This year, the Open edX Conference will be held from March 28 – 31 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The conference schedule is jam-packed with awesome tutorials, talks, and workshops.
You will hear from three of our coding wizards. Check out their talks below:
by Xavier Antoviaque
Would you like to involve your learners in contributing, building, and improving your courses?
Xavier is presenting recognized best-practices that have made open source communities successful. With decades of field-tested approaches in building collaborative online projects, open-source communities can provide a useful perspective to educators looking to develop a different kind of engagement with their students.
Xavier will be speaking on March 29, 2023.
Xavier is an Open edX Technical Oversight Committee member and contributor. He’s also active in several community working groups. And he was one the very first outside contributors to the Open edX codebase!
Xavier founded OpenCraft when he noticed there was a huge demand for instance customization and feature development on edX. To take on this challenge, he rounded up some of the best developers in the world!
OpenCraft is now one of the largest contributors to the Open edX code base (outside of edX, of course). We provide design, development, and hosting services for clients like Harvard, MIT, edX/2U, and Esme.
Xavier loves all things open source and has been a tenured 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 primary free software advocacy organization in France.
Xavier is really active on the Open edX discussion forum. So reach out to him there!
by Braden MacDonald, and tCRIL’s Jenna Makowski and Dave Ormsbee
tCRIL and OpenCraft led Product Discovery work on the Modular Learning Initiative. This initiative makes authoring more flexible by ensuring all parts of the course are independent, composable, and reusable. The teams adopted an “open first” philosophy, making product development a transparent process. Braden, Jenna, and Dave will discuss how community input shaped the project’s direction. They’ll also discuss what they learned, how they can improve community input channels, and ways for those that are interested to stay in the loop.
Braden will be speaking on March 29, 2023.
Braden MacDonald is the CTO of OpenCraft, a Core Contributor to the Open edX project, and an active full stack developer. Braden has led the development of several major features of the Open edX platform, as well as many projects in the broader community ecosystem. He is the official maintainer of projects like Blockstore and Tutor’s ARM64 plugin, as well as several open-source projects outside of Open edX. When he’s not coding, Braden enjoys answering questions on the community forums.
by Jillian Vogel, and tCRIL’s Brian Mesick
What are your wildest dreams for data analytics on the Open edX platform? Jill and Brian want to make those dreams come true.
In this talk, find out how far the Open Analytics Reference System (OARS) for the Open edX platform has come, and help guide where it's going. Jill and Brian want to hear from educators, administrators, operators, developers, and anyone else who wants to know more about how people are interacting with educational content.
Jill will be speaking on March 30, 2023.
Jillian Vogel is a senior open-source developer and DevOps at OpenCraft. She’s an Open edX core contributor, and started contributing to the platform and analytics system in 2016. Jill loves working at OpenCraft because of our values, openness, quality, commitment, and empathy. She’s a firm believer in learning to code. She finds that even if someone doesn’t stay in tech, code is a tool that can be applied to any field, be it science, engineering, arts, or politics.
Catch Jill’s recent interview with LabXchange here.
The Open edX Conference is an annual 4-day event where the Open edX community and experts in ed-tech meet to discuss the latest industry research, technologies to enhance teaching and learning, and any technical advances in the Open edX platform.
Get a sneak peek of the 2023 Open edX Conference with tCRIL's series of "Conference Preview" blog posts. The articles focus on the less-publicized but equally exciting Tuesday and Friday schedules, in addition to the two main days of the conference. Mark your calendars for March 28-31, and stay tuned, as session proposals are currently under evaluation. We know that this year's program promises to be amazing!
-> Tuesday preview blog post
-> Wednesday-Thursday preview blog post
-> Friday preview blog post
Sarina Canelake and Jenna Makowski of tCRIL present three captivating blog posts showcasing the latest enhancements and additions in Olive, the newest release of Open edX. The first blog post provides a comprehensive look into the improved authoring experience of the Text Component (previously known as the HTML component), which now supports emoticons, visual tables, and more. The remaining two posts showcase significant and highly-anticipated improvements to the discussion forums, including a refined search function, ability to mark posts as answers, and neat new tools for forum moderators.
-> Improved Studio Editing in Olive
-> New and Improved Discussion Forums
-> Moderation & Authoring Tools for the New Discussions Features
Looking for what has changed in the Olive release? Find the release notes here.
[Core Contributor Retros] Did you know that Core Contributors work in bi-weekly sprints and share their progress at the end of each sprint using Listaflow, an open-source checklist tool developed by OpenCraft? Their reports, accessible on Discuss, provide insights into what tasks require assistance, in case you're interested in lending a hand. Keep up-to-date on the latest sprint reports!
The recording of the January online Community meetup can be watched here. This meetup featured the following presentations:
___
Open source and free, a gift from above,
The Open edX platform brings knowledge, so that we can grow.
An endless stream of learning, for one and all,
Its power immense, shall answer our call.
With endless possibility, for young and old,
To explore and grow, with stories untold.
So gather ye students, from near and far,
And let the Open edX platform, be thy guiding star.
- Courtesy of ChatGPT
The Open edX Core Contributor Program grants community members expanded rights and ownership over various aspects of the Open edX Project, allowing them to actively participate in defining and deciding the direction of the platform. Members of the Core Contributor program earn this distinction by participating in Open edX community with distinction. They embody what we call the “3 Cs”: Commitment to the project, exemplary Conduct, and high Caliber contributions.
The program began in 2020, with an initial 9 community members being granted write access rights to various Open edX code repositories. Since then, the program has expanded to include nearly 40 core contributors, who not only commit code but oversee translations, manage projects, and more.
Recently we codified the program in OEP-54. “OEP” stands for Open edX (Enhancement) Proposal. An OEP is a document that details a specific decision being made by the Open edX community; the community agrees that they will follow the processes defined in the OEPs.
In OEP-54, we define various aspects of the Program, such as membership criteria and the nomination process for a new member. I’ll dive into some of these, with a focus on Core Contributors who commit code changes.
As we’ve expanded the number of Core Contributors who can commit code, we’ve also begun expanding the number of roles a Core Contributor can take on. Contributors are welcome to hold more than one role, as well! A full list of roles and responsibilities can be found at this link; a few roles I’ll highlight are:
For information on how to really dig into the community, see OEP-54’s “Where Do I Start?” section - there’s a lot of good resources there to get you started, as well as a few pointers on how you can reach out on the forums or to specific working groups. Joining a working group is a wonderful way to meet members of the community and get started on tasks identified by the group as having high value.
For those who code, I recommend joining the Build-Test-Release or Frontend working groups, as both groups tend to have a backlog of tasks they’d like people to pick up. The Deprecation working group is pretty fun (in my opinion!) - they focus on removing dead code from the system. They also tend to have a large backlog, but some tasks may be pretty complicated unless you know some Open edX architecture or are strong in Django/Python.
If you work at a company that’s developing Open edX features you’d like to someday see in the main codebase, you should reach out early in your development process to get pointers on the best way of architecting and implementing your change in order for it to have the greatest chance of being accepted. Reach out in the discussion forums in the Collaborative Proposals topic. Submitting your bug fixes, changes, and features upstream is a great path towards becoming a Core Contributor.
Community members who have demonstrated the 3 C’s, with a history of contributions to the Open edX project, may be nominated for inclusion in the program by an existing program member. For coders, the nomination would specify one or more repositories in the openedx GitHub organization for the nominee to get write access to. The process is designed to be straightforward and transparent: it takes place on the discussion forums, and other Core Contributors in the program weigh in on the nomination. Members are encouraged to give constructive feedback if they don’t feel a nominee is quite ready to join the program.
The Core Contributor program is administered by The Center for Re-Imagining Learning (tCRIL), the nonprofit organization that stewards the Open edX project. At any point on the road to becoming a core contributor, the program administrators may be reached in the #core-contributors Slack room in the Open edX Slack, or at cc-program-admins@tcril.org.
It’s been a joy and a privilege to be a part of the Open edX community and to have the chance to help administrate the Core Contributor program. I look forward to working with more and more of you as the program goes.
—---
Sarina Canelake
Engineering & Community Manager at Axim Collaborative
Sarina has 5+ years experience hacking on the Open edX platform and working with the Open Source community. She is dedicated to enabling open source contributors to the Open edX platform via extensibility and process improvements. She lives in Boston, MA with her 3 cat sons and has a lifelong love for all things Pokémon.
Photo by Chang Duong on Unsplash
The 2022 Open edX Conference will be hosted in-person in Lisbon, Portugal, from Apr. 26-29. You should register as soon as possible – the early bird rates end on Feb 28th!
The Open edX team is putting together an ambitious program: the conference will present innovative uses of open source technology in higher education and inside corporations, across a global scale. Attendees will participate in exciting talks about advancements in platform features, instructional design, course production, and technical sessions for operating, extending, and enhancing the Open edX platform. All members of the OpenCraft team have submitted proposals — we're looking forward to seeing you at our sessions! Stay tuned for the conference program reveal next month.
-> Schedule outline, travel guidelines, and more
The Open edX team have announced this year's keynote speakers for the Open edX Conference:
Keynote speeches 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.
After a successful pilot, the Core Contributor Program has officially been defined, reviewed, and adopted as an Open edX Proposal (OEP-54) by the community. Victory! ?
The foundational document defines Core Contributors, explains its motivations, details all roles and processes involved (such as nominating new Core Contributors), and features a change log. Our tCRIL friend Sarina Canelake will soon publish an article on our blog that further details the history and key items of the Program.
As a reminder, Core Contributors is a program that grants rights to individuals in the Open edX community that allow them to actively participate in defining and deciding the direction of the platform. At the time of writing, 11 members of the OpenCraft team are Core Contributors, along with many more members of the community from around the world.
We would also like to take the opportunity to welcome newcomers Jorge Londoño, Maria Grimaldi, Andrés Gonzales, JayRam Nai, and Dean Jay Matthew to the Program. Congratulations on your Core Committer nomination, and welcome aboard! : )
-> Core Committers Program definition
The Translations Working Group was formed with an initial focus on improving platform translation for ten languages: Spanish, French, Arabic, Italian, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Mandarin, and German. The group needs additional translators for Arabic, Hindi, Russian, and Ukrainian — please let us know if you're interested!
We would love to turn this newsletter into a community effort. Do you have any news about Open edX that you would like us to share? Please let us know by going to the Newsletter threads on either OpenCraft's public discussion forum or the Official Open edX forum!
As the stewardship of the Open edX platform is moving from edX/2U to the newly formed Center For Reimagining Learning (tCRIL), the team has announced the creation of a Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) as a new governance structure to the project. The TOC will have nine members: three from The Center for Reimagining Learning, three from edX/2U, and three from members of the rest of the Open edX community. The first six members were recently nominated, and the remaining three members will be chosen soon.
-> Read the Technical Oversight Committee's foundational charter
The end-of-year community virtual event took place on December 14th, bringing a successful conclusion to a landmark year for the Open edX platform. Ed Zarecor from tCRIL presented a "State of Open edX" keynote that covered the creation of tCRIL, the platform's new governance structure, and the Maple release. We also enjoyed watching other talks on the program, and had fun talking with old friends and new!
-> Watch talk recordings and download presentation materials
Maple, the latest stable version of Open edX, was released on the 20th of December, thanks to the great work of the Release working group ? ! Maple brings a good amount of fixes and features, such as the implementation of the new Learning Micro Front End as the default platform experience, granting course and library creation rights on a per-organization basis, and improvements to the Common Problem Editor — so be sure to upgrade your Open edX instance(s)! Also, please let the working group know if you spot any bugs or issues.
-> Read the official announcement
Core Contributor work is now organized into 2-week sprints, which aim to help coordinate contribution efforts and drive more contributions. During the first-ever Core Contributor sprint, the focus was on helping to assign the remaining open issues for Maple from the release working group board. It was also nice to get to meet all the core contributors!
-> Check out the latest Core Contributors Sprint
The Marketing Working Group is working on a number of issues to improve the Open edX platform's marketing ecosystem, such as preparing community member presentation videos, creating various promotional materials, and helping redesign the provider marketplace experience on the Open edX website. 2021 has been a productive year, and the group is excited about the year to come!
-> Check out the Marketing Work Group's Trello board
The Translations Working Group, was formed with an initial focus on improving platform translation for ten languages: Spanish, French, Arabic, Italian, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Mandarin, and German. The group needs additional translators for Arabic, Hindi, Russian, and Ukrainian, so please let us know if you're interested! The group is also working on implementing automated translation for the official platform documentation — something that has been long requested by the community. We'll keep you abreast of our progress on this topic in the upcoming newsletters.
-> Check out the Transifex Work Group's Trello board
We would love to turn this newsletter into a community effort. Do you have any news about Open edX that you would like us to share? Please let us know by going to the Newsletter threads on either OpenCraft's public discussion forum or the Official Open edX forum!
E-Learning company 2U has completed its acquisition of the edX.org website and assets, as announced in Open edX's recent blog post. The Open edX project itself isn’t included in the sale. The proceeds from the transaction will fund a new nonprofit which will take over stewardship of the project, and also invest in other online learning projects. A Technology Oversight Committee (TOC) will be created to lead the Open edX platform's development and community governance. The committee, whose members have not been announced yet, will include representatives from the nonprofit, edX/2U, as well as other community members. edX and U2 have also made a formal pledge to contribute to the ongoing development of the platform.
-> Read the official press release by edX/2U
All members of the community are invited to join Open edX's end-of-year virtual conference and meetup, scheduled on December 14th, 2 pm-5 pm UTC. The keynote speech will be a "State Of Open edX" discussion about the creation of the new nonprofit, and the way forward for edX and 2U following the acquisition. Attendees can expect a few additional talks, along with ample time for chatting and networking. We are looking forward to seeing you there!
-> Read more and register for the event on the Open edX blog
The Build-Test-Release working group has launched the Maple beta 1 release and commenced testing it. The working group is encouraging all community members who have the chance to test Maple as well, especially if you’re using a feature in the Open edX platform that isn’t widely used. A few issues have already been reported, and we need volunteers to help fix them. These issues are low-hanging fruits and good first issues for anyone to get started with. If you’ve ever considered contributing, now would be a great time!
On some additional news, the Lilac 3 open release has been released. You’re encouraged to upgrade your Lilac instances.
-> Click here to check the Maples issues that need some love
The Core Contributor program continues to grow with the addition of the first new Product & UX Core Contributor, Ali Hugo from OpenCraft, and a potential Product Management Core Contributor in prospect. To better provide context about each contributor’s efforts to one another, the idea of adding sprints is being discussed and contributors are encouraged to participate.
The frontend working group is working on removing IE 11 support and upgrading to Node.js 16. The data working group has recently been discussing the ElasticSearch vs OpenSearch issue.
-> Read more community meetup updates
The Open edX Tech Radar, first announced a few months ago, is now live! The Open edX tech radar is a visualization tool that represents the technologies used in the platform. Its goal is to help new developers get involved, but also to facilitate reviews and discussions about technologies, frameworks, techniques, and tools used in the platform. The radar was built through community effort and is maintained by the community in Github.
