Hi everyone! I’m taking another look at the Vietsch Foundation grant (https://vietsch-foundation.org). If anyone has any projects ideas in mind that could be a good fit for this grant or even other grants we find, please feel free to share them in this thread. You can find the eligibility criteria in the link below, but to summarize:
Projects that use Internet technology in support of research and higher education
Greatest impact at minimal cost, innovate technologies, services or approaches contributing to openness and neutrality of the Internet
Projects should last months not years and only need “tens of thousands of Euros”
Beyond what will be suggested in the current thread, an approach to find topics to submit for grants would be to take them from the Open edX roadmap - in particular, the ones marked as “not resourced” but which have already been approved could be good candidates. Some of the ones in the backlog could be potential candidates, too.
Also, members of the Open edX product working group, such as @Ali and @cassie could be good people to discuss with to get with ideas. It could be worth creating tasks on the prospect budget to assign to them, so they have dedicated time to think about it and answer to you.
@antoviaque I looked through the roadmap, and I don’t see any not resourced and approved projects that are good candidates, but I am intrigued by this Learner Activity Service which is still in review:
I think the gamification of learning is very interesting when looking at the future of online education and learning platforms, but particularly for this grant, the motivational support tools and especially the focus on activity data align well with the eligibility criteria. I think focusing on this from the perspective of “learner activity data to help identify common data patterns” and API to build out these motivational tools, outreach messaging and deeper learning engagement works well for this grant.
It is my first time reviewing the roadmap though, so I’m not sure what the approval process is like, nor what type of budget or timeline a project like this would require. Any feedback is appreciated!
@jordan Thanks for reviewing the Roadmap! I agree that the Learner Activity Service proposal—or at least a portion of it—could be an interesting candidate for this grant.
It also aligns with one of the three themes that seem to recur in product discussions:
Gamification in learning
Competency-Based Education (CBE)
AI-driven support for learners and educators
This suggests to me that there’s demand for it within the community. Additionally, these search results for “gamification” on the wiki show that it’s a frequently discussed topic.
We could always create a related proposal that only tackles a portion of the work suggested on #376, and ensure the deliverables match the available budget and timeline. Then @cassie or I could coordinate the proposal and try to get it approved as soon as possible.
I ran out of time to look for proposals related to CBE and AI-driven support, but I can do some more research should we decide that those topics might be interesting options for this grant.
I like @Ali’s ideas. In addition, I’d like to drop this into the ring… How about leveraging Listaflow and adapting it for researchers to address gaps in research workflows?
Research workflows can be complicated, involving tasks like data collection, systematic reviews, grant writing, and collaboration. While static checklist tools like PRISMA help with systematic reviews, they lack dynamic features such as real-time collaboration, task delegation, and integration with academic platforms (from what I can see). This highlights a potential gap for a checklist tool specifically tailored to researchers. Here is some reading to back up my thoughts:
Tools like PRISMA show that structured checklists help ensure no steps are overlooked (source).
Researchers seem to discuss workflow challenges on platforms like Reddit, highlighting the need for tools that improve task tracking and enable seamless collaboration across teams (example 1, example 2).
Studies like QuOCCA (source) show how structured checklists can streamline research workflows.
Tools like LiteRev (source) and LLAssist (source) reflect the growing interest in automating literature reviews and task management for researchers.
How can we adapt Listaflow?
Develop standard templates for tasks like grant applications and experiment planning.
Ensure the checklist capabilities are dynamic enough to evolve to project needs and user input.
Integrate seamlessly with Zotero (reference management), PubMed (literature databases), and Overleaf (collaborative writing)
Enable multi-institutional teams to collaborate in real time with features like task delegation, progress tracking, and notifications.
Use analytics to track task completion rates, spot bottlenecks, and optimize workflows.
Why does this fit the Foundation’s criteria?
Adapting Listaflow brings a dedicated tool with dynamic checklists, academic integrations, and reports tailored for researchers.
As an open-source tool, Listaflow is scalable and cost-effective, benefiting researchers worldwide.
Its open-source nature meets the Foundation’s standards for openness and neutrality.
@jordan@Ali@cassie Great picks! This definitely seems like the type of options for go for
And great initiative @cassie to have created Log in - OpenCraft on the prospect budget - there is room on that budget to do some work, maybe that can be a way to offset some of the reductions on the core contributors budget? They could actually still go together, but that might help targeting spending time on things that can bring additional billable work?
Btw, note that the proposal from Open edX Roadmap · GitHub comes from Marco - so it might be worth reaching out to him to make sure he is aware of what we do, and maybe offer to submit a joint proposal for the funding?
@antoviaque@Ali Thanks for your feedback! I am reaching out to Marco to see if there’s potential to do a related proposal that limit the scope, ensuring it fits within the eligibility criteria. @cassie Thanks for sharing your ideas on Listaflow. That is a great project for us. I’m just reviewing it against the eligibility criteria to see if there’s any potential adjustments that could make it more desirable for the grant, and I’ll get some feedback on it to you shortly.
I like your proposal and was surprised by it, because I hadn’t considered Listaflow for that particular grant. I needed to take a bit of time to go back and re-read the requirements and project history for them and compare it to your idea. After doing so I can say, yes, this does seem plausible to me! I think if we scoped the work to handle conditional capabilities and authoring capabilities, we could make it within the ‘few tens of thousands of Euros’ range the grant mentions while hitting all of their requirements.
One thing that might be an issue is that they say “Funding will only be provided for projects that will produce a step-change, create a new possibility, or
document a new approach; requests for maintenance to keep an activity going in a steady-state will not be considered.”
I think we should make it clear if applying here that the funds would be put toward functionality that isn’t currently being considered, but would allow the tool to be adapted for the aforementioned research purposes-- the conditional workflow. Right now all checklists are linear-- the only conditional presentation of checklist items comes from the user’s tagged role, not on how they previously answered a question.
Hi @jordan. I’m not sure if you’ve heard back from Marco yet, but I took another look at his proposal and noticed it focuses specifically on the mobile app. Perhaps we could create a separate proposal for the web app while ensuring it aligns with Schema’s vision for mobile.
Let me know if you’d like any help refining the direction for the proposal or brainstorming other options for this grant.
Would it be a stretch to suggest that part of the Prospects account could go toward creating and coordinating product proposals or attending Core Product Working Group meetings? I have a feeling it might be, but figured I’d ask anyway!
@Ali Yes that would indeed be stretching it - the budgets need to remain meaningful, if we cram everything into the prospect budget we don’t really help to achieve sustainability, which is the actual goal - we just lose visibility over where we spend time and money.
it was your idea and Ali put it into effect 
