Using Open edX® technology as a tool for employee training in public institutions and councils
Open edX technology is best known for its application as a large-scale MOOC platform on platforms like edX.org, XuetangX, or FUN, serving millions of users.
However, we have decided to use Open edX software in a different and very niche context by training government employees to comply with the high regulations of managing third-party funding.
Using Transifex, we were able to translate the platform into German and tailor the courses to our user’s needs. Running the Open edX platform on an AWS Server in Frankfurt, allowed us to comply with the regulation that all services needed to be hosted in Germany.
Although the entire platform only has one course instructor, Dr. Andrea Greven, we decided to run a complete platform for just the purpose of a few courses.
Link to platform by Dr. Andrea Greven
One benefit of the Open edX platform, which is easily overseen, is the ability to have an extensive feature set at a low cost of implementation. Through the easy-to-use authoring tool Open edX Studio, our team was able to draft the first version of the course and allow the instructors to make final changes on different question types and texts.
Using Open edX Studio was a massive improvement over the more traditional approach of building web-based-trainings in a SCORM format, which is often used within government institutions throughout Germany.
While SCORM is static and requires the course team to edit files and re-upload them to the LMS, edX Studio is ideal for us to work together as a team, releasing content into the live course.
We are looking forward to adding new features, such as peer review assignments, to the courses, and expanding our user base over various institutions in Germany, working with third-party-funding projects (Drittmittelverwaltung).
This project has proven to us that the Open edX platform is an excellent fit for individual topic experts, who want to share their knowledge. Open edX technology allows them to run courses within a platform that they can control and manage without having to rely on commercial online course platforms.
