This newsletter about Open edX is a monthly report compiled by the IBL News staff, in collaboration with IBL Education, a New York City-based company that builds AI analytics-driven, revenue-oriented learning ecosystems, and courses with Open edX and other educational software.
“Red Hat has evolved from a one-product company to the enterprise open source leader with a full portfolio stack,” said its CEO Jim Whitehurst during the first annual summit, which took place this week.
To highlight the moment, Red Hat modified its logo and launched a campaign around “open source” and how “it unlocks the world’s potential”.
“We hope you share the same passion”, encouraged Tim Yeaton, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer.
To live by the example, this manager inked himself with an arm tattoo displaying the company logo. He proudly showed it on stage during a talk about “open source stories” this Wednesday.
Another executive, Leigh Day, Marketing Communications Manager, did exactly the same.
In addition to updating its brand, Red Hat publicized several case studies (from
giants such as Delta or Deutsche Bank to farming and educational projects) who utilize open source hardware and software.
The Red Hat Summit in Boston was also notorious for the visit of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who walked on stage to talk with Jim Whitehurst, and bear the news of a new joint Microsoft-Red Hat program: Azure Red Hat OpenShift.
Two decades ago Microsoft’s Chairman Steve Ballmer claimed that “Linux is a cancer”, and now its CEO is coming into a major Linux tradeshow and announcing a partnership. (On the open source Open edX universe we’ve also seen a similar approach from Microsoft).
Satya Nadella explained that Microsoft has embraced open source, “because it’s driven by what I believe is fundamentally what our customers expect for us to do. Which is to say: Doing what’s best for both companies’ customers.”
“We have to be a bit more humble and say, ‘Okay, how do we bring value to the table with great technologies coming from a lot of places?,’” he added.
Whitehurst replied: “Five years ago we had been linked to the whole adversary relationship. It’s just amazing to see how much progress we’ve had together. And I think that’s on both sides and both desire to serve our customers, and we found such great range to work together.”
Microsoft’s move seems mostly motivated because its interest on promoting Azure on its fight with AWS, Google Cloud and others.
Last year, Red Hat brought its enterprise Kubernetes OpenShift platform to Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
The two companies see this pairing as a road forward for hybrid-cloud computing.
IBM’s Acquisition Approved
Just ahead of this conference, the US Department of Justice approved IBM’s proposed Red Hat acquisition, which was announced last October. This means the IBM/Red Hat acquisition for $34 Billion is still on track for the second half of 2019.
During the summit, IBM Chair and CEO Ginni Rometty reiterated Tuesday that Red Hat would remain independent as promised.
“Jim and I have both agreed—Red Hat should stay an independent unit,” she said during his keynote.
“I’m not buying them to destroy them. It’s a win win for our clients. It’s a way to drive more innovation.”
This newsletter about learning innovation is a monthly report compiled by IBL News and IBL Education. If you enjoy what you read please consider forwarding it to spread the word. Click here to subscribe.
Using open educational resources such as Jupyter and Open edX to teach STEM will transform teaching and learning and result in an engaging active experience in the classroom.
This was the central idea of a faculty workshop conducted by Professor Lorena A. Barba, from The George Washington University (GW), at the University at Buffalo this weekend.
During this hands-on seminar, participants reviewed some of the education research underpinning design decisions and discovered practices of open education.
Also, it included an introduction to the Jupyter toolbox for teaching and learning.
“Jupyter is a killer app, it provides a medium for expression using computing as part of the learning,” said Professor Lorena Barba who has been using Jupyter for over six years.
“Using the Open edX course platform, you can construct learning pathways using content pulled dynamically from a public Jupyter notebook (e.g., on GitHub), with the Jupyter Viewer Xblock.”
GW, along with IBL Education, contributed two XBlocks to build edX-style courses based on Jupyter: the Viewer, and a Jupyter Grader for auto-graded student assignments.
Jupyter-based courses can be written using an open development model (like any open-source software project), collaboratively and under version control. Once the material is ready, instructors can build a MOOC-style course on Open edX, pulling the content from the notebooks without duplication in the course platform.
Instructors can interleave short videos and graded sub-sections using the built-in problem types, or using the Graded Jupyter XBlock.
“Our course development workflow is the product of several years of refinement and applies evidence-based instructional design. Combined with modern pedagogies used in the classroom, like active learning via live coding, you can create learning experiences that are effective on campus and online,” explained Prof. Barba.
Watch the interview with Professor Lorena A. Barba in the video below.
Miguel Amigot II, CTO of IBL Education, spoke to the issue of data centralization in today’s learning ecosystems during the 2019 Open edX Conference in San Diego. Blockchain technology, he argues, decentralizes data ownership away from a small selection of vendors which allows the ability for companies to share data without having to trust one another.
Centralization is where we are today, as businesses protect their learners’ data and commoditize it. However, this is inefficient for the learner as there is no ability to move with ease between different learning management systems.
When we look at the alternative, Miguel says, decentralization is the ability to use Blockchain as the infrastructure layer, which in turn allows that decentralization to happen. “The common analogy is, Blockchain is HTTP.”
“Blockchain allows us to see what a world would be where businesses and different organizations don’t make a living by siloing off that data.”
An obvious use case is certificates, Miguel argues, which require time sensitivity and validity from their sources. This has already gained traction, such as MIT’s blockcerts that “allow us to insert certificates on the (public) Ethereum blockchain.”
Adaptive learning as another case study illuminates the issue that due to the siloing of information by companies, true adaptive learning is not yet possible. There is a rigidity that users face where they cannot prove what skills they have already mastered, because they are unable to share achievements from other learning platforms.
Blockchain allows convenience and flexibility in these case studies and many others, such as user management. In his talk, Miguel urges us to think, “Are these problems worth solving? Are we just going to say, in the future, everything is going to be centralized and we are going to live in a world where perpetually organizations make their money by siloing data and really implementing dark practices…”
Blockchain allows us to share without trusting each other. “There is some data that we are going to agree to share, and the arguments for that aren’t altruistic necessarily…it’s really just about what is most practical.”
Watch Miguel Amigot’s full talk in the video below.
San Francisco-based Docker Inc, known for its widely used containerization software, introduced today Docker Foundation, intended to lower barriers to education and create opportunities for others.
“We want to transform the world through inclusive access to technology and education,” said CEO Steve Singh on his keynote this morning during the 2019 Dockercon conference.
One of the first partners of the Docker Foundation is CodePath.org, whose CEO Michael Ellison participated in a conversation with Steve Singh this morning. [In the picture].
“There is a huge wealth of minority tech talent that has been largely overlooked. They have the potential to succeed, but they need computer science programs that are designed to work with them” said Michael Ellison.
CodePath has developed three free, semester-long courses: Technical Interview Prep, Professional iOS, and iOS for CS Majors. Courses are offered on over 25 campuses worldwide.
Two other supported organizations will be Black Girls Code and the Holberton School.
Docker’s CEO announced that he is donating one million dollars to the Foundation. Another million will come from former CEO Ben Golub, serial entrepreneur and currently Executive Chairman and Interim CEO at Storj Labs.
Dr. Charles Severance, Clinical Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information, discussed with IBL News the success of his world-renowned python course and where he sees his future in online education.
While Severance did not have the first python course online, he has the world’s most popular course which has reached over 4 million students. “Across all the platforms it exists on (Coursera, edX, and others), I have probably graduated about 200,000 students.”
“What I’ve found is a very unique niche… computer science professors actually don’t know how to teach an introductory computer science course. They know how to teach [this] to someone who has been programming for several years. I specialize in actually teaching introduction to programming, which is a prerequisite to introduction to computer science.”
With Severance’s course, students were able to get the fundamental skills in programming that they necessitate to succeed in other introductory computer science courses. “I became, over the last 5 years, the de facto prerequisite for literally everything python.”
As the need for programmers is expanding, Dr. Severance’s courses offer a possibility to students who have no background in the computer sciences. Right now “you could learn python, you could work an entire 50-year career, and never learn another programming language. And in the future, python is going to further dominate.”
Primarily, his courses were offered on Coursera, but as of January 2019, Severance’s courses are available on edX.
“I knew that edX was missing a course that was a beginning programming course, and if I could just give that as a gift to the entire edX community, then edX would be better.”
“That is python for everybody, everywhere. And that is my joy, my joy is everywhere. No matter what country, what language, everyone has a chance to get a decent technical job that can take care of their families and give them a life and a future, and give them a step into education.”
The “Django for Everybody” Course Will Start In the First Quarter of 2020
With the most successful online introductory programming courses in the world, everyone is excited about new releases from Dr. Severance.
His “Django for Everybody” course, he says, will be started in the first quarter of 2020, after teaching it once more on campus. He aims to alter the course into a MOOC to be offered on Coursera or edX but will be available on his own website by January 2020.
Severance’s main goal is to adequately prepare students to fully succeed within computer science curricula. “I think there are many good degrees in computer science… My goal in life is to get as many people ready to go into a real degree with 40 or 50 faculty members.”
Speaking at the Open edX conference, Severance says that while he is attending “partly as a happy and satisfied faculty member successfully teaching on edX,” he is also aware that online learning is bound to change, and he also attended to see how “the next generation of LMS’s might take benefit from all of the wonderful experience that the edX software base [has provided].”
“I think the greatest mistake that we can make is that just because products are successful in the marketplace does not mean they cannot be replaced by the next generation. If there has been anything in the last 15 years of education technology, it’s that there is always a new generation… and a wheel of progress.”
“I believe that there’s going to be a transformation…and the next LMS generation is going to be based on the next generation of standards — learning tools interoperability LTI advantage is just coming out.”
Watch the first part of the interview with Dr. Chuck Severance in the two videos below.
The leading Australian employment marketplace SEEK continues its grandiose march into the education at scale industry, after a huge investment in Coursera last week.
FutureLearn, the fourth largest MOOC platform (after Coursera, edX, and Udacity) announced today, through its CEO Simon Nelson, that SEEK is taking 50 % of this educational portal for $64.6 million (£50 million).
“This is big news for us. SEEK adds experience and expertise in the employment sector, a good fit for the education sector as more people look for a return on the time and money they invest in learning,” stated Simon Nelson.
“We will still be offering access to courses for free but the investment means we can do more, more quickly. For example, we’ll continue to invest to ensure our platform remains extremely user-friendly and enjoyable to use on mobile, desktop and tablet. We’ll also remain focused on the courses we bring you so look out for more courses in terms of new subject areas, more degrees, and bite-sized stackable courses for learners keen to develop a particular skill for the workplace.”
SEEK invested another $50 million on a minority stake in Coursera last week.
Sheryl Barnes, Director of Digital Learning and Residential Education at MIT, shared with IBL News MIT’s extensive use of the edX platform following her talk at the Open edX conference.
MIT has a local version of the Open edX platform in addition to many MOOCs currently running on edX. Her task is “finding a positive synergy between the work that goes into developing the MOOCs and teaching on campus.” The content that is created for the MOOCs is easily repurposed for blended MIT classroom experiences, where instructors can utilize their video lectures and “repurpose the classroom time to do higher order thinking application, value added-type activities.”
99% of undergraduate MIT students have taken a class that utilizes the Open edX platform. The two major perks, as identified by Barnes, are the ability for instructors to create video lectures that are “the version they would like to give every time,” and using the self-graded problem types that allow instant feedback to students.
Barnes says that she is “excited about the teaching and learning folks in the community coming together.” While the Open edX conference has been steered toward the developer community in the past, the broadening to include these other sections of the online learning community has been beneficial for Barnes and her counterparts in education.
Watch Sheryl Barnes full interview with IBL News in the video below.
With $80 million of financing from MIT and Harvard, and a consortium business model, mainly based on partnerships with top universities and companies, edX is an unusual non-profit organization, although a successfully disrupting shop.
“Over the past eight years, everything that we’ve done has been controversial, where somebody or other has lobbed a call to me saying, “Anant, are you crazy? What are you doing? But over time, people have gotten used to it,” revealed Anant Agarwal, CEO at edX, on a candid conversation with Harvard Business School Professor Joe Fuller.
Open sourcing the platform, setting a paywall for courses, partnering with the corporate world, and the launch of the edX For Business marketplace are among those controversial decisions. “There are 2,400 other sites using Open edX, on which there are an additional 25 million learners learning.”
“As a nonprofit consortium of universities, we have a lot of debate, and we, ourselves, don’t move as fast as I would like to see us move because of the need to communicate and get everybody’s buy-in. But even then, certainly bringing in corporate partners to offer content on edX was controversial, and we certainly hear from university partners about that. However, at the end of the day, we reflect the voice of the learner, and we believe we should be doing what is right for humankind. And, by and large, the partners come along once they realize that the motivation here is nonprofit. It’s for the good of the learner, and they’ve all bought into it.”
“Corporations bring a whole new perspective to learning. Where the university courses tend to be oftentimes theoretical and rich in one sense, the corporate courses tend to be much more applications-focused and bring a whole different kind of view on learning.”
Mr. Agarwal highlights the idea that staying relevant in today’s workplace requires constantly adding and being credited with new skills. “Skills are moving at an incredible pace.” “Employees that are working—or looking for work—need new literacies, need new ways of building skills, need new skills to be able to get jobs in the new economy. There are various studies that show that, within the next 10 years, by 2030, half the people on this planet will need to upskill themselves, or they will risk losing their jobs”.
edX’s CEO mentions the MicroMasters program as an example of innovation that responds to learners’ demand and the fact that 75% of them are looking for a modular demand. The outcome is clear: 91% of MicroMasters’ students say that they’ve already achieved a career advancement based on that certificate.
“Given the future of work, how technology is rapidly changing work in amazing ways, the future of learning will be lifelong. (…) For lifelong learning to happen, I don’t believe there is any other way to do it than online. What are the odds that you’re going to be able to go to a campus for a year once you’re 35 years old? You need modular credentials, you need online learning, and it has to be open enrollment. We can’t have admissions processes.”
“What edX has done is, by applying a platform approach to education, it is aggregating learners from all over the world—20 million of them, and 140 institutional partners—to be part of the platform. The content comes from many places, and learners come from many places that coordinate on the platform.” (…) “We have 100 professional certificate programs and 50 MicroMasters programs on topics like blockchain and fintech and Python programming and Azure Cloud and cloud computing, and all kinds of topics.”
