Open EdTech

About Open EdTech

Open EdTech is an initiative to develop open infrastructure supporting learning throughout life.

Open EdTech is a project founded by Martin Dougiamas, and continues to be directed by him. Martin previously founded Moodle, the widely used open source learning management system, in 2000.

Origins

Open EdTech began in 2019 with a two-day festival in Barcelona that brought together builders, users and funders of open education technology. It has gathered people from many countries since, and in 2026 took a new direction towards the learner-controlled Coach described on the plans page.

About forty people posing with their arms raised in front of a large screen reading Open EdTech Global Festival 2019, 21 to 22 November 2019, Barcelona.
Participants at the first Open EdTech Global Festival, Barcelona, November 2019.
November 2019
The first Open EdTech Global Festival, held over two days at ESADE Business School in Barcelona. It brought together open-source developers, researchers, non-profits and governments to map the open edtech ecosystem and agree a one-year blueprint for the sector, including the guiding principles below.
September 2022
Open EdTech workshop at MoodleMoot Global, exploring what education technology could look like without the constraints of what exists now.
November 2022
The Open EdTech Launch Paper is published, and the Mastodon instance openedtech.social opens.
June 2023
Open EdTech is incorporated as an international non-profit association in Belgium, after a general meeting attended by nearly fifty people. The association is now being wound up.
September 2023
Workshop at MoodleMoot Global 2023 with over 150 people, discussing the path forward for open educational technology in a world with AI assistants.
September 2024
Interview at MoodleMoot Africa on Open EdTech in the African context.
September 2026
A new direction: the learner-controlled Coach proposal, described on the plans page, and this site.

Earlier participants are not assumed to endorse every part of the current proposal.

Guiding principles

At that first meeting in 2019, the participants agreed a set of guiding principles for Open EdTech. They still guide the work today.

  1. Education is a basic human right, and Open EdTech can best enable equitable access to quality education for everyone on Earth.
  2. We strongly support open standards and interoperability.
  3. Control of education technology should be collectively shared.
  4. We want to empower educators and learners to improve our world.
  5. Education should drive technology, not the reverse.
  6. We encourage strategic alliances and networks for those around Open EdTech.
  7. Open EdTech should be the most well-designed, competitive and sustainable technology available.
  8. We embrace the best of open source practices.
  9. We want to build on what already exists, including standards and tools.
  10. Openness in EdTech should include transparency about sustainability models.
  11. We work closely with our diverse communities to define our goals and roadmaps.
  12. We understand and respect diversity when creating and recommending Open EdTech tools and resources.

Following these principles, the meeting identified six areas of the learning ecosystem that Open EdTech can improve: open pedagogy and collaborative learning; lifelong learning and recognition; learning analytics, research and AI; funding and policy; promoting and managing institutional change; and technical standards and interoperability.