OpenCraft, an Open edX provider led by French developer Xavier Antoviaque, has announced the launch of an pre-installed service to host small Open edX instances, which "can be a good place for a first course experimentation with a small set of students; or as a side instance for tests," according to his creator. The service, hosted at http://opencraft.hosting/, is now in beta mode and open to early testers.
Beyond the traditional instructional designers, a new speciality is emerging: learning engineering. Courses need to be re-engineered to create online and blended experiences and improve learning outcomes. This was one of the conclusions of the recent 2016 LINC Conference at MIT from Sanjay Sarma, vice president of open learning at MIT: "Understanding how people learn is critical to understanding how — and when — to apply digital technologies for education. This is where “learning engineers” come in, designing new approaches to the practice of learning. Online education is not as simple as posting coursework on the internet; courses need to be re-engineered for the digital environment. By taking advantage of the available technologies, educators can create a blended learning experience, enhance the curriculum and, ultimately, improve outcomes for students."
Paco Cruz, lead engineer for edX and Open edX at UC3M –the Spanish university that will organize the 2017 Open edX Conference– showed during Spain's 2016 Open edX Meetup all of the developments his organization is delivering in terms of XBlocks, learning analytics and gamification. XBlock to rate videos and add comments (available on Github) Regarding analytics, UC3M is using Elastic and Analyse (internally developed software) Additional developments on the iOS app in Spanish and a coming-soon app for flipped classrooms (Flip App) "Quiz video" XBlock to insert questions inside videos using the "Paella Interactive Video Player" Private video stream XBlock for Wowza Full interoperability between its Moodle and Open edX platforms, which is used for SPOCs (Small Private Online Course) at spoc.uc3m.es UC3M is one of the most active non-US universities both in course creation and developments. It has attracted 280K enrollments through 12 courses on edX, and is now preparing another 5 courses. Additionally, it has launched 10 SPOCs and is creating 7 more. See the video above –captions are available in English– as well as main conclusions from this university regarding the future of learning.
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)'s MOOC strategy in online learning, branded as IDBx, is paying off. "Project Management Techniques for Development Professionals" has been the most successful course, with 88,300 enrollments in its two editions. The courses "Introducción a la Gestión para Resultados en el Desarrollo" and "Desarrollo Urbano y Vivienda" have accounted for over 19,000 registrants each. Courses developed in Portuguese attract an average of 4,000 people. The series of MOOCs developed by IDB on the edX platform are aligned with its commitment to achieve results and increase integrity, transparency and accountability on the public sector in Latin America. Headquartered in Washington, DC, the IDB provides loans, grants, technical assistance and does research and training. Its shareholders are 48 member countries, including 26 borrowing member countries. In addition to MOOCs, IDB maintains a Moodle platform hosting many courses targeting students in Latin America.
EdX has established a plan to reduce the complexity of the edX-platform codebase, while focusing on extensibility and interoperability. The new Chief Architect of edX, Eddie Fagin, who will execute this transformation, removed the old architecture diagram (below) and presented a new one (above). (Watch his talk below). Along with it, notable technology updates are coming soon. The new "Eucalyptus" version, scheduled for July, will include new features such as: New course home and navigation Bookmarks Teams Student Notes Video Closed Captions Self-Paced Course Pacing Additionally, the new iOS and Android mobile apps will continue to evolve from being a video companion app into a much more sophisticated setup, including learner profiles, discussion forums, native course discovery and push notifications, according to Marco Morales, Product Manager at edX.
