We are taking some time in the weeks leading up to Open edX Con 2015 to share a bit about the speakers and what they are working on. Open edX Con 2015 is October 12-13th, at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA.
Edward Daciuk from ExtensionEngine will be presenting Open edX and Adaptive Learning Monday October 12th at 2:50 in Ballroom East.
Tell us bit about yourself.
I’m Edward Daciuk. I work as a Principal at ExtensionEngine. There, I manage client engagements and partnerships in the online education space. I have professional interests in next generation learning, product strategy, and innovation.
My personal interests include: music, science fiction, sarcasm, tennis, keeping up with technology trends, and industrial and digital design.
What inspired you to get involved with edtech?
I really would like to learn everything. But the time and expense involved is prohibitive. I’d like to see us leverage technology and standards and innovative learner experiences to make access to education broader, less expensive, and more entertaining.
What will you be presenting on at Open edX Con?
I’ll be talking about ExtensionEngine’s experience building adaptive learning on top of the Open edX platform.
How does working on the Open edX platform relate to your work?
Myself and ExtensionEngine are focused on helping to move education beyond the current model that has existed, largely unchanged, for a very long time. It’s time to update it. We believe that advances in digital content, technology, and emerging learning standards combined with skyrocketing education costs present an exciting opportunity where both the will and landscape exist to drastically improve how people learn.
Open edX is a perfect example of business and technology advances that are lowering the cost of producing education and changing the way education is distributed. Its open nature gives universities the confidence that they will not shoulder the burden and cost of producing online courses. They instead can take advantage of a large and growing community.
ExtensionEngine has been working on Open edX for a couple of years now. We primarily focus on unique learning experiences. We tend to build custom interfaces on top of the Open edX platform. We also manage the development of course content and ongoing management.
What excites you about the conference?
I’d be really interested in understanding the various experiments that are happening in online education around learner experiences, technology, and different business models.
Edited for grammar and content.
