quality education for everyone, everywhere. Anant joined 2U through the edX acquisition, where he directed its evolution into one of the world’s leading online learning platforms as founder and CEO.

As the first educator to teach an edX course on circuits and electronics from MIT, Anant drew 155,000 students from 162 countries. He remains a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT today.

Previously, he served as the director of CSAIL, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Tobie Langel

An industry veteran, Tobie Langel is a world-leading expert on open source and standardization. Through his consultancy UnlockOpen, he advises some of the biggest names in tech, promising startups, and industry organizations. Tobie thrives on helping build open, sustainable ecosystems that carefully balance private and public interests in pursuit of the common good.

Tobie is the facilitator of AMP’s Advisory Committee, a voting member of the OpenJS Foundation Cross Project Council, and sits on the Advisory Council of OASIS Open Projects.

The keynotes will take place on the mornings of April 27th and 28th. Additional details about the tutorials and workshops will be announced in the coming weeks.

You don’t want to miss these incredible speakers! Register today.

The post Open edX 2022 Keynote Speakers appeared first on Open edX.

The inaugural TOC meeting was held on Friday, December 10th.  We want to meet as soon as possible to advance the important business of selecting the initial community members of the TOC.  As specified in the charter, the six initial members will select 3 members from the broad Open edX community to join the TOC.  In the initial meeting, we were able to agree upon a rubric and begin the process of nominating candidates for membership.  We hope to complete the selection process as quickly as practical.  Selection of community members will focus on reflecting the diversity of the Open edX community.

Without further ado, the initial members of the TOC are:

Anant Agarwal, Chief Open Education Officer at 2U

Anant Agarwal is the Chief Open Education Officer at 2U, Inc., guiding and furthering the company’s mission to increase access to high-quality education for everyone, everywhere. Anant joined 2U through the edX acquisition, where he directed its evolution into one of the world’s leading online learning platforms as founder and CEO.

As the first educator to teach an edX course on circuits and electronics from MIT, Anant drew 155,000 students from 162 countries. He remains a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT today. Previously, he served as the director of CSAIL, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Anant is a successful serial entrepreneur, having co-founded several companies including Tilera Corporation, which created the Tile multicore processor, and Virtual Machine Works. He has received multiple accolades over the years for his pursuit of great educational innovation. He won the Maurice Wilkes prize for computer architecture and MIT’s Smullin and Jamieson prizes for teaching. He is also the 2016 recipient of the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize for Higher Education, which recognized his work in advancing the MOOC movement. Additionally, he is a recipient of the Padma Shri award from the President of India and was named the Yidan Prize Laureate for Education Development in 2018.

A pioneer in computer architecture, Anant is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the ACM. Scientific American selected his work on organic computing as one of 10 World-Changing Ideas in 2011, and he was named in Forbes’ list of top 15 education innovators in 2012.

Luyen Chou, Chief Learning Officer at 2U

Luyen Chou is the Chief Learning Officer at 2U, Inc., having joined 2U through the acquisition of Trilogy Education Services, where he was Chief Product Officer. As 2U’s CLO, Luyen is responsible for curriculum design, development, and production across the company. Prior to joining Trilogy, Luyen served in a variety of product leadership roles at Pearson Education, most recently as the company’s Chief Product Strategy Officer with responsibility for the company’s $6B global product portfolio strategy. Luyen joined Pearson in 2011 through the acquisition of Schoolnet, a leading provider of data-driven curriculum and assessment solutions for K-12 school districts and states, where he served as Chief Product Officer.

George Babey, Director of Engineering at 2U

George Babey is Director of Engineering at 2U, leading the development for our Enterprise business. In over four years at edX, George has focused on growing our commercial and academic business through products and features that assist learners and administrators to be successful when rolling out learning initiatives within their organizations. He has a special affinity for frontend development and has helped lead the Open edX project through various improvements such as micro-frontends (MFEs) and the Paragon component library. Prior to edX, George has worked in various engineering and leadership roles across a 20+ year career.

Sanjay Sarma, Vice President of Open Learning at MIT

Sanjay Sarma is the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He is the Vice President Open Learning at MIT. He co-founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT and developed many of the key technologies behind the EPC suite of RFID standards now used worldwide. He was also the founder and CTO of OATSystems, which was acquired by Checkpoint Systems (NYSE: CKP) in 2008. He serves on the boards of edX, GS1, EPCglobal and Hochschild Mining (HOC:LSE). Dr. Sarma received his Bachelors from the Indian Institute of Technology, his Masters from Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Sarma also worked at Schlumberger Oilfield Services in Aberdeen, UK, and at the OATSystems. He has authored over 150 academic papers in computational geometry, sensing, RFID, automation and CAD, and is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching and research including the MacVicar Fellowship, the Business Week eBiz Award and Informationweek’s Innovators and Influencers Award. He advises several national governments and global companies. He is the author of the book, GRASP: The Science Transforming How We Learn.

Dustin Tingley, Deputy Vice Provost for Advances in Learning

Dustin Tingley is Professor of Government in the Government Department at Harvard University. Dustin is Deputy Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, Faculty Director for the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning Data Science and Technology Group (Harvard higher education data science group), and Faculty director for the Harvard Initiative on Learning and Teaching. He received a PhD in Politics from Princeton in 2010 and BA from the University of Rochester in 2001. His research interests include international relations, international political economy, climate change, digital education and data science.  His book on American foreign policy with Helen Milner, Sailing the Water’s Edge, was published in fall 2015, and was awarded the Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best book published in the field of U.S. national policy. Recent projects include attitudes towards global climate technologies and policies, and the intersection of causal inference and machine learning methods for the social sciences. He teaches courses on data science, international relations, and climate change.Dustin co-founded ABLConnect, previously served as the Director of Graduate Studies for the Harvard Government Department and faculty director of IQSS’s Undergraduate Research Scholar program. Dustin has organized interdisciplinary conferences on causal mechanisms, climate change politics, negotiation in international relations, the intersection of causal inference and machine learning, active learning, peer learning, and equitable instruction in inclusive classrooms.

Ed Zarecor, Vice President of Engineering for the Open edX Project

Ed Zarecor is the Vice President of Engineering for the Open edX project at Axim Collaborative.  Ed has been a software engineer, architect and technology leader throughout his career of more than 30 years, with a focus on educational technology.  For the last nine years, he has led development of the Open edX platform at edX Inc., where he served as the Head of Engineering and Head of the Open edX project. Notably, Ed oversaw a significant reinvigoration of the Open edX project starting in 2019, laying the groundwork for a more open and inclusive project, expanding opportunities for community participation, and so far, realizing a 10-fold increase in code contributions.  He is also one of the lucky few to have a three character GitHub username, e0d.

Ed will be the Chair of the Technical Oversight Committee.

The post Introducing the Initial Open edX Technical Oversight Committee Members appeared first on Open edX.

As you already know, stewardship of the Open edX project is moving from edX to Axim Collaborative, a nonprofit organization led by MIT and Harvard University.

As part of this transition, we are introducing a new governance structure to the project.  We will be forming a Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) for the project.  That committee will be responsible for governing the overall technical direction and stewardship of the Open edX project.

The TOC will have nine members, three from Axim Collaborative, three from edX/2U, and three from members of the worldwide Open edX community.

With this change, the broader community will have direct input into project governance for the first time.

Axim Collaborative and edX/2U have already appointed their members — we will share those details in a separate post.  

The initial slate of TOC community members will be selected by unanimous decision of the members designated by the Axim Collaborative and edX/2U.  

In subsequent years, community members will be elected from the community via a process that the TOC will establish. 

The TOC itself was established and is governed by a formal charter.  You can read the full document here.

We will be moving to identify and select the community members of the TOC as quickly as practical.

The post Open edX Governance Changes appeared first on Open edX.