Open edX 2019

A round table discussion about the current state of open source and open standards in online learning. Attendees will hear about progress and problems, as well as how we can more forward.

This session highlights The Linux Foundation’s journey from small-scale instructor-led training to a diversified elearning catalog with over 1.3 million learners worldwide in less than 5 years. Learn how The Linux Foundation translated instructor-led courses into dynamic, engaging elearning content. We'll review our challenges and the solutions employed to overcome them, ultimately demonstrating that designing active learning experiences can be done on a small budget with a small team. The presentation will also cover instructional design strategies the Linux Foundation Training Team is considering to further improve learner engagement in the future.

Open edX contributors come from all over the world. Representing a wide range of ages and education levels, our interests and goals vary. Although we might not meet in person, we share one thing in common: we are each part of the Open edX community. Open edX occupies a large place in many of our daily professional lives. Lost in the minutiae of running courses or developing features, we can sometimes lose track of the actual impact of our work on the Open edX community. But each Open edX contributor is also part of a larger community of humans who care about learning. Whether you’re a learner, an educator, or a technologist, this talk aims to empower contributors to make changes and positively impact the community we share.

By definition, open source companies give their products away to an unknown audience. This talk will explore how education can be utilized to provide deep insights into usage, behavior, and future intent for product usage, including monetization. We will take a deep dive into how education is used at Redis Labs, the leading open source in-memory database. Designed for community builders who want to understand the commercial impact of education and how to modernize their marketing programs, this talk will cover education’s importance to open source communities, what drives a commercial company to build free education, and how deep analytics can inform downstream teams such as Sales & Marketing.

How can we foster a greater sense of community in online environments? This talk focuses on how attitudes toward giving, gift economics, and community expectations may positively influence learner experience and lead to a greater sense of belonging and collaborative production in a MOOC. Aimed at community organizers and course producers interested in understanding possible motivations for participation and contribution in an online course, this talk highlights recommendations on how open source and open access technologies can create a circular sense of gift giving in the MOOC community.

Aimed at educators, content authors, and anyone involved with Open edX and online education, this talk will explain LabXchange, a new platform that connects life science communities in a collaborative learning environment. We will demonstrate how LabXchange works and discuss why we decided to build it using Open edX. We’ll also explain how LabXchange exemplifies the new authoring workflows and instructional design paradigms that Blockstore will enable.

LibreCorps is an initiative that places RIT students into paid Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) internships at Humanitarian organizations. Attendees will learn how RIT's FOSS efforts grew from a single course to a full academic minor and series of experiential education programs. We’ll outline our long-term goals for LibreCorps to become a year-round, student-based FOSS consultancy program, and talk about why humanitarian work has become a driver for today's college students. We’ll offer tips for engaging students in FOSS developer communities and for growing FOSS education within your own organization.