Platform Contributions

OpenCraft benefits from a long-standing development partnership with the edX organization. EdX has hired us for the development of key features of the platform and has publicly recognized OpenCraft as one of the leading Open edX specialists in the community.

We have been involved in the Open edX project since its creation, and we are one of its biggest feature contributors. OpenCraft has successfully submitted 1000+ changes to Open edX and played a major role in the development of content libraries, single sign-on, badges, analytics, XBlocks, and many more.

A corporate client hired OpenCraft to develop the Open edX® platform’s Completion API, which provides the often-requested ability to track a learner’s progress through each course by marking learning units as complete. Along with visual indicators developed by edX, this feature helps learners keep track of their progress and allows them to resume their course at the last unit they completed. The Completion API was introduced in the Hawthorn version of the Open edX platform.

OpenCraft led the development work for the Open edX® platform’s Content Library feature, which allows instructors to create a library to build a pool of HTML components, problems, and video components for use in randomized assignments in their courses.

OpenCraft was hired by a client to develop what would become the popular Drag and Drop XBlock V2, a visual exercise where the learner drags items to zones on a target image. OpenCraft was then enrolled by the edX team to integrate the Drag and Drop V2 exercise as a standard problem type in the Open edX® platform and to make it mobile-optimized.

OpenCraft led the development work of the Image Explorer XBlock, a visual course component for the Open edX® platform that prompts learners to explore an image containing hotspots and click the hotspots to display custom content.

edX hired OpenCraft to develop a large part of Shibboleth and SAML Single Sign-On support for the Open edX® platform, allowing users to authenticate on the platform using a variety of identity providers.

The Australian National University, Australia’s foremost public university, hired OpenCraft to develop a project called the XBlock Reporting Tool. The tool improves reporting functionalities for XBlocks, allowing course instructors to get more data about learners’ responses to problems and to preview and download detailed reports. OpenCraft also provides consulting services as needed for ANU’s in-house deployment of the Open edX® platform.

See ANU courses on edX

Harvard University hired OpenCraft to develop advanced learning tools for the Open edX® platform through their HarvardX online learning initiative. We developed the Atlas XBlock, a visual tool that aggregates survey results and displays them on a world map. We also rewrote and improved Dalite, a tool for asynchronous peer instruction which identifies discussion arguments for students to revise or defend, enabling peer instruction at scale in online courses.

OpenCraft was put in charge of deploying, customizing, and maintaining a large-scale Corporate Academy based on the Open edX platform to deliver online training programs for a worldwide management consulting firm. We implemented several supplemental features on the Academy such as Single Sign-On, Insight analytics, and Mobile Apps. We were also given the task of developing several new features for the platform, resulting in the development of the Chat XBlock, which allows learners to chat with a robot acting as a teacher’s assistant on their mobile phones while in the platform. Finally, we provided the staff with consulting on course authoring with Studio.

Testimonials

“LabXchange is committed to the principles of open source, and so with OpenCraft's deep investment in the development of Open edX, they were an obvious partner for us. OpenCraft not only built the LabXchange platform, but also ensured a close and productive collaboration with the technical team at edX. Among other things, this allowed us to release Blockstore, the next-generation content storage system for the Open edX platform.”

Robert A. Lue, Former Faculty Director and Principal Investigator

Harvard LabXchange

“I have worked with OpenCraft on multiple projects in the past years, and I am still amazed by how consistent, professional, and responsive they are. I can rely on their support and quality of the code, always. They continuously contribute to the Open edX platform.
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Natalia Berdnikov, Senior Project Manager

edX

“OpenCraft’s strong collaboration skills, excellence in their craft, and harmonic practices lead to significant contributions to the Open edX ecosystem. This results in a profound resonance of the edX mission to provide quality education to the global community.
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Nimisha Asthagiri, Chief Architect

edX

“OpenCraft was a pleasure to work with, helping through every stage of the process. From idea generation, prototyping, construction, deployment, and testing. They were responsive to my needs and completed the work on time and on budget. The OpenCraft team knows edX inside out, both technically and organizationally. This is invaluable as they are able to reach the right people to get features released on time for our edx.org courses.”

Bill Wisser, Sr. Director of Learning Technologies

Harvard Graduate School of Education

The opinions printed here are the perspectives of the individual(s) quoted and do not represent the views of Harvard University or Harvard Graduate School of Education.

“OpenCraft is an invaluable partner. They’ve successfully architected and delivered several complex features in the Open edX platform, and are recognized throughout the community as experts in development of XBlocks.
We count on OpenCraft to develop key parts of our roadmap on time and at a high quality standard.
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Steve Magoun, Former Engineering Director

edX

“OpenCraft is fantastic to work with. They customized our Open edX instance allowing for the very specific use case we needed. The high level of customization achieved thanks to OpenCraft is critical to our ability to train policy makers around the world. ”

Charlotte Tuminelli, Senior Training Manager

Harvard Kennedy School

The opinions printed here are the perspectives of the individual(s) quoted and do not represent the views of Harvard University or Harvard Kennedy School.

“OpenCraft developed two custom products for my team to expand the edX platform’s capabilities. Their performance and attention to customer satisfaction exceeded my expectations with seamless integrations. ”

Stefan Esposito, Instructional Development Manager

HarvardX

The opinions printed here are the perspectives of the individual(s) quoted and do not represent the views of Harvard University or HarvardX.

“OpenCraft’s working relationship with the edX community allows changes to be quickly integrated in the latest Open edX release, allowing everyone to benefit. The team provided fantastic support on a very complex issue with a very tight deadline.
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Ethan Barden, MeriSTEM Project Coordinator

Australian National University

“OpenCraft took full responsibility for the code reviews and upstreaming process and led it on the highest professional level. OpenCraft’s work is professional, accurate, always on time and with a smile. They are true leaders of the Open Source community around the Open edX technology.”

Anna Lifshits Agmon, CTO

Campus-IL - Israel's National Project for Digital Learning

“OpenCraft has been an invaluable partner in making our vision for Cloudera OnDemand a reality. No other Open edX provider can rival OpenCraft’s deep level of knowledge of the platform, or match their skill in customization.”

Rowan McVey, Former Program Manager

Cloudera

“We were looking for a partner who shared our values on open source, knew the Open edX community well, and would deliver high quality service. Opencraft did just that and more. Their service was rock solid and they were always willing to explore ways for the Open edX platform to provide more value to our university community. We could not have done it without them by our side.”

Michael Greene, Associate Director

Duke Learning Innovation, Duke University

The opinions printed here are the perspectives of the individual(s) quoted and do not represent the views of Duke University.

“Opencraft has matched all of our hosting needs, quickly and satisfactorily. This is a service we would recommend. Everything works great and there is always somebody on the other side of the email.”

Ramon Ovelar, Researcher

University of the Basque Country