Guest Post: Michael Amigot, Founder at IBL Studios Education

This article originally ran on the Open edX Universities Symposium’s website on September 8, 2015

 

It’s a Global Success

The Open edX software is open-source technology that makes learning easier and studying faster.

It was created by MIT and Harvard University, and was quickly supported by universities such as UC Berkeley, Georgetown, and Stanford, and companies such as Google and Microsoft.

This software platform is designed to engage students and teachers in an interactive, modular way. It promotes active learning by using video snippets, interactive components and game-like experiences.

The Open edX project is a global success. It powers major MOOC initiatives, hosting blended and online courses, all around the world.

 

Top Ten Uses

These are the top ten examples of the ways in which the Open edX platform is used:

1. It powers edx.org’s MOOC portal with more than 5 million users, 500 available courses and 50 involved international universities and business organizations.
2. Stanford University uses it at lagunita.stanford.edu for both on-campus students and distance learners.
3. MIT has made its private installation of the Open edX platform its central on campus LMS, with nearly 200 courses and 80 percent of students using it.
4. Harvard University uses it for online teaching and learning.
5. Top universities in China, the Middle East, Indonesia, Japan, France, India and Spain, among other countries, have embraced it for MOOCs.
6. Innovative universities such as The George Washington University (GW), NYU, and Duke University are using it to launch MOOCs, SPOCs and professional education-related initiatives. GW was the second American university after Stanford to deploy an Open edX-based online learning website.
7. McKinsey & Co has adopted the Open edX system to create McKinsey Academy, which serves over one hundred of its clients.
8. Johnson and Johnson, Microsoft, Amnesty International, International Monetary Fund, MongoDB and other top international companies are creating Open edX-based courses.
9. Davidson College, the College Board, and edX have launched AP courses on edx.org intended for high-schoolers. EdX’s High School Initiative highlights this focus, too.
10. Arizona State University is offering the first freshman in college through edX-based courses on edx.org.

 

Superior Pedagogy

Open edX technology allows instructors to create engaging learning sequences, which promote active participation as students alternate between learning concepts and solving simple exercises to check their understanding.

The course content is presented through learning sequences: a set of interwoven videos, readings, discussions, wikis, collaborative and social media tools, exercises and materials with automatic assessments and instant feedback.

Students can move at their own pace following a self-regulating learning process. They complete interactive assessments and receive instant feedback.

Results on both student learning outcomes and student satisfaction from the use of the Open edX technology are compelling.

The Open edX system provides superior pedagogy.

 

Tech Features

The Open edX software includes two main applications: one for taking courses – the LMS or Learning Management System – and another one for creating them – “Studio,” the CMS or Content Management System.

An Open edX course organizes course content through a three-level hierarchy of sections, subsections and units. Sections and subsections appear on a vertical navigation bar on the left and units appear sequentially on a horizontal navigation toolbar. This navigational structure is effective, engaging, and results in a great learning experience.

Units contain components such as discussions, HTML, problems and video.

One of the most powerful technologies native to the Open edX platform is the multiple ways in which course staff can express problems. It allows for multiple-choice questions, checkboxes, dropdowns, textual, numerical and mathematical inputs as well as many other types of advanced problems, using custom Python and JavaScript to evaluate answers and display the results.

The Open edX video player, which is based around YouTube’s embeddable video player, is excellent: custom extensions to this player allow students to follow click-on transcripts to move along the video, adjust video speeds, download both the video and the transcripts, and even view transcripts in other languages.

A course can have cohorts, HTML pages, textbooks, wikis.

There are endless ways to structure course materials within an Open edX course.

“What makes Open edX unique is that it is the only last-generation, full-featured, open-source platform for online learning,” explains Lorena Barba, Professor at GW and one the most prestigious voices in the Open edX community.

 

Sites powered by Open edX

In our view, these are the best platforms built with Open edX-based code.

• XuetangX
• FUN
• edX
• Edraak
• Stanford University
• MIT Professional Education
• MITx Residential MITx courses for MIT students
• George Washington University (Engineering)
• George Washington University(MOOCs)
• Proversity
• IONISx
• EducateForce
• MongoDB University
• Ooed
• Neodemia
• Pepper
• Politecnico di Milano
• MoocIT
• Ethicon
• Gacco
• SDSN
• Ulibre
• McKinsey Academy
• Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
• Lectylab – Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez
• Isead Business School
• Spain’s Ministry of Education
• Divergence Academy
• IndonesiaX
• Mondragon University
• University 4 Industry
• HDFC Securities

An extensive list, organized by Open edX community members, is on GitHub.

 

Michael Amigot is the founder at IBL Studios Education, a leading Open edX provider for higher-ed. IBL works for MIT Sloan, George Washington, NYU, Duke University, edX, Cooper Union, ETS and over 10 universities in Europe, Asia and Latin America

Guest Post: Lorena A. Barba
This article originally ran on the Open edX Universities Symposium’s website on September 3, 2015

 

 

 

Prof. Carolyn Rosé’s research focuses on modeling conversations between students in learning contexts to find out what it is about conversations that makes them valuable for learning. To study conversations, she uses text mining, machine learning, and computational discourse analysis. With this new understanding, her goal is to design interventions to support learning in online settings.

Carolyn Rose, Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University,  started a working group called DANCE with the goal of developing extensions for the Open edX platform to enhance discussions for collaborative learning.

 

Q&A

 

What is text mining?

 

Text mining means applying machine learning to textual data, sometimes in addition to other types of data. The target is to extract meaningful features from natural language and make predictions about situations that are of interest. In our work, we focus on conversational data, and look for patterns that reflect social processes. We build machine learning models using research from the fields of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, social psychology, and rhetoric.

 

What does this mean for text and conversations related to learning?

Many researchers in Learning Sciences study learning by observing learners interacting, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Text mining is our method of observing learning interactions. We don’t attempt to replace existing methods with text mining, we adapt them to use text mining.

 

What is a “conversational agent” and how does it use machine learning?

Conversational agents (also known as dialogue systems) are state-based computer programs that interact with human beings through natural language. They interact through text, speech, images or video. Their behavior draws from machine learning in a variety of ways. We use machine learning and text mining to monitor group interactions in real time to detect opportunities for agents to intervene. Machine learning here is just a tool in the hands of researchers who have insights into how language reflects social processes. Only with these insights can we design models able to detect opportunities for meaningful intervention.

 

What do people mean by “social learning” and why is it a good thing?

Social learning includes any learning experience involving more than one student, with an opportunity for communicating and collaborating. The value of these learning experiences lies in seeing the learning material through the distinct lenses of other people’s viewpoints. This offers the opportunity of reflecting on the reasons for one’s own representation of knowledge. Social connections can also be motivating.

 

Why did you start the social-learning-in-edX initiative (called DANCE)?

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is my research area. Our community has substantial knowledge about how to use technology to support collaborative and discussion-based learning. My team started DANCE with the goal of enabling the CSCL community to contribute its accumulated wisdom and technology to MOOCs.

 

What tools do you currently have available for the OpenEdX platform?

We are very happy to share the interventions we deployed in the Fall 2014 Data, Analytics, and Learning MOOC, such as agent-supported collaborative chat and a social recommender to facilitate help exchange. We are developing xBlocks that will make it easy for MOOC developers to use intelligent support of group interactions and learning. Our hope is to release a new xBlock to integrate social recommendation in edX discussion forums in Fall 2015 (via the DANCE website). We would be very happy to partner with developers and researchers interested in using our approach.

 

How do you envision text and social-based tools influencing learning in the OpenEdX platform?

One overarching goal is to create more of a sense of community connected with the MOOC experience. Research on social support in online communities argues strongly for its value in increasing commitment and decreasing attrition. We know there is a lot of room for improvement in facilitating help exchange in MOOCs.

Many forms of social learning have proven valuable in residential settings but so far have not been part of the typical MOOC experience; we would like to enable them there. This includes collaborative problem solving, as well as project- and problem-based learning.

 

Do your tools also apply in residential settings? And if so, are you currently running residential experiments?

We were running studies in residential settings for several years before beginning our research in online learning and MOOC settings. This work was conducted in middle school, high school, and college courses in a variety of STEM topics.

We are not currently running any residential studies, but several faculty at Carnegie Mellon are engaged in a new Writing Across the Disciplines effort, connected with Carnegie Mellon’s Simon Initiative. We are excited to see how that will take shape and how we can get involved.

 

 

Learn more!

Links

• Research page of Prof. Carolyn Penstein Rosé at Carnegie Mellon University
• Website of DANCE edX Satellite Group for social learning in OpenEdX
• [Flash Video, 51 min] Talk: “Computational Analysis of Social Positioning in Collaborative Learning Interactions” (June 2012)

Interview with Carolyn Rosé, by Phil Hill of eLiterate TV — February 2014

 

Prof. Rosé explains her research project funded by the MOOC Research Initiative.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lorena A. Barba is Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the George Washington University. She taught the first GW MOOC, titled “Practical Numerical Methods with Python.”

The 2015 II Open edX developers’ conference is all set. It will take place on October 12-13th in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and will host an energetic community of software engineers, system administrators, instructional designers and education specialists.

The keynote speaker will be MIT’s Professor Mitch Resnick, creator of Scratch and a champion of innovative tools, pedagogies and learning techniques.

During this two-day event there will be at least 17 talks, in addition to un-conference time and networking opportunities.

• A learning analytics extension for Open edX called “Analyse”, developed by the Carlos III of Madrid University.  Presenter: Jose A. Ruiperez-Valiente.

• Building successful Open edX instructors from non-faculty domain experts. Presenters: Julie Mullen, Lauren Edwards, and Vijay Gadepally.

• Building the Plane While Flying it – Migrating an Existing MOOC to edX. Presenters: Mike Bifulco, Andrew Miller, Jeremy Osborn, and Michael Bingham-Hawk.

• Configuration Primer. Presenter: Feanil Patel.

• Contributing to Open edX. Presenters: Xavier Antoviaque and Sarina Canelake.

• Deploying SPOCs in a University Institution with Open edX: What Do We Need? Presenter: Jose A. Ruiperez-Valiente.

• Digging through the data – MoocCzar. Presenters: Andrew Dekker and John Zornig.

• Leveraging Open Edx for Corporate Training. Presenter: Cathy Herbert.

• Life in the Avant-Garde. Presenter: Regis Behmo.

• MIT Learning Object Repository for Education. Presenter: Peter Wilkins.

• Navigating Barriers to Implementation of an International Medical Training Course in Developing Nations. Presenter: Nicholus Warstadt.

• Online Geospatial Education in Africa through the Open edX Platform: Possibilities and Limitations. Presenter: Thomas Ballatore.

• Open edX and Adaptive Learning. Presenter: Ed Daciuk.

• OpenStack for edX: Inside, and Out. Presenters: Adolfo Brandes and Florian Haas.

• Pragmatic development lessons from UQx. Presenters:  Andrew Dekker and John Zornig.

• Real Time Analytics Using ELK. Presenters:  Felipe Montoya.

• Semantic Tagging Using Asides in Studio. Presenters: Cole Shaw and Ross Strader.

Researchers at MIT and Harvard have identified, through a new algorithm they developed, a new method of cheating with edX’s certifications. This technique allowed cheaters to acquire a certification for a course in an hour. It was used in 69 MOOCs offered by HarvardX and MITx from the fall of 2012 through the spring of 2015. This falsification was detected in 1,237 earned certificates, or 1.3 percent, and among less-educated males outside the United States. In the U.S. the rate was 0.4 percent.

Their working paper, “Detecting and Preventing ‘Multiple-Account’ Cheating in Massive Online Courses”, has been published on an online repository.

The paper’s co-author Isaac Chuang, an MIT professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics, said he noticed that some users answered questions “faster than is humanly possible”. The cheating strategy was based on “copying answers using multiple existences online”. A user gathers solutions to assessment questions using a “harvester” account and then submits correct answers using a separate “master” account.

Isaac Chuang said in MIT News that “this is a well-known issue in academics, and it’s happening in new ways in online settings”. “This could seriously devalue MOOC certification”.

The authors suggest, as preventions techniques, to restrict solutions to assessments until after they are due, as well as randomize questions so that each learner receives a customized set of problems.

The Knowledge Management and Big Data for Business‘ MOOC, that covers the areas of Management, Big Data and Cloud Computing, attracted during the last week of July the highest number of enrollments among all MOOCs offered by edX: nearly 20,000 learners from 187 countries.

Designed and delivered by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), this free, 6-week course starts tomorrow, August 25.

Their creators explained their experience in an edX’s blog post.

 

 

Harvard University has explained how content hosted on any Open edX instance –including grades– can be automatically deployed to the Canvas platform using LTI technology.

Phil McGachey, a Harvard engineer who leads this content embedding tool, has posted an overview on GitHub, “Using edX as an LTI Provider”.

To handle edX’s course content and usage id parsing to Canvas, Harvard has built an open-source, custom tool (still alpha):  https://github.com/penzance/edx-in-canvas .

To integrate grading data into Canvas’ gradebook, the LTI launch must be made from the Assignments section in Canvas (or from a module item that points to an assignment) and the edX content must be of a single problem component.

–

• Dec 11, 2014: LTI Technology is Getting a Second Chance on Open edX Thanks to Harvard University 

Ed Tech is a big business and learning analytics initiatives are attracting millions of dollars, but scholars are suspicious.

Professor Lorena A. Barba gave a courageous conference talk in PyData Seattle 2015 where she reviewed the newer trend of learning analytics.

Among other conclusions, Professor Barba said that “adaptive learning has still a long way to go” and “most analytics based on log data in the Learning Management System (LMS) are inadequate”.

“The poster child of “adaptive learning” is a company called Knewton. (…) There is little evidence that this technology actually improves learning”. 

Regarding edX’s Insights analytics technology used on edx.org (but not on independent Open edX platforms), Professor Barba said that “edX is putting analytics into the service of user experience rather than education, perhaps influenced by web developers, who maybe didn’t interact with learning scientists and educators to find what information might be useful”.

 

> Watch the whole conference and read the notes

 

 

 

 

This is an important milestone: over 5 million students worldwide are now learning on the edx.org educational portal.

Several factors can explain this success: from the courses’ quality and methodology to the dedication and great teamwork of edX’s staff and employees in the Cambridge offices.

EdX has became a worldwide phenomenon.

University 4 Industry is the first Open edX platform built on the latest Cypress software.

Developed by IBL Studios Education, University 4 Industry is an Open edX platform, created by German entrepreneurs, that intends to close capability and skills gaps in the workplace by educating industry practitioners and students.

The first course, “Internet of Things – Opportunities and challenges for the semiconductor industry”, will become available to the general public within a few days.

“After a lot of work hammering out the last few issues, Cypress is ready to go!”

With this revealing announcement on the General Open edX discussion forum on Google Groups, David Baumgold, edX’s engineer in charge of the release, broke the news.

An official blog post on the Open edX portal, written by Sarina Canelake, explained that this third release of Open edX is “absolutely jam packed with new features and improvements” (see below) and “strongly encouraged everyone in the Open edX community to begin their upgrade to Cypress immediately“, revealing that “Cypress is now the only supported Open edX release” and “security patches will no longer be released for Birch”.

This Cypress-named release added around 188,500 lines of code and removed around 46,000 lines, touching nearly 2,500 files in the process. Seventy individuals, along with many other contributors, have been involved in writing the code of the edX platform since the release of Birch in February 2015. In total, over 3,150 commits.

Among the new features:

• OLI Hinting
• Creative Commons
• Polling and Survey XBlocks
• Learner Profiles
• Course Search
• Randomized Content Blocks
• Single Sign On (SSO)
• Performance improvements
• Security and stability fixes

A full list of features has been posted here, along with instructions to migrate to Cypress.

The next Open edX release, Dogwood, is expected for the end of November 2015.