Core Contributor News for Sprint: June 21st - July 4th, 2025
This sprint brought mostly positive experiences. 91% of participants rated their experience as good or great, while 9% reported a neutral experience or faced some challenges.
What are we celebrating?
- Attended the Open edX conference! Presented two sessions and got amazing feedback. I’m so happy to have seen you all at Telecom Paris
- It was so incredible seeing everyone at the conference! Thank you for the inspiring discussions and collaborations!
- I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who was involved in organising the 2025 Open edX conference in France; it was fantastic and we got a lot of work done!
- Catching up on Arabic translations. Still waiting for the Teak release to make the translations cut.
- The 2025 conference was fantastic! Kudos Axim, all the sponsor organizations, and everyone who could attend for making this possible. Was especially thrilled with the audience response for my talk on Modular Learning – thank you everyone for your thoughts and questions! Slides here: Libraries v2: Reusable Content for Authors - Google Slides
- EMOOCS + open EdX conferences were really good & productive.
- Yes, we launched the Distinguished Contributors program at the conference! We also managed to move the Ukrainian translations forward
Who needs help?
- I’d appreciate a review of my latest version of the Discovery: New Open edX Handbook Structure
I think this is a good start in bettering the overall UX of our community documentation. FYI @john_curricume and @Michelle_Philbrick.
If there’s anything you’re stuck on, need help with, or would like input on, please feel free to leave a comment in this topic. We’re here to support you!
What Pull Requests (PRs) need review?
As a CC, check for PRs that are stuck and need attention. Don’t have write access? No problem! You can still help by reviewing to move things forward. Ping Axim if there are issues merging after you review.
Below is a list of stalled PRs that need urgent attention:
- fix: cohorts api permissions
- fix: Ensure problem response reports include all descendant problems regardless of nesting or randomization
- feat: api for shifting all relative past due dates
- chore: add missing inline code annotations in filters
- fix: Remove horizontal scroll on instructor page in RTL version
- fix: visual and progress score display enhancement
- fix: course outline not found issue for ccx courses
- fix: problem editor content style
- fix: styles for share video functionality of the video xblock
- feat: third party authentication automatic logout with a single redirect
Find a full list of PRs ready for review here, or focus on edx-platform PRs that need attention.
What are the Working Groups up to?
| Working Group | Latest Updates |
|---|---|
| BizDev | The June 18 Open edX WG-BizDev meeting brought together global community members to explore the Vorkis/Unibot integration by Intela, focused on skill-based learning and job market alignment. Key updates were shared across global RFPs, partnerships, revenue growth, and market expansion. Participants were encouraged to review the agenda, bring ideas, and help shape the platform’s future impact. Latest meeting notes → 2025-06-18 Partnership development Meeting |
| Build-Test-Release (BTR) | Several items remain open, including scheduling the release meeting, sharing announcements, and reviewing testing and documentation progress. Teams are asked to flag risks, share ongoing work, and contribute to the retrospective linkedin Teak.1 Retrospective. Latest meeting notes → 2025-06-23 BTR Meeting Minutes |
| Contributor Coordination | The working group decided to adopt an asynchronous-first model, retiring monthly meetings in favor of ad-hoc calls when necessary. Last meeting notes → 2025-05-13 CC Working Group Meeting Notes |
| Core Product | The status of product subgroups was reviewed; several appear inactive and may be archived, while others remain active with regular meetings. New subgroups were proposed to align overlapping product proposals from multiple teams, especially around Catalog, Learning Paths, and Programs. An update to the Product Review Process was discussed, aiming for a more efficient structure without adding unnecessary recurring meetings.Latest meeting notes → 2025-07-15 Core Product Meeting Notes |
| Data | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-05-07 Meeting notes |
| Deprecation | On June 26, 2025, the Cookie name change ticket was completed, and related middleware marked for deprecation. The Fast Track template is being updated; while automation isn’t in place yet, manual instructions are available to move items through. Board review included updates and check-ins on tickets pending review.Latest meeting notes → DEPR Meetings Notes (2025) |
| Documentation | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-04-17 Docs WG |
| Educators | No current updates available. |
| Frontend | The group agreed to adopt Adam’s strategy of making frontend-build an optional peer dependency in frontend-platform, avoiding unintended installs in production bundles. A PR cleanup and documentation of three dev-dependency scenarios are underway, with Brian and Adam leading next steps. Reminder: Design Tokens launch is set for June 18, 2025, with coordinated merges and QA support planned. Last meeting notes → 2025-06-05 Frontend Working Group Meeting Notes |
| Large Instances | Networking issues at eduNEXT were resolved by updating outdated AMIs; Picasso and other automation tools were discussed as collaboration opportunities. There was consensus on moving away from Discovery Service and aligning efforts on new solutions like Learner Pathways and Tutor-compatible tooling. Last meeting notes → Large Instances Meeting Notes 2025-07-08 |
| Learning Tools (LTI) | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-04-01 Meeting notes |
| Maintenance | Usama Sadiq proposed updating the requirements upgrade workflow so it can run on forks without requiring a GITHUB_TOKEN, enabling open source contributions. A discussion is needed with OpenCraft and others; currently, only the upgrade-one workflow runs without a token. No alternative solutions have been proposed yet. Permissions for the AppHelix team were also discussed—Jeremy will review replacing the arbi-bom team with AppHelix under the maintainers-at-large group. Latest meeting notes → 2025-07-10 Meeting notes |
| Marketing | No current updates available. Last meeting notes →Agenda, May 21st, 2025 |
| Mobile | The meeting highlighted progress on the Course Content/Progress reviewer project, with calls for community reviewers and 2U onboarding support. Discussions on mobile adoption included feature differentiation, app store visibility, and a push to raise usage from <5% to 50%. Updates also touched on API limitations, a new AI product subgroup, and interest in future discussions on build tools and Zeit Labs. Last meeting notes →Agenda, June 20th, 2025 |
| Technical Oversight Committee | New committee members Shreshtha Gupta (CTO of NSDC, India) and Aref Matin (CTO at 2U). Key announcements included Pearson’s course content translation proposal, discussions on current translation approaches, and upcoming events like the Open edX Conference and a grant opportunity for AI features in Studio. Shreshtha presented NSDC’s digital skilling ecosystem in India, highlighting the Skill India Digital Hub built on Open edX with features like blockchain credentials and job aggregation. Jenna Makowski and Dave Ormsbee outlined plans to revamp Open edX’s role-based access control system to improve security and flexibility through granular, stackable permissions. Next steps include sharing presentations, gathering community feedback on translation proposals, and exploring KeyCloak integration for RBAC. Last meeting notes → TOC Meeting Notes - 2025-05-14 |
| Translation | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-04-16 Translation WG Meeting |
| UX/UI | The session included quick updates on current UX/UI efforts, including a centralized database of design projects (Sam Daitzman) and a proposal to reintroduce the search bar in the Learner Dashboard (Chelsea Rathbun). @Edward Byun shared progress on a Platform UX issue tracker, while @Santiago Suarez proposed a multi-question problem editor to enhance authoring flexibility. Last meeting notes →2025-06-12 - UX/UI Working Group Meeting |
What events are coming up?
- Educause 2025: EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2025 - 4 Providers confirmed (Edly, Intela, Aulasneo, and DRC).
- Join a working group meeting using the community calendar.
What are we working on?
- Our community is working on exciting projects! Visit our Open edX Roadmap and Release Planning Spreadsheet to find out what’s happening.
Want to participate in Core Contributor Governance?
- Participate to the work of the Contributor Coordination Working Group. The group works asynchronously using the working group tasks board, and we’d love your input there. You can review and comment on existing threads there, or post your own topic to discuss with the group by creating your own ticket on the board (“+ Add item” in “New topics and issues to discuss”).
Anything to add?
Share your thoughts in Slack (openedx.slack.com) or the comments below!