Open edX

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Introduction

In 2019, the Open edX homepage stated that “edX is the online learning destination co-founded by Harvard and MIT. Open edX is the learner-centric, massively scalable learning platform behind it. Originally envisioned as a MOOC platform, Open edX has evolved into one of the leading learning platforms catering to Higher Ed, enterprise, and government organizations alike.”

In 2017, the same homepage had a more focused vision, “The Open edX platform is a free--and open source--course management system (CMS) that was originally developed by edX. The Open edX platform is used all over the world to host Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as well as smaller classes and training modules.”

See also:

Administering Open EdX

The administration interface is available only through the localhost (server machine)

This means that you either have to create a tunnel to run a navigator or else launch a firefox on the server and use X windows to display, e.g. if you got your own Linux machine:

ssh server.machine -XY
firefox --new-instance

It can be configured to be available here (same port as edx-studio)

Read more in:

Creating a course

By default, any registered user can create a course. We find that really strange given all these annoying security features that otherwise imposed. However, in a production system, the administrator may have disabled course creating for non staff members (see Open edX installation and configuration

For creating courses one is supposed to use studio, but someone will have to tell you where to find it. I will, but you also can read the official documentation

If you configured your firewall as suggested above, then it is here:

Yes it runs by default on port 18010 !

Creating a course is very simple:

  • Hit the big green button and fill in the form
  • Add instructors as needed (you need to know their email address and they must have signed up with edX with that email).
edX studio - Creating a course

Authoring a course

edX studio - Organizing the course
edX studio - Adding content to a unit

Links

Official documentation

The documentation is spread over several places.

  • Slack archive (even if you do not believe that knowledge should be conversational ...)