Open edX 2017: Full Schedule

2017 Open edX Conference
23 - 26 May
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Register today!

10:00 CEST

Devstack installfest

Please complete the prework at https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/display/COMM/Open+edX+2017+Installfest+Pre-work
before arriving at the installfest. The in-person time will be reserved for troubleshooting as much as possible!

Tuesday May 23, 2017 10:00 - 11:15 CEST
4.1.E06

Tutorials

11:30 CEST

Building an XBlock from scratch using edX cookiecutter template.

Limited Capacity filling up

XBlocks is a powerful plug-in mechanism for Open edX platform. However, learning to create XBlocks is not trivial - and learning to create maintainable and easy to evolve XBlock is even harder. In this session we’ll talk about how to give new XBlock a good starting point by using cookiecutter template specifically designed for new XBlocks by edX.

Speakers

Eugeny Kolpakov

Senior Open Source Developer, Opencraft

Tuesday May 23, 2017 11:30 - 12:45 CEST
4.1.E06

Tutorials

14:00 CEST

Get cracking! Enabling your learners to work hands-on with Open edX and OpenStack

Limited Capacity seats available

We're big fans of self-paced online training, but also firm believers in learning-by-doing. This tutorial is a distillation of our (so far successful!) venture into in merging the two into a real-world product, using edX, OpenStack, and our own open-source glue.

We will demonstrate how to create a self-paced course that includes an LMS-accessible lab environment that will be launched, suspended, resumed, and graded automatically for each learner. Attendees will be provided OpenStack-based devstacks.

Speakers

Adolfo Brandes

Developer, Senior Technical Consultant, hastexo

Adolfo started out as an ESL teacher, but a gift for programming computers shaped his early career. He developed everything from an Asterisk-based PBX to the odd Linux kernel driver, including several websites and an AGPL3 Python-backed web game. Nevertheless, in his mid-thirties... Read More →

Florian Haas

City Network

Florian runs the Education team at City Network, and helps people learn to use, understand, and deploy complex technology. He has worked exclusively with open source software since about 2002, and has been heavily involved in OpenStack and Ceph since early 2012, and in Open edX since... Read More →

Tuesday May 23, 2017 14:00 - 15:15 CEST
4.1.E06

Tutorials

15:30 CEST

SSO and third-party authentication in Open edX: theory and practice

Limited Capacity seats available

An overview of the theory and practice of implementing SSO and third-party authentication (TPA), answering the big questions, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of OAuth and SAML, and giving some practical examples.

Speakers

Maximiliano Fernandez

Software Engineer, Appsembler

Tuesday May 23, 2017 15:30 - 16:45 CEST
4.1.E06

Tutorials

13:05 CEST

Visualizing course data using VizIT

When running MOOCs, instructors, administrators, and designers alike often settle for shallow heuristics of success (such as retention rate) or overly specific data (such as percentage of learners who watch a certain video for a certain duration). Borrowing from the information sciences, learning sciences, and instructional design, UBC created a dashboard (VizIT) that focuses on day-to-day MOOC operations at the single- and multiple-course levels. VizIT emphasizes relationship between course structure and engagement, offers an intuitive understanding of learning in the course, and provides success metrics and actionable information.

Speakers

Pan Luo

Programmer Analyst, University of British Columbia

Ido Roll

Director, Institute for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, University of British Columbia

Technology can Help folks be eager learners Fruitful in context

Derek White

Senior Manager, University of British Columbia

Wednesday May 24, 2017 13:05 - 13:40 CEST
4.1.E06

Breakout session, Analytics and research

13:45 CEST

Contributing to Insights & the Analytics Pipeline

The Open edX Insights Dashboard displays an ever-growing set of analytics data gleaned from learner activity in your courses. But what to do if you have data and reporting questions that the dashboard doesn't answer? In this talk, we will provide an overview of Insights and the Analytics pipeline, discuss the data that drives it. We'll present a use case from Harvard Kennedy School for their recent contributions to Insights and the Analytics pipeline. Finally, we'll discuss best practices for designing and contributing large changes to the Open edX platform.

Speakers

Jill Vogel

Senior Open Source Developer, OpenCraft

Brian Wilson

Data Engineer, edX

Contributing to Insights and the Analytics Pipeline pptx

Wednesday May 24, 2017 13:45 - 14:20 CEST
4.1.E06

Breakout session, Analytics and research

14:25 CEST

Using peer assessment and peer instruction to improve competence and instigate real change in online corporate learning

Presentation of a design solutions that improves competence and instigate real change in corporate online learning using the Open edX’s peer assessement and peer instruction.

Speakers

Henrik J. Mondrup

Henrik J Mondrup

I am interested in creating MOOCs that integrates social learning.

Wednesday May 24, 2017 14:25 - 15:00 CEST
4.1.E06

Breakout session, Corporate & professional learning trends

15:30 CEST

EdX Enterprise: endeavour into corporate learning

“Lifelong Learner” is a concept embraced by most modern educational institutions and from the corporate sector - more and more enterprises encourage their employees to obtain new skills and knowledge. This talk will introduce how Open edX and edx.org are evolving to support increasing demand in this sector - the edx-enterprise (aka ENT) project.

Speakers

Matt Drayer

Brittney Exline

Senior Software Engineer, edX

Eugeny Kolpakov

Senior Open Source Developer, Opencraft

Jesse Shapiro

Senior Open Source Developer, OpenCraft

Wednesday May 24, 2017 15:30 - 16:05 CEST
4.1.E06

Breakout session, Corporate & professional learning trends

10:45 CEST

Canal Fundación ONCE @ UNED: Open edX accessibility in practice

In this session we will introduce the project in which Fundación ONCE and UNED, the second largest university in Europe, have improved the accessibility of UNED’s Open edX Dogwood instance. One of the most relevant milestones of the project is the plan to contribute with the evidence-based findings back to the Open edX community.

Speakers

Miguel Angel Cordova

UNED

Vicente Goyanes

CEO, TELTEK Video Research

Alejandro Rodriguez-Ascaso

Lecturer, Universidad Nacional Educación a Distancia (UNED)

Thursday May 25, 2017 10:45 - 11:20 CEST
4.1.E06

Breakout session, Other

11:25 CEST

Evolution of edX LMS and Studio Architecture

The LMS and Studio architecture has evolved in many ways over the last few years and we are actively developing its future.

We'll touch upon the evolution of:
* our current technology-concerned monolith towards a business-centric monolith
* django-independent xBlock runtimes to django-dependent xBlocks
* decoupling of LMS and Studio via extensible Block Transformers
* synchronous REST APIs to asynchronous message passing / batch processing
* grades architecture
* containerization of devstack

Speakers

Nimisha Asthagiri

Principal Architect, edX

Hey all! I look forward to meeting you and working together to develop an impactful shared vision for the future of Open edX architecture.

Thursday May 25, 2017 11:25 - 12:00 CEST
4.1.E06

Breakout session, Operations & technical deep dives

13:00 CEST

Lightning talks - Localization & technology track

Localized Math on the edX Platform
Omar Al-Ithawi, Edraak

Javascript tools to enhance a language MOOC
Carlos Turro, Leonardo Salom, Ignacio Despujol, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia

Building a multilingual platform
Pierre Mailhot/Robert Gérin-Lajoie EDUlib/Université de Montréal

edX cookiecutter templates
Eugeny Kolpakov, Opencraft

XBlocks vs LTI's: The Winner is Both
Dr Aneesha Bakharia, The University of Queensland

Open edX and OAuth2: Scalable Extensions to the Platform
Miguel Amigot Jr, IBL Education

Thursday May 25, 2017 13:00 - 13:40 CEST
4.1.E06

Lightning talks

13:45 CEST

Applying Blooms Taxonomy to Open edX

Teach First is a social enterprise registered as a charity which aims to address educational disadvantage in England and Wales. Using Open edX we have developed a series of courses to deliver professional development across the whole of the UK.

This is an update to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy specifically for an Open edX world which attempts to account for the new behaviours and actions emerging as technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous.

Bloom's Revised Taxonomy describes many traditional classroom practices, behaviours and actions, but does not account for the new processes and actions associated with advances in technology.

Speakers

Dr Philippa Hardman

Thursday May 25, 2017 13:45 - 14:20 CEST
4.1.E06

Breakout session, Analytics and research

14:25 CEST

Delivering an online master's degree program on Open edX

University of Notre Dame recently announced their first online masters degree program and it will run on Open edX. ExtensionEngine, an edX partner, is customizing Open edX to create a branded experience that supports the program's pedagogy. Furqan Nazeeri, partner at ExtensionEngine, will discuss the program and how Open edX is being customized and deployed to support it.

Speakers

Furqan Nazeeri

Partner, ExtensionEngine

Furqan Nazeeri is a Partner at ExtensionEngine, a consulting services firm that specializes in online education platform and course content development. With a team of over 200, Furqan has worked with universities, corporations and other learning organizations including Harvard... Read More →

Thursday May 25, 2017 14:25 - 15:00 CEST
4.1.E06

Breakout session, Innovative courses in higher education social impact and professional development

15:30 CEST

How we Beautifully and Quickly engage students on iOS and Android

Here at Appsembler, my job is to make it easy for organizations to launch iPhone and Android applications for their course websites. Today, I’ll tell you a bit about what pieces we’ve simplified so far and what we’re doing next, to make it even easier.

Speakers

J'aime Ohm

Software Engineer, Appsembler

Mobile apps for iOS and Android

Thursday May 25, 2017 15:30 - 16:05 CEST
4.1.E06

Breakout session, Operations & technical deep dives

16:10 CEST

The Evolution of Open edX Theming

We will look at available approaches to theming Open edX sites and how the approaches have been changing over the history of Open edX. We will look at motivations, benefits, and drawbacks of each technique with a focus on the most recent ("comprehensive theming") approach.

Speakers

Matjaz Gregoric

OpenCraft

Thursday May 25, 2017 16:10 - 16:45 CEST
4.1.E06

Breakout session, Operations & technical deep dives