Help Build the Ultimate Open edX Guide

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Hi everyone :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

We’re creating our first pillar post for OpenCraft, tailored to institutional decision-makers, ie. leaders at universities, governments, and large organizations exploring the best LMS options. This guide is a chance to deliver real value and showcase OpenCraft as an Open edX expert.

But we don’t just want to repackage what’s already out there. The most valuable insights come from your real-world experience. So that’s where your knowledge comes in… What do you think institutions should know more about? It could be a practical tip, an underrated feature, a powerful customization, or a lesson from a challenging implementation - anything you’ve seen that makes a real impact (the aim isn’t to create DIY content, we want to create something for decision-maker guidance.)

Key information to guide your thoughts:

Draft Pillar Post Structure:

Here’s the working structure for our guide - designed for universities, corporations, and government institutions evaluating LMS platforms. Please add your two cents in the thread. Nothing is set in stone!

TL;DR

  • A quick summary for institutional leaders, IT decision-makers, and procurement teams:
    • Who this guide is for
    • What you’ll learn (LMS evaluation criteria, real-world implementation advice, Open edX use cases)
    • Why Open edX offers unique value as a secure, scalable, and customizable open-source LMS

1. Why Institutions Are Choosing Open Source LMS Solutions

Keyword focus: Best open-source LMS, customizable learning management system

Open edX Explained: An Open Source LMS Built for Institutional Innovation

  • Origins and evolution (MIT and Harvard roots, edX.org, global adoption)
  • What makes Open edX different from other open source platforms

Why Open Source? The Institutional Advantage

  • Control over features, data and hosting
  • Customization of features, UX, branding and integrations
  • Global community and transparency
  • Alignment with academic/government values (eg, openness, autonomy, public good)

2. Key LMS Evaluation Criteria for Institutions

Keyword focus: Scalable LMS for universities, secure LMS for government, Open edX for enterprise

Security, Scalability, and Compliance at Scale

  • Why secure hosting, data protection, and uptime matter for governments and large institutions
  • Open edX security architecture and compliance support

Integrations and Custom Features that fit your Institution

  • Compatibility with campus tools (SIS, CRM, SSO)
  • Custom pathways, certifications, mobile UX

Customization Without Vendor Lock-In

  • Branding and learner experience
  • Tailored features and pedagogical models

Open Source vs SaaS: Cost and Flexibility Compared

  • Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and hidden costs in SaaS
  • Why institutions choose to self-host or work with Open edX partners
  • Comparison table: Open edX vs Blackboard vs MoodleCloud vs Canvas LMS-as-a-service

3. Future-Proofing Your LMS Investment

Keyword focus: Customizable learning management system, corporate training platform open source

What’s Next: Trends Shaping the LMS Landscape

  • AI and adaptive learning
  • Microlearning and modular content
  • Data analytics and personalized learner journeys

Building an Agile and Adaptable Infrastructure

  • Planning for change, scale, and institutional growth
    How Open edX positions institutions for long-term success

4. Real-World Implementation Tips

Hosting Models that Fit you

  • Self-hosted vs. partner-hosted: control, cost, and complexity

Keys to a Smooth Rollout

  • Stakeholder alignment and governance
  • Training, support, and institutional onboarding
  • Designing for adoption across departments

5. Success Stories

Highlight OpenCraft case studies across sectors (gov, higher ed, enterprise). Ideally we can link to our existing case studies…

6. How OpenCraft Supports your Open edX Journey

Keyword focus: Open edX for enterprise, customizable learning management system

Strategic and Technical Services

  • Architecture, development, integrations, UX
  • Security audits and performance optimization

Long-Term Partnership and Maintenance

  • DevOps, updates, scaling
  • Becoming your LMS co-pilot, not just a vendor

Leaders in the Open edX Community

  • Contributions to the platform
  • Thought leadership and collaboration

7. Let’s Talk about your LMS needs

  • Schedule a Discovery Call
  • Download the Full Guide (PDF)

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! :bulb:

Log time here. Our budget is limited so while your feedback is important please be a bit time sensitive :slight_smile:

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Maybe mention the opportunity to institutional stakeholders to become involved in shaping the future of the platform - participate on product advisory boards, contribute or review code/features/plugins, even sit on the TOC.

I think it would be good to mention that Open edX is built around the Open Learning XML (OLX) data format, which has been a stable and backwards compatible format for the past decade, ensuring that your content data is always accessible and can be converted to other formats, rather than locked in to something proprietary.

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@cassie Thank you for all this work! :clap: I’ve added a few notes below.

  • Benefit from ongoing improvements and peer collaboration.
  • Reduce licensing fees and long-term vendor lock-in.
  • Technology tends to evolve rapidly.

Here are some strengths as per this SWOT analysis by Annabel Cellini at Axim:

  • Highly customizable and extensible, and flexible
  • Brand, Expertise, Higher Education trusted source, connection and knowledge of HE
  • Proven excellence
  • Multitenancy
  • Scalability
  • Sovereignty/Democratic community control
  • Community

Some focus areas from Annabel’s research:

  • Competency-based and non-degree education - Focusing on underserved learners seeking credentials, typically but not exclusively through community colleges. Growth in career-aligned credentials, competency-based learning, and apprenticeships
  • National upskilling platforms and initiatives - Supporting government ministries and large-scale workforce development programs, with successful examples including the e-She project in Ethiopia.
  • Institutions increasingly looking to serve historically underserved populations like adult learners.
  • Student preference for hybrid learning post-pandemic.
  • In-house product design team
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  • Cost per learner is much better at scale
  • Larger pool of providers capable of handling your customization and maintenance needs
  • Compliance is much easier when source code can be audited and certified
  • Data sovereignty and the ability to build in-house specialists and become entirely independent from outside contractors if desired (Kind of restating what you already said in the first point, but felt it was a good additional framing)
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These are all gold everyone! Wow thank you!

@antoviaque would you also like to add some points?

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@cassie This is a solid base, kudos! And between your post and the suggestions in this thread, a lot of it is well-covered.

There is maybe a point that could be worth making more central: instance maintenance and its long-term implications. Most providers just work on forks and don’t contribute the features - which creates a growing difference between the client or provider fork and the official version, which creates an exponentially growing pile of work to do at each upgrade. By being “upstream first”, contributing features and core changes as much as possible to the official version, it allows to keep the maintenance and upgrade costs from ballooning (and often upgrades to stall). This is a key differentiator, which helps to explain why we are more expensive upfront than other providers, but economical on the long term.

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