The Open edX Project and Western Governors University

The Open edX Project and Western Governors University To Accelerate Online Learning Innovation

Cambridge, MA – February 18, 2025 — Today Open edX, a leading open-source platform and global community, announced Western Governors University (WGU) is the first organization to join the project as a Mission Aligned Organization.

In this role, WGU, the largest nonprofit university in the U.S., will contribute guidance from senior WGU leaders and provide a dedicated team of 10 engineers and product management services to accelerate advances in online learning.

Mission Aligned Organization (MAO) is a new category of institution-level partnerships dedicated to accelerating development of the Open edX platform. The platform is stewarded by Axim Collaborative and supported by a strong global open-source community that includes developers with deep expertise who service course-offering websites around the world that use the Open edX platform.

The Open edX project expects to welcome more MAOs as institutional interest in shaping the platform direction as it grows. 

“Open edX is a highly scalable, open-source technology platform that has enabled innovation and fast technology implementation that is crucial for our students’ learning outcomes,” said David Morales, senior vice president for technology and CIO at WGU. “We are committed to supporting WGU students with high-quality learning experiences and are also pleased to support thousands of other organizations embracing competency-based learning, student-first approaches and solutions for documenting skills and credentials through our contributions to the Open edX project.”

Morales will join the Technical Oversight Committee to provide strategy support, including platform architecture design, tech stack and design templates. Immediate priorities for the WGU engineers on the project include building a roles and permissions framework, creating better facilities for extracting data, setting up libraries of atomic learning units and improving the upgrade experience for developers.

With WGU’s participation, the Open edX project expects to deepen its ability to support competency-based education, which measures skills and learning rather than time spent in a classroom. Students earn competency units (the equivalent of credit hours) when they demonstrate skill proficiency through completing performance and objective assessments. As a result, students progress through courses as they prove mastery of the material, rather than advancing only when a semester or term ends.

The Open edX platform is a leader in learning science and instructional design and pioneered massive open online courses (MOOCs). Since its founding in 2012, the platform has evolved into one of the top learning solutions worldwide, supporting high quality, high-scale online learning in higher education, enterprise, and government organizations. Supported by developers, researchers and users, the Open edX platform empowers anyone to design or enhance courses and programs.

WGU adopted the Open edX platform in 2022 to deliver course content to its students. As part of this new collaboration, WGU will help develop additional features and capabilities of the platform, driving innovation that benefits the Open edX ecosystem.

“We are thrilled to be collaborating with Western Governors University. WGU shares our commitment to opening educational pathways to better opportunities for all students,” said Edward Zarecor, vice president of engineering for the Open edX platform, Axim Collaborative. “WGU’s contributions will help extend the Open edX platform to better support competency-based learning pathways, mastery learning and microcredentials. Together we strive to create real economic mobility for learners through affordable offerings. We can help millions more learners by openly sharing our expertise and software, fostering a vibrant ecosystem where everyone can thrive.”

“We are delighted to see mission driven organizations come together to accelerate innovation around high impact solutions. WGU’s significant contribution will help all organizations leveraging the platform and continue to grow the Open edX ecosystem of contributors,” said Ferdi Alimadhi, chief technology officer, Open Learning, MIT and member of the Technical Oversight Committee.To learn more about WGU’s use of the Open edX platform and innovations to support competency-based learning on the platform, join WGU and the Open edX community webinar on March 18, 2025, at 1 p.m. ET. Register here to learn more.

About WGU

Western Governors University, the nation’s leading nonprofit, online university, is transforming higher education to be more student-centric, affordable, accessible to all and relevant to the workforce. Established in 1997 by 19 visionary U.S. governors, WGU creates life-changing pathways to opportunity for those underserved by traditional institutions — working adults, historically underrepresented communities and a diverse, growing number of learners looking for a flexible, online model that better suits their life circumstances. WGU’s competency-based education model allows students to demonstrate mastery as they progress through programs at their own pace. Learn more at wgu.edu.

About the Open edX Project

The Open edX platform is an open-source learning management system that is used across the globe to teach and learn online. The Open edX platform powers more than 50,000 courses and supports more than 55 million learners. It has been deployed to support everything from single classrooms to university-wide education, to government-sponsored nation-wide learning initiatives. The Open edX project and its community pursue innovative approaches to learning and pedagogy, promote the adoption of best practices across the education continuum, and share the vision that everyone, everywhere should have access to high-quality education.

About Axim Collaborative

Axim Collaborative seeks to broaden access and deepen impact for all learners by making education more accessible, relevant, and effective in support of strong student outcomes. Axim uses catalytic funding to foster cross-cutting partnerships and scale digital innovations to strengthen pathways to better opportunities for learners. These innovations engage students in their course of study, enable them to persist through their programs and prepare them to excel in their careers. Axim is a non-profit, co-founded by Harvard and MIT and is the successor to edX, the pioneering online learning platform that launched in 2012.