Now the Lilac version of the Open edX platform, using the LTI consumer XBlock, has been formally certified as an LTI Advantage learning platform.  We’re excited to continue to support the latest capabilities of LTI, including Deep Linking, to provide the best support for this important interoperability standard.

As an open source platform, we believe strongly in supporting standards like LTI that enable instructional teams to choose the best tools for their needs.  LTI Advantage is the latest evolution of the widely used LTI standard.  Supporting it fully gives Open edX operators the widest choice of tools and capabilities.

The work to extend the XBlock to support LTI Advantage was a collaboration between edX and OpenCraft as a blended development project.  This is an example of the kind of successful joint effort that open source enables.

See the IMS site for more about LTI Advantage: http://www.imsglobal.org/lti-advantage-overview.

LTI® and Learning Tools Interoperability® are trademarks of IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. (https://www.imsglobal.org)

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For Learners: Many areas of the learner experience have started their transitions to modern micro front ends, including the Learner Profile, Account Settings, Order History, Checkout Page, and even the Course Experience. Additionally, advancements to our platform’s commerce capabilities enable feature-based enrollments for more configurable content access gating. Improvements have also been added enabling learner schedule personalization, team assignment submissions, as well as major updates to the mobile application video experience.

Complete details are in the Learner Experience release notes.

For Educators: For educators many updates have been made to the Studio experience in support of improving authoring speed for frequent actions like component naming, unit creation, problem markdown editing, and learning sequence navigation. Additionally, updates to the platform grading tools are a key part of these updates. For instances using programs, various program operations have been updated through the introduction of a new registrar service and a way for external systems to set enrollments for program learners.

More information is in the Educator Experience release notes.

For Developers: In the developer experience, a few key highlights include major core upgrades to support Python 3 and Django 2. For front-end components, Juniper brings a major shift toward micro front ends and the Paragon component pattern library that has led many platform areas to be deprecated in favor of their future MFE replacements. On a related note, the deprecation process has been a source of increased cleanup and visibility into keeping the platform healthy.

Full details are in the Developer Experience release notes

Overall, Juniper represents a huge step forward for the Open edX platform. We’re excited to see what the community will build with Juniper to spread education across the globe.

To get started with Open edX Juniper, visit openedx.org or join the discussions at discuss.openedx.org.

(Image credit: MPF / CC BY-SA)

The post Juniper is here! appeared first on Open edX.

We would like to create closer collaborative ties with you to accelerate platform development. We are especially interested in projects and proposals that make the Open edX platform a better teaching and learning platform, whether your focus is pedagogy, engagement, analytics or something we haven’t imagined. We have some funding from an unexpected source as well as architectural and operational expertise and can use it to help you bring projects over the finish line.

The goal of the demo session is to learn enough about your project or idea for us to select projects to pursue. We can help with:

• Implementation funding
• Architectural and design guidance
• Access to edX experts on UX, a11y, scalability and security to ensure incorporation
• Accelerated review process
• Feature availability on edx.org
• Promotion on openedx.org

Format

We are holding individual 20-minute sessions for informal demos and discussions of projects or work-in-progress. There are times available on Tuesday May 5th and Wednesday May 6th.

Sign up for a 20-minute slot: https://calendly.com/nedbat_openedx/edx-sponsorship-demo 5

If these times don’t work for you we can arrange more sessions. Get in touch: oscm@edx.org.

Rubric

During the demo session, we’ll be looking for answers to these questions:

1. What have you built?
2. Who is it for?
3. How does it improve the teaching and learning platform?
4. What evidence is there that this feature would be adopted?
5. Has it been used in the real world?
6. How ready is it to run on a site like edx.org?
7. Which edX team would be an internal champion for it?
8. What resources are needed to finish it?

We hope to hear from you soon!

The post edX Sponsorship Demos appeared first on Open edX.

The Open edX Team has spent the last couple weeks consulting with virtual conference experts and members of the community about holding a virtual Open edX Conference.

We appreciate everyone who took the time to answer the survey or speak with us about it.

Ultimately we have decided that we won’t be holding a virtual conference this May.

With the current worldwide disruption caused by the spread of COVID-19, our collective energies are needed to help support moving education around the globe online.

We are hopeful that as things return to normalcy in the coming months that we can start planning for Open edX 2021 and, again, gather this wonderful community together, in person.

Between now and then, we will hold more virtual events.  We want to expand these events to include more of the great content we saw proposed for the conference.  This was already something that we planned to do. We will also look to incorporate more access and more opportunities to participate for remote conference attendees in the future.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our call for speakers. We wish we could put all of you in front of the community. We’ll be working on how best to get your ideas out to people.

For those of you who purchased tickets, we are actively working with Eventbrite to refund all purchases in full.  This process has taken longer than we liked.

The post Cancelling the 2020 Open edX Conference appeared first on Open edX.

This year’s conference will focus on shaping the future of education together. We’ll explore the future of work and how we can leverage open technology to solve the challenges of upskilling, reskilling and delivering life-long learning. 

Through workshops, breakout sessions and lightning talks, attendees will:

• Hear about innovative uses of technology in higher education, inside corporations and across nations
• Learn about advancements in instructional design and course production
• Learn about methods for operating, extending and enhancing the Open edX platform

Interested in speaking at the conference? Our Call for proposals is open. Submit before the February 19 deadline.  

Early bird registration is now open. Register today and save! Please be aware that May is tourist season in Portugal so hotel rooms will get booked quickly. If you’re thinking about joining us, make your reservations soon to assure you get the accommodations you want. 

Interested in getting in front of the world’s leading minds in online learning? Check out sponsorship opportunities.

We’re looking forward to another great event! Check out this blog in the near future for more information, including keynote speakers!

The post Open edX 2020 Conference: Shaping the future of education together appeared first on Open edX.

You’re probably wondering what my departure means for the Open edX Community. For one thing, edX will continue to invest in supporting and growing the community.  As for the various community initiatives, look for the continuation and growth of things we started or improved upon these last few months:

• Expanded Open edX Conference
• Instructional Design community
• Community working groups
• Better, more reliable Open edX releases
• Improved communication tools (https://discuss.openedx.org) 
• INCRemental improvements, DEPRecated code

I hope to see all of you again at the next Open edX Conference, although I suspect it will be slightly less stressful for me this time

If you want to reach out with questions or feedback, I’m around until August 2.

Thank you,

John Mark

The post Stepping Down as Open edX Community Lead appeared first on Open edX.

If you have something you’d like to demo or you want to add an item to the agenda, see the agenda page.

This hangout will feature a segment about working groups – how we’d like to organize them, and which ones we’re starting with. You can see the working group guidelines (WIP) on the wiki.

Be sure to check out working groups currently in incubation. To start, we’re focusing on these 4:

• Instructional design
• Analytics
• Governance
• APIs (and API docs)

Hope to see you there! Monthly hangouts are recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel afterwards.

The post Next Community Hangout – All About Working Groups appeared first on Open edX.

(Many thanks to Data Science Dojo for sponsoring the Open edX 2019 Conference! Following is their sponsored blog post)

Authors: Arham Akheel – Business Analyst; Sanjay Pant – Data Analyst; and Ahsan Khan – Data Engineer

AI and machine learning are the most exciting subjects of the decade, and they’ve increasingly become part of our daily lives. When you type a search query on Google or keep scrolling on the endless feed on Facebook, they are all powered by insights from machine learning engines. As technology advances in data science, the need for relevant skills becomes essential for teams in every company. As a global leader in data science learning, we believe in making AI and machine learning accessible to everyone with a unique learning program. The program covers essential topics in data science and data engineering to trail-blaze through real-world problems, apt for working professionals looking to beef up their skill set. Our focus is mainly on providing a blended learning experience with online and in-person courses using Open edX as a self-hosted platform.

Why we use Open edX?

We created the best rated data science bootcamp by prioritizing social learning and hands-on interactivity and we strongly believe that an in-person learning experience carries a lot more value when compared to 100% online learning. As we see a shift from the physical classroom to anytime, anywhere learning, platforms are growing quickly across many industries. Education professionals always talk about the “MOOC Revolution”, referring to the explosive emergence of Massive Open Online Courses back in 2012. Since then, dozens of learning organizations have entered the MOOC arena, wanting to get a piece of the growing market of online students

We chose Open edX over hundreds of MOOC Providers because open source is the future. It’s hard pressed to find a startup today worth its venture capital funding not based, at least in part (if not largely), on open source. Open source isn’t a fad, or a bunch of hippies out in California passing around tie-dye laptops like they would illicit substances. Open source is how modern organizations, and increasingly more traditional organizations build software. Even Microsoft, traditionally one of the most stark opponents to open source, has open sourced their primary development framework (along with Apple and Swift). Today, all of the largest names in technology, from IBM, to SAP, to Adobe actively participate in the open source community.

Open edX emerged as the chosen online learning platform for many organizations because it’s learner focused, scale-able, and flexible. Open edX’s modern web user interface pushes the focus on usability making it a great platform for instructors and an immersive learning environment for students. It’s a powerful, online open source learning platform and is constantly innovated with contributions from the world’s most brilliant minds. Open edX is extensible, versatile, and can be adapted for your needs.

“What makes Open edX unique is that it is the only last-generation, full-featured, open-source platform for online learning,” – Lorena Barba, Professor at George Washington University and one of the most prestigious voices in the Open edX community

Business Agility is Important

When companies think of open source, these days they think about “business agility,” a quality increasingly valued above all others in the fast-changing marketplace. The ability to create new applications quickly, reliably and economically is drawing all businesses,  both big and small, to open source and encouraging them to use it for ever-larger projects like buildingan ecosystem using open source. 

We are more focused on content creation, rather than building a platform from scratch. 

Why not stand on the shoulders of technology giants? 

This shifts our developers from low-value workers to high-value workers, in open source all the easy problems have already been solved. Blogging, content management, and operating systems are all problems with established (and mainstream) open source solutions. While our developers could spend their time reinventing wheels that the open source community have already perfected, it’s far preferable to use the worlds best wheel, especially when it comes at no cost to you. This frees our developers to work on yet-unsolved challenges, developing new features that are unique and add value to our organization’s mission of making data science accessible to everyone.

Open source is a give-a-penny-take-a-penny jar of software. If you consume open source, be it a server, a desktop publishing application, or Open edX, you are obliged to give back to the community. After all, without the contribution of others, the micro and macro economic motivations would no longer hold true, and open source as we know it would cease to exist. This is the Golden Rule, or in traditional philosophical terms, a categorial imperitive. 

How we use Open edX?

We started out by using Open edX as a complementary learning platform to our in-person training sessions. This helped us fine tune the learning experience and grow into the online space by offering 100% online data science courses. 

Learning Management System

There are several benefits of a learning management system (LMS) for students:

• Learning Medium: Our bootcamp attendees are using Open edX LMS as an additional learning medium, and are utilizing it to fulfill prerequisites, review course material, and learn extra content. It also helps them to evaluate their understanding of whatever topics they have learned in the class.

• Content Creation: We are continuously striving to author engaging new multi-media content. Most of our attendees get access to this content when they sign up for the bootcamp. Each course comprises of quizzes, video lectures, homework assignments and handbooks to enhance learner’s various concepts of data science and data engineering.

• Flexbility: The platform is flexible as students can enjoy rich content at their convenience on various devices. Being able to access up to date learning material is a huge benefit. We are also able to communicate updates to students in real-time in case there are any changes to the schedule or curriculum. 

• Analytics: Learners can assess and evaluate their understanding and the platform gives them a set of tools to track their progress. It helps course creators understand how to improve and enhance the learning experience of students.

• Collaboration: We use the forum extensively to promote collaborative and social learning. Students can post various questions, and answers using the discussion feature and are helping each other understand and clarify diverse machine learning topics.

Studio

Instructors and course creators use the Open edX content management system to create engaging Data Science and Data Engineering content which has made it easier to develop multi-media content like videos, quizzes, and coding exercises. There are several benefits of using a tool like Studio:

• Re-usability and Experimentation: Instructors can utilize the same course for different cohorts, and do not have to create it from scratch for each class. Content groups can be used to create sets of content units based on the type of learner. Groups can also be used for online experimentation and A/B testing for deciding between variations to increase engagement and understanding.

• Multi-Media Content: Open edX makes it effortless to create learning materials in multiple formats using X blocks which helps course creators in developing engaging content.

• Uniformity: Once instructors and course creators get accustomed to making the first few courses,  the content creation process becomes effortless, and they can focus on creating captivating materials to enhance learners’ engagement.

• Feedback: Instructors can use various metrics to evaluate how learners are using the content and collect explicit and implicit feedback to improve their content.

• Communication with Students: Instructors and students can use LMS as a communication channel. If a student were to miss class, they are able to find updates and announcements from their instructor in the learning portal.

Development and Operations

• Deployment and Maintenance: We are hosting Open edX code on DigitalOcean and using Ansible for deployment, orchestration, and configuration. Data-intensive applications are hosted separately from stateless applications. Most of our services for LMS are utilizing open source software and only using platform as a service like Segment for analytics and Sentry for application error tracking.
• Data Storage: As the number of users grows, the demand for more computational resources also increases. The elastic stateless applications can be easily horizontally scaled, but the persistence elements do not scale smoothly. So, we are hosting several data systems’, like MySQL and MongoDB, media and static files in separate servers.  

• Multiple app servers behind load-balancers: We are running core edX services like LMS, CMS, Discovery, and Forum in each app server and operating multiple nodes behind a load-balancer.

We started with a native installation on a single server and soon realized that it could become a nightmare if we were to scale. So, we moved all the persistent data systems out of the individual node but were still manually configuring the servers by editing configuration files independent to each server. Realizing this would become complicated with mulitple servers, we found Ansible, a piece of art software that helps orchestrate and deploy any software by running a script. By creating a customized Ansible script, we were able to control our servers from a single control machine.

Data Science Dojo at Open edX Conference

Our team is joining the Open edX Conference 2019 in San Diego and are looking forward to building partnerships with others in the community. We are intrigued by different product strategies undertaken by some of the participating companies and would love to know more about the e-learning space as we grow our product. We are rapidly hiring developers, product managers, instructional designers and data scientists for multiple roles to support our platform. If you are interested or know someone who might be interested in joining our team. Feel free to apply on our website. 

The post Data Science on Open edX appeared first on Open edX.

If you have questions about Ironwood or beyond, the edX Product team wants to hear them. Ask them questions!

The post Ironwood is here! appeared first on Open edX.

This year’s conference slogan is “Collaborative Learning. Community Led.” Part of that slogan means expanding our community and collaborating with the instructional design community as well as educators and learners. As such, we’re pleased to announce the Instructional Design Summit to be held on Tuesday, March 26 at UC San Diego as part of the Open edX Conference.

• Register for the Instructional Design Summit at Open edX
  • Tickets for the tutorial day (March 26) or the 4-day pass are eligible for admission

Anyone interested in designing and developing an online course is invited to attend the instructional design summit. This full-day summit will cover everything from theory to application of best practices and learning science in online course design. Participants will have the opportunity to apply those models to the development and alignment of learning goals, assessments, and content delivery. Tips and strategies on using Studio will be used when building your own course in Open edX.

Come prepared with a laptop, an idea for an online course, 1-3 main learner takeaways, and an idea for one module to focus on during the summit.

As an added bonus, attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a course design collaboration workshop with interested engineers on Friday, March 29.

The post Announcing: Instructional Design Summit at the Open edX Conference appeared first on Open edX.