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.
We’re an elite team of designers and developers, who love creating quality learning management solutions. Let’s chat about your latest project.
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 fifteenth Open edX community release, called Olive, is now out! The release was coordinated by the Open edX community via the Build / Test / Release working group, and brings improvements to the Discussions Micro-frontend (MFE) and HTML component editors, but also novelties like the brand-new Authentication MFE.
You can also learn more about Olive at the upcoming Open edX Community Meetup, scheduled for 1/26/2023 at 10 AM (EDT). A registration link to this free virtual event will soon be posted on the Open edX blog.
In addition to Open edX development, OpenCraft has been working on the development of Listaflow, an open source workflow tool for remote team collaboration and reporting. In the blog post highlight below, our UX designer Ali Hugo presents the product, and explains how the early release is already being put to good use by the Open edX community. Scroll down to learn more!
The Call For Proposals for the 2023 Open edX Conference is open until January 23rd, 2023. All community members are welcome to participate and submit their ideas! To learn about the types of presentations the Community is seeking, and how you can submit a presentation proposal, please visit Sessionize. Early bird rates for conference tickets are up until early January, so be quick and buy your tickets!
The recording of the December Open edX Community Meetup can be watched online. Here's a recap of the program:
I love cooking, and I love sharing recipes. Here’s one for a simple, yet very tasty marinara sauce. It's great on everything. It's one of my secret weapons. All you need is 3-4 ingredients and a few hours' time. Share this red deliciousness with friends and family, and appreciate the small, great things in life.
The team at tCRIL announced the first two keynote speakers for the 2023 Open edX Conference, taking place March 28-31 at MIT:
Early Bird rates are available for only a few more weeks – so go ahead and book your conference ticket!
-> Register now for the 2023 Open edX Conference
The next online Community Meetup will be held on December 8th, 2022 at 10 AM (EDT). Here's the session lineup:
-> Book your free Meetup seat!
Following the first-ever election for Open edX's Technical Oversight Committee (TOC), 3 elected members will represent the community at the project’s governing body:
They will join the TOC on January 1st 2023, and serve until the end of the year.
We'd like to thank all the participants in the election, especially the candidates, voters, and community members who have relayed the calls to register to vote!
tCRIL has issued a short survey to learn about how people use the Open edX Platform. The survey will help them figure out:
• What features to build next
• How they can make the platform better for institutions, course authors, and their users
• How they can support users better
If your organization uses or has used the Open edX platform in the past to deliver online learning or training, please take two minutes to answer the survey.
Here's a recap of our October 2022 newsletter:
The 2023 Open edX conference has just been announced! The event will take place between Tuesday, March 28 and Friday, March 31 2023 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The annual conference is a great opportunity to meet members of the community from around the world, attend captivating talks, and learn about innovative uses of the Open edX Platform. Registration is now open on Eventbrite, with Early Bird rates valid until January 6th. The Call For Proposal is now also open. You can read the official announcement for more detailed info. We'll be sharing more news about the conference in subsequent newsletters. Stay tuned, and see you there!
-> Register now for the 2023 Open edX Conference
The October Open edX Community meetup featured three presentations:
OEP 57 is currently open for community reviews. OEPs (Open edX Proposals) specify a best practice, architectural decision, or process that the Open edX community has agreed should be adopted by the project. In the case of OEP57, it is intended to serve as a glossary to the key terms and concepts that will guide and frame the Open edX product management organization and product practice. Your comments and questions can be posted directly on the Confluence page!
Working Groups are community-led teams dedicated to a project or projects that fit under an easily definable business process. They are designed to create and/or facilitate a particular feature set within the Open edX platform. They are also an authoritative body giving the community structure and a process for decision-making. For example, see this recent Open edX blog post presenting the Translation Working Group. Join the Open edX community and take part in our collaboration efforts!
After three years of not seeing each other in the flesh, the OpenCraft team flew to Lisbon, Portugal to attend a well-deserved team retreat and participate in the 2022 Open edX Conference. All OpenCraft team members work remotely — the Conference is always a great occasion for us to meet in person, to work together, and cram in a few team meals and fun activities. Our time at the Conference was preceded by a week-long team retreat around Lisbon, Portugal, where we spent quality time together! Here’s a recap of those two weeks:
Most of the team arrived around the weekend of April 16-17 — coming from all corners of Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. While the majority of the team managed to fly to Lisbon, a few of us unfortunately could not make it, because of Covid-19 and visa-related issues. Sad. We'll see you next year! Still, there were more than 20 of us on-site, all ready to meet and have a good time!
Since the conference venue was located in the town of Carcavelos, roughly 20 km West of Central Lisbon, we decided to rent accommodations around that town to enjoy the weather, the beachfront location, and the relaxed atmosphere of the area. The Lisbon larger metropolitan area has a vast and efficient network of public transit, which made moving to other locations and getting to downtown very easy.
We bundled up in cozy Airbnbs, ready to work (a little), eat (a lot), and spend good times all together. Speaking of work — we rented two nice coworking spaces in nearby Estoril (another prime beachfront town!) to allow team members to catch up on work whenever they wished. Many of us also needed to prepare sessions for the conference, and the coworking spaces proved perfect for this.
During the first week, our days mostly consisted of going to the coworking space in the morning to get some work done, eating lunch together (often with a beach view!), working a little more, and spending the rest of the afternoon and evening doing stuff together. Oh, and we drank lots of strong espresso coffee, and ate unreasonable quantities of Portuguese pastries. Some went for the ubiquitous, sweet egg custard-filled pastel de natas, while others (such as myself) favored salty pastries such as the classic pastel de bacalhau, filled with cod fish. Portuguese take their pastries seriously, I'll tell you that — they're just everywhere!
Here are a few highlights from the first week:
We went on an e-bike tour, visiting a number of locations around Lisbon that offered gorgeous viewpoints of the city and its surroundings, featuring some of the city's brilliant street artwork. Things suddenly took an unexpected turn when our colleague Fox flew over his bike, and broke his arm. Yikes! Thankfully, he was taken good care of, and was able to enjoy the rest of his trip (although in a cast).
A board game night took place at Gabriel, Geoffrey, and Giovanni's place (a.k.a. the G-House). Many games were played, a bottle of fine whiskey was shared (thank you, Xavier!), pizza was eaten, and additional beverages were delivered to the apartment at a late hour. Success!
Some of us went diving in Cascais. After the logistical challenges (no car, no gear, zero knowledge of the area) were sorted out (Uber, gear hire and expertise from Bork), this was worth the effort. Xavier deserves all the credit for this, by the way — without his determined optimism, we never would have even gotten in! The water was cold, but the day was gorgeous. By swimming only a few meters off the coast, we saw octopus, many fishes, starfish, and sea urchins, buried amongst the rocky underwater ravines.
We went for an all-out bar crawl in the traditional neighborhood of Alfama, visiting all sorts of drinking and eating establishments. Which ones? How many? We don't remember exactly… but the food, ginjinha (cherry liqueur), cachaça (sugarcane spirit), and other delicacies were definitely abundant. To the great misfortune of one of our colleagues, one thing we definitely remember is that we did not find any chicken wings.
Following our team retreat, we all attended and participated in the 2022 Open edX Conference, hosted at the beautiful seaside campus of Nova School Of Business and Economics, in Carcavelos. The conference spanned from Tuesday, April 26th to Friday, April 29th — you can review the complete schedule in Sched.
We were truly eager to meet the Community again, and see old faces and new: people from The Centre for Reimagining Learning (tCRIL), friends at edX, team members from other service companies, and many of our clients attended in numbers. What a pleasure it was to reunite with familiar faces, and to meet new members of the community! After a lengthy period of isolation, coming all together again certainly felt like a blessing.
For this year's edition, the OpenCraft team got pretty involved in many aspects of the conference. Some of us had been busy for months helping tCRIL with the conference planning. Some volunteered for on-site help and many of us were invited to present sessions during the conference. In 2022, OpenCraft team members presented 4 hands-on tutorials, 4 breakout sessions, and 3 lightning talks — not bad! We were also the event's reception sponsor for this year.
This year's conference offered four distinct session tracks: Integrations and Extensions, Pedagogy and Instructional Design, Platform and Product, and a Virtual Track for those who could not attend in person. Our sessions touched on various topics, including UI/UX, Micro Front-Ends, platform deployment, LTI, and the Core Committers Program. By the way, all session recordings are available on Open edX's Youtube channel — go watch them!
We also enjoyed attending the excellent sessions prepared by our colleagues, clients, and friends, which explored a wealth of complementary topics. We were equally excited to attend the keynote speeches, and these two in particular:
Ed Zarecor and Jenna Makowski from tCRIL presented the much-awaited "State Of Open edX" keynote (watch here). The talk gave insights on the important changes happening in the Open edX project's governance following the 2U/edX acquisition and the creation of tCRIL, and touched on other important topics such as Core Contributors, and the product vision and evolution of the platform. The talk was concluded with a guest appearance by Racoon Gang CEO Sergiy Movchan, who explained how the Open edX platform can be leveraged to support and maintain educational programs in war-torn Ukraine.
Open Source evangelist Tobie Langel's keynote speech, titled "From Open Governance to Collective Ownership" (watch here), discussed the critical topic of collective ownership of open source software. He argued for the importance of true, community-driven open source projects that are based on openness, collaboration, and equality. Needless to say, as strong open source advocates ourselves, we were quite captivated by Tobie's presentation. A few of us even had the pleasure to sit down with Tobie and discuss some more.
Kudos and special thanks to tCRIL, edX, and every member of the Community who worked hard to make this event a success! We're thrilled to see that the broader Open edX Community is increasingly involved in the project's governance, and in the planning of activities such as the Conference. We're taking steps in the right direction : )
Another definitive highlight during the week of the conference was the OpenCraft-sponsored food & wine tour, organized by yours truly. What better way to mingle and discover Lisbon other than touring historical neighborhoods on foot, eating great food, and drinking great wine? We organized a lucky draw, formed a group of 12 lucky tour guests, and had a wonderful Thursday night walking Lisbon's colorful streets. Our tour guides took us off the beaten path, sharing intriguing anecdotes about Portugal and Lisbon's history in the process. We visited a specialty olive oil shop for some tastings, ate charcuterie in a traditional Portuguese grocery store, and sat down in three (!) different restaurants to sample Lisbon's finest traditional dishes. Needless to say, our stomachs were full, and our heads were now filled with memories. Faithful to what is seemingly becoming a tradition, I took the remaining survivors for a bar-hopping ride to end the night in true Portuguese fashion.
We ended the week with our traditional team dinner, sharing a few last bites of excellent vegetarian food at The Green Affair, a few drinks, and warm goodbyes until next year. It all went in the blink of an eye!
Some of us visited Sintra towards the end of the trip, which is a beautiful and well-preserved castle town near Lisbon that hosts a variety of fascinating historical buildings and stunning natural scenery. A perfect day trip!
Before we knew it, our two weeks in Portugal were over, and it was time to head back home. But what a time we had! We are all very grateful for our presence in Portugal this year, and can't wait to do this all over again next year in Cambridge, USA : ) Thanks to everyone who made this possible!
Photo credits: Gabriel D'Amours, Jill Vogel, Geoffrey Lehée, and Giovanni Cimolin da Silva.
Here's a recap of our April 2022 newsletter:
This edition of our newsletter will be shorter than usual, because our team is currently retreating in beautiful & sunny Lisbon, Portugal. ☀️
We're seeing each other for the first time in three years, and we're having a great time! The weather is beautiful (although quite windy at times!), the food is amazing, and we're spending quality time together. We'll soon be sharing a blog post and more details on what we've been doing here – but in the meantime, here are a few pictures. Até já!
(and sorry to those of us who could not attend because of visa/covid/other issues – we miss you dearly!)
At the time of reading this newsletter, our team will be right in the middle of attending the 2022 Open edX Conference, hosted in Lisbon. We're busy presenting talks and workshops, helping with conference organization, chatting with friends and members of the community, and doing all sorts of activities. We'll be posting a recap of the conference next month, so stay tuned!
-> Review the conference program
tCRIL have created three new spaces to increase engagement and interaction of Open edX Product Managers and community members across the ecosystem: the Product Working Group Slack Channel, the Open edX Roadmap, and the Open edX Product Management wiki. Please join the Product Working Group using the Slack channel if you're interested in getting involved!
The program and schedule for the 2022 Open edX Conference are now live! Please visit Sched to see the full program and build your own custom conference schedule. Conference registration is also still open. The 2022 Conference spans four days:
Tues, April 26 – Registration + Tutorials and in-depth training
Wed, April 27 – Conference Day 1 and evening reception
Thu, April 28 – Conference Day 2
Fri, April 29 – Developer Summit
This year, conference sessions have been grouped in three distinct tracks: Pedagogy & Instructional Design, Platform & Product, and Extensions & Integrations.
The OpenCraft team is delighted to participate and contribute to the conference, as always. For our contribution this year, we are members of the conference planning committee, have submitted a record number of session proposals, and also are sponsoring the evening reception! Our team is very excited, and we hope to meet you soon in Lisbon : )
-> Read more about sessions, speakers & sponsors on the Open edX blog
The Open edX Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) has recently completed its roster with three new members, including none other than OpenCraft CEO Xavier Antoviaque! Our team is proud, and humbled, by this nomination — it is a nice testimony to OpenCraft's deep and lasting involvement in the Open edX community.
As announced a few months ago, the committee will be responsible for governing the overall technical direction and stewardship of the Open edX project. The addition of members coming from the broader community is an important step in establishing a more inclusive and open leadership for the Open edX project.
The Center for Reimagining Learning (tCRIL) is conducting a survey to capture a more detailed understanding of the Open edX scope and impact. They aim to use the survey results to answer questions about the number of instances deployed, the platform's reach, sectors served, and so on. The results of the survey (which will be anonymized and aggregated) will be presented at the Open edX Conference in April.
If you host the Open edX platform for yourself or your clients, please take a few minutes to answer the survey. The data will help the community make more informed decisions about the future of the platform.
-> Read the instructions on how to answer the Open edX Survey
After 3 years of not seeing each other, OpenCraft is finally able to organize a team retreat in Lisbon : ) Most of the team will fly to Portugal the week before the Open edX Conference, and we're looking forward to seeing each other again. We'll be operating from a co-working space, living together in Airbnbs, doing various activities together, and eating way too many pasteis de natas. Hit us up if you're around! We'll post a recap of our time together in an upcoming newsletter.
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!
