Open edX 2019

Join edX CEO Anant Agarwal for a discussion and update to partners on edX vision and strategy.

Learning is complex. Decades of research in the science of human learning have produced results that could transform education; however, research findings have not often made a positive impact on teaching practice, educational technology design, or student learning. Likewise, the wisdom of instructors and authentic learning experiences rarely have an impact on research. In this talk, I will describe a model for using educational technology to shift the relationship between learning research and teaching practice in service of simultaneously improving student learning and contributing to our fundamental understanding of human learning.

Enormous investments have been made by universities, governments, and private industry in developing online courses in every field imaginable. But the dream of their widespread use to support personalized learning has been hampered by millions of individual digital assets being locked in the indivisible unit of the course.  True personalized learning requires that these assets be searchable and dynamically remixed to meet the assessed need of the individual learner.  The next generation of Open edX, with the new Blockstore architecture contributed by LabXchange, will be the largest open source platform with the potential to dynamically deliver different learning assets as part of personalized learning.  In addition, integration of this open architecture for personalized learning with social networking designed to promote the sharing of learning experiences will enable their collective application to global challenges.  This reimagines online learning as simultaneously more personal at the individual level and more collectively engaged at the societal level.

At One Laptop per Child, I used to draw a line in the sand regarding the use of free/libre open source software. Education was unequivocally on the must-be-FOSS side of the line because transparency is critical to fostering curiosity and independent thinking. With the current inroads that AI is making into educational software, it is again important to consider transparency. Transparent AI is bringing learning into day-to-day work through assistance with on-the-job training and corporate e-learning. In this talk, I will review the role that transparency plays in elementary and secondary education, and I will describe how Sorcero's use of cognitive computing harnesses AI in support of both subject-matter experts and learners in the workplace.