Open edX is the open source learning platform that MIT and Harvard built for edx.org and its 30M+ learners.  It’s scalable, well-tested and fully-featured in terms of its web application, iOS and Android platforms,  and learning analytics.

Moreover, because it’s open source, any organization can use it to build a learning portal it can fully control and customize.

It’s used by the world’s top ten universities, either as a course publishing tool through edx.org, or fully personalized instances in the case of Stanford and MIT.

Also, organizations such as Tesla, Cisco, IBM, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and the U.S. Air Force use it. National consortiums in China, France, Israel, and Russia educate millions of learners with this technology, too.

Today there are around 20,000 courses created with the Open edX technology and pedagogy, with 45 million users.

At IBL Education, we are at the forefront of these developments. As an example, we recently released the Jupyter notebook integration for the Open edX platform. Our clients include IBM, NVIDIA, Tesla, Cisco, Global Knowledge, University of Phoenix, MIT, NYU, GW, Vermont Oxford Network, and the U.S. Air Force.

In addition to the 35M+ users of edx.org, the Open edX software is used by 25M+ learners from a variety of corporate, academic, nonprofit and government-backed initiatives.

Microsoft, IBM, McKinsey & Co are some of the largest backers of the technology. Another important player is Global Knowledge — the largest private IT training company in the world — which has been recognized for its innovation by building its online offer on top of it.

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. Other important players are Harvard, Stanford and NYU.

In terms of nonprofits and governments, it’s used by the US Air Force and millions of learners across XuetangX (China), FUN (France), Campus IL (Israel), and Edraak (Jordan and the Middle East).

The Open edX platform is designed around optimizing learning outcomes and based on the latest research in learning science. The student is in control of their learning process and is actively engaged.

The pedagogical foundations of the platform are seven:

• Immediate feedback
• Mastery learning
• Self-regulated learning
• Continuous formative assessment
• Metacognition
• Remediation of common misconceptions
• Constructive learning

By carefully assessing course data, from mouse clicks and time spent on tasks to evaluating how students respond to various assessments, researchers shed light on how learners access information and master materials, with the ultimate aim of improving course outcomes.

Additionally, the Open edX online environment provides educational organizations with a powerful platform to conduct experiments, as a way to explore how students learn and how faculty and trainers can best teach using a variety of novel tools and techniques.

The edX xConsortium, founded by MIT and Harvard University, is known for developing best practices to enhance the student experience and improve teaching and learning both on campus and online.

The most innovative learning platforms today are edX, Coursera and Udacity in terms of sheer numbers, scale and engagement.

Open edX, as the proven open source software behind edX, is the most advanced learning platform today:

• Its community is being driven by the largest organizations across all sectors
• It has been proven by more organizations and learners than any other competing platform
• It’s about complete openness and control (no licensing fees)

Its openness allows you to extend it into a fully featured and integrated platform of tools and learning components, like the diagram below shows:

No licensing, setup or royalty costs at all. The software is open source and you can install it freely at any time.

As with any open source product, however, you can solicit the help of a vendor like us to help you quickly ramp up with what you need to know, maintain it and customize it for your purposes. What’s great about it is that you’ll always be in full control over your software and data, which means that you won’t need to rely on anybody.

As a learner, enroll in a course on edx.org or a popular Open edX implementation.

As an instructor, see edX’s Course Creator series or contact us to get access to a sandbox platform.

As an engineer, install Open edX and see the developer documentation.

If you have any more questions, feel free to contact us and we’ll help you.