Learning is not a spectator sportOct. 12, 2015Open edX Conference by Nate Aune, Appsembler

Who am I?

15 years experience as open source software developer

10 years as President of Jazkarta, Python web development firm

Consultant at edX, Inc. in 2013

Presented at Open edX conference 2014

Commissioned by Stanford to author Open edX gap analysis report

Founder and CEO of Appsembler

Appsembler

Solutions provider specializing in the Open edX platform

Open edX customization, implementation, hosting and support

Official referral partner of edX Inc.

Headquarters in neighboring town to Cambridge, MA

MIT Sloan, Financial Times, Aquent, Intersystems, Metalogix

“Lecture-style” model

PassiveWatching video lectures

Reading text

“Learning-by-doing” model

ActiveRich interactive activities

Practice by doing

Intersystems

30 year old company

Lots of software products

Very successful classroom training

High customer satisfaction for classroom

7

Problems with classroom training 8

Doesn’t scale wellClass is limited

Can only send so many studentsExpensive

Challenges for online labs

Very technical courses

Need a way to get access to the software

Avoid providing trial licenses

Avoid downloading software

Avoid setup complexity

10

“What we really would like is for our customers to be able to put their hands on our software - you know, hands to the keyboard, and use it.”

- Jim Breen, Director of Learning Services

11

The solution 12

Virtual labs using Linux containerswith some help from Docker

Create student sandboxes for mobile developers

1. Student needs a sandbox environment in which to complete an exercise

2. Clicks a button in the course in edX, and a Linux container is provisioned for them in 10 seconds with the software pre-installed and pre-configured

3. Student completes exercise and container is shut down (or can remain running if they’re going to come back to it)

testing

testing

Coding environment running completely in the browser.

Live demoView this video on Youtube to see the virtual labs service in action, and integrating with an Open edX course.

Watch video!or go tohttps://youtu.be/8SqG2ilZQz0

“What if we authored an edX course about developing on the Open edX platform and provided a Open edX development environment within the edX course!?”

- Nate talking to himself in the shower

19“Meta moment”

EDE - edX Development Environment

Cloud-based development environmentPowered by

• Open edX running in 1 container• Cloud9 IDE running in 1 container• Paired with a shared volume

20

Shared volumeedx-platform

ApplicationOpen edX devstack

Code editorCloud9 IDE

Benefits 21

“Devstack without the headache”Get started in 10 secondsNo software to download to your computer

Disclaimer: Experimental project right now

Come find me at the hackathon to get access to the environment and help test it!

Thank you for your time!

Questions?