Educators Working Group
Charter
The Open edX working group is a community of practice for educators and course-builders on the edX platform, representing a cross-section of instructional contexts and ways that the Open edX platform is being used. Our group will share best practices, examples, and showcase the various ways that we build on the platform. In doing so, we'll create a more innovative, relevant and welcoming space to other educators who want to start or want to expand their online learning initiatives.
Another purpose of this working group is to represent the needs of educators in the Open edX community and provide a consolidated voice for them in the platform's development. We aim to inform and give feedback to other relevant groups that are interested in the voice of the educator and the learner, to ensure that the finalized product is relevant and effective for actual use cases. Our goal is to provide structure around how educator voices can be heard in the Open edX roadmap.
Our working group is an explicitly inviting space that is "no code" or "low code" friendly. We aim to be a community that seeks ways to support the community of Open edX learners, educators, and developers where participants can come for support and community, or share their insights and ideas.
How to Join the Educators Working Group
To be a part of the Educators Working Group, you are encouraged to follow the discussion and keep an eye out for meetups, meetings & projects. Contribute as you are able, but there is no “minimum requirement” for being a member. Here is how to join Slack and the Open EdX Forum where Educators WG discussion happens.
Change notification settings to “All messages”.
Here is one way to do that from Slack on Desktop. And here are some alternatives depending on how you use Slack.
Create an account in the Open edX Forums and enable at least “Watching First Post” notifications for the Educators channel.
Communication Tools & Norms
Slack:
Slack is used for asynchronous discussion. It is more internal-facing than the discussion forum since membership requires an administrator’s approval. Slack tends to get faster responses, so it is considered the best in-group discussion area.
Open edX Forum:
The Open edX Discussion forum is for asynchronous discussion that is more public-facing. The Open edX forum can be joined by anyone without administrator approval and it is also crawl-able by search engines. The forum is a good place for questions, tips, presentations and similar that could be beneficial to the wider Open edX user base.
Github
We use Github Projects to track tasks and responsibilities. The github project board allows us to assign tasks to users for follow-up, and track as tasks move from the creation phase to completion.
Open edX Community Confluence Wiki
The wiki space is where we keep important public documentation like group rules and meeting notes. Anyone can view and edit these documents.
How we Make Decisions
By default, decisions are made by lazy consensus:
Lazy consensus means that when you are convinced that you know what the community would like to see happen, you can assume that you have consensus in favor of the proposed work and and get on with it. You don’t have to insist people discuss and/or approve your plan, and you certainly don’t need to call a vote to get approval. You just assume you have the community’s support unless someone says otherwise.
Lazy consensus works only if you communicate with enough advance notice, and with enough details that people who would object have the time and the necessary information to do so. Generally speaking, it’s better to over-communicate.