Core Contributor News for Sprint: Oct 25th - Nov 7th, 2025
This sprint brought mostly positive experiences. 75% of participants rated their experience as good or great, while 25% reported a neutral or negative experience.
What are we celebrating?
- We have deployed Ulmo to a couple of test environments, but it doesn’t look like we’ve got it working yet.
- Our deployment that follows master has been having lots of performance issues with discussions. We’re hopeful that completing the migration to MySQL will help, but we keep hitting migration issues and MFE issues
Who needs help?
- frontend-app-authoring bugix PR needs review: https://github.com/openedx/frontend-app-authoring/pull/2600
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. These are just some of the many PRs that require immediate review and action. In addition, there are several Draft PRs that need attention to move forward. Please take a moment to review and update them as needed so they don’t remain blocked. Thank you!
Stalled PRs: Some of the many PRs that need urgent attention:
- fix: answer range format validation and error message in Numerical input
- feat: Fixed delete for additional video url fields (sumac)
- Transform , , , and to typescript
- docs: ADR instructor dashboard rest api architecture
- First commit of DemoX v2 (2024) course
Reviewers needed
- fix: fixed getting a users’ name on UserData collections
- fix: fixed styles for legacy xblock’s editor
- Fix: When clicking “Download Handout”, the handout (image) overlays the video area, and the download does not start automatically.
- fix: prevent null start date in course details
- chore: fixed typos
- feat: add Waffle flag to control start date access for masquerading users
- fix: removed unused task code
- fix: specify primary key for Meilisearch indexing in CourseTeamIndexer
- fix: validation API for certificates (backport - Ulmo)
- fix: updating advance settings should update corresponding course_app
Draft PRs: Require review and updates to move forward:
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 final BizDev WG meeting of 2025 reflected on achievements, challenges, and next steps, emphasizing the need to revitalize participation and clarify responsibilities. Around 55 product proposals were reviewed during the year, with progress on the AI Extensions Framework and key partnerships like Turnitin and Credly. For 2026, the group aims to simplify structures, improve visibility across WGs, and relaunch with clearer goals in January. Latest meeting notes → 2025-11-12 Partnership development Meeting |
| Build-Test-Release (BTR) | The Ulmo.1 release (Dec 9, 2025) review focused on progress across testing, new feature validation, release management, documentation, and debugging. Each lead shared ongoing work, identified red flags and blockers, and issued calls for community support to ensure timely completion. The Build-Test-Release WG continues coordinating efforts to resolve remaining issues and finalize readiness for the upcoming release. Latest meeting notes → 2025-11-10 BTR Meeting Minutes |
| Governance WG | The Governance Working Group (formerly the Contributor Coordination Working Group) exists to enable continuous improvement of Open edX community governance. It provides a recurring and open forum for discussing community-wide governance topics, supporting proposal development, unblocking issues, and ensuring follow-up on initiatives. Status updates → #wg-large-instances |
| Core Product | The meeting focused on clarifying how to handle feature ideas and fast-track changes, agreeing that uncertain cases should be posted on Discuss for broader input. The group also proposed creating a new Learner Motivation and Engagement Subgroup under the Product WG to explore gamification and engagement features with open participation. Santiago Suarez will create a Confluence page for the new subgroup and schedule recurring meetings to define its scope and priorities. Latest meeting notes → 2025-11-04 Core Product Meeting Notes |
| Data | No current updates available. Last meeting notes → 2025-08-20 Meeting notes |
| Deprecation | The group reviewed fast-track updates to the DEPR OEP, continuing efforts to streamline the deprecation process. The session concluded with an OEP board review, focusing on items in the Draft column for next steps. Latest meeting notes → DEPR Meetings Notes (2025) |
| Documentation | The Documentors WG focused on aligning testing documentation with Ulmo test cases, addressing mismatches and missing coverage for features like login and password reset. The group agreed that documentation should be the primary reference, with John and Peter mapping test cases to docs and prioritizing newer features (libraries, taxonomies, metrics). Ana Garcia will create an AI-narrated demo video for the libraries feature, while Sarina Canelake supports release notes and documentation gap tracking. Last meeting notes → 2025-10-01 Docs WG |
| Educators | Feanil from Axim presented LTI 1.3 integration improvements, introducing the LTI Store and a new Tutor plugin to simplify setup and reuse configurations across components. He demonstrated a reusable configuration process using slugs, discussed upcoming Studio integration, and outlined plans for enhanced security and dynamic registration. The meeting closed with Ulmo LTI testing updates, inviting educators to join the testing sprint and help align documentation before the December release. Latest meeting notes → 2025-11-10 Educators |
| Frontend | The Frontend WG (Oct 23, 2025) discussed catalog MFE integration, agreeing to move forward with a plugin-based approach for flexibility and easier management. They reviewed the new Admin Console MFE with RBAC, enabling role assignment and permissions for libraries ahead of the upcoming release cut. Adolfo demoed MIT’s new “Never Show Correct Answers” feature, improving academic integrity for re-used courses by hiding correct responses while still grading them. Latest meeting notes → 2025-10-23 Frontend Working Group Meeting Notes |
| Large Instances | Latest meeting notes → Large Instances Meeting Notes 2025-10-28 |
| Learning Tools (LTI) | The group discussed ways to support the 1EdTech certification process, focusing on reviewing the Open edX LTI roadmap to identify next steps and ensure compliance. Members were encouraged to contribute by testing, documentation updates, and feedback on integration improvements. The goal is to advance LTI certification readiness and strengthen Open edX’s interoperability with external tools. Latest meeting notes → 2025-11-11 Meeting notes |
| Maintenance | Django 5.2 remains in testing under the BTR team for the Ulmo release cut. 2U has decided to postpone its deployment until the Ulmo.1 release cycle. Further updates will follow once testing and stability checks are complete. Last meeting notes → 2025-11-13 Meeting notes |
| Marketing | The upcoming Open edX Meetup (Oct 30) will feature the next conference location announcement, a Distinguished Contributor Celebration, and a TOC Nominee Roundtable. Upcoming events include Educause in two weeks and Bett London (Jan 2026), with regional meetups approved for funding up to $5K per quarter. The Marketing Sub-Group also reviewed and updated its OKRs to align with ongoing community and outreach initiatives. Last meeting notes →Agenda, Oct 14th, 2025 |
| Mobile | The group reviewed Ulmo mobile release updates and shared a scheduling survey for upcoming meetings. Plans include a roadmap workshop and discussion of the PDF XBlock offline support proposal. FY26 priorities focus on mobile adoption, lower costs, and new engagement features like gamification and discovery feeds. Latest meeting notes →Agenda, October 24th, 2025 |
| Technical Oversight Committee | The meeting confirmed the 2026 Open edX Conference location, reviewed the ongoing TOC elections, and highlighted WGU’s strong contributions with 300–400 PRs and new committers. Felipe Montoya presented an AI experimentation framework for Open edX, while Axim explored OpenAI funding options to support AI-related development. Regis demoed Sparkth, an open-source MCP server enabling AI-powered course creation and publishing, showcasing innovative external AI integrations for Open edX. Last meeting notes → TOC Meeting Notes - 2025-09-10 |
| Translation | The Translation WG reviewed recent language performance drops after migrating to the openedx-translations project, noting that machine translations are active for all languages except Portuguese (Portugal). Eden Huthmacher led a GitHub board review to track ongoing translation efforts and priorities. Action items and next steps were documented in the Translations Working Group page for continued follow-up. Last meeting notes → 2025-10-15 Translation WG Meeting |
| UX/UI | The meeting reviewed Notifications Phase 1 designs, including the tray, Preference Center, and email templates, ensuring alignment with the Studio outline redesign. Cassie Zamparini proposed a platform-wide design mapping to connect learner, instructor, and admin experiences. The group also discussed Indigo theming as a potential default for Open edX, focusing on accessibility, colors, and landing page improvements. Last meeting notes → 2025-11-06 - UX/UI Working Group Meeting |
What events are coming up?
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We are excited to announce that Western Governors University (WGU) will be hosting the Open edX Conference 2026. May 19 – 22, 2026 • Salt Lake City, Utah
- Register now and join the Open edX community in reimagining what’s possible in learning!
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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!
