Today more companies are using LMS to provide employee training and skills development because it can increase by 24% higher profit margins. Based on data from research.com, more than 40% of companies included in the Fortune Global 500 have used LMS. This number is expected to continue to grow. However, it must be followed by the companies’ understanding of the importance of choosing a proven LMS.

A proven LMS is an LMS that has good scalability. The application scalability is related to the application database that continues to grow and modifications to the back end. It is prominent so that the LMS remains stable for more users and provides them with a pleasant experience accessing every part of the LMS. Thus, e-learning will run more optimally so learners or trainees will not be bored with various LMS constraints that are difficult to access or unstable.

One of the best scalable LMS is Open edX. Open Edx has been used by world companies such as Google, Johnson & Johnson, McKinsey, and Microsoft Laas and some top universities such as Harvard, MIT, Arizona State University, Singapore University of Social Science, and the University of California San Diego. By 2022 the number of users is more than 55 million.

Open edX is an LMS platform for creating, managing, and delivering online courses or training. As one of the most popular LMS platforms, it is known to have high technological complexity due to supporting good application scalability. For this reason, this article will discuss Open edX from a technical perspective, especially regarding the underlying technology.

Open edX Stack Technology

Like building a house, we will need various building materials such as bricks, split stones, sand, etc. Likewise, in building a website, we need many types of underlying technologies as well. This collection of technologies is known as stack technology.

Stack technology is a group of technologies used by agencies or companies to build web or mobile applications. Usually, stack technology is a combination of several programming languages, libraries, patterns, frameworks, UI/UX solutions, servers, software, and other tools needed by developers.

Open edX also uses stack technology to be a qualified LMS to organize online learning without space and time limitations. Even Open edX is also known as the most stable LMS to be used by millions of users at once. This platform consists of several components that are interconnected and exchange data through various APIs. The entire Open edX platform is built in Python using the Django framework for web applications.

The basis for the whole technology platform is open edX containing all functionality to make, send, and manage courses or online learning. The platform is known as LMS and studio. The platform can also store learners’ data in MySQL tables. All data in the learning LMS is stored in MongoDB, a document-oriented data-based management system.

Here is the Open edX stack technology suite.

Stack technology consists of at least a front end and a back end. However, Open edX also uses additional technology so that the function of this online learning platform is more optimal. The front end is part of the web that interacts directly with the user so that the settings are related to a responsive and optimal web appearance. Meanwhile, the back end is the server side of a website so that the front end runs smoothly. Front-end and back-end are written in programming languages ​​like HTML, JavaScript, Python, etc.

Front-end

The front-end side of the Open edX stack technology is supported by Django which uses Mako (a Python-based template library) to generate front-end templates. The front end is written in the JavaScript programming language and some parts are in CoffeeScript. On the client side, the backbone framework is used. CSS is also used to complement the Sass and Bourbon frameworks.

Courses

All courses in Open edX consist of a module called XBlock. This allows writing new XBlocks that will extend existing course components.

Discussion forum

The stack technology in Open edX supports discussions between students or training

participants. This technology runs on an autonomous web service called independently deployed applications (IDA). In this service, IDA is called a comment. A similar comment service which includes an explicitly added notification process is also used to send notifications to students about topic updates of interest. This component is written in Ruby using the Sinatra framework.

Back-end

The Open-edX back-end relies on RabbitMQ and Celery. RabbitMQ is a queue broker. Meanwhile, Celery is a system for managing task queues. In simple terms, tasks will be put on a line and then Celery will fetch and then execute them. The task consists of an evaluation of the entire lesson or course, sending letters, making certificates, etc.

In addition, the stack technology of Open edX also includes a separate XQueue tool that is responsible for various learners’ or trainees’ performance assessment processes. For example, a learner or trainee sends assignments via LMS. This task will be automatically added to the XQueue. The XQueue tool will then evaluate the error with the external service and then send the response back via the LMS.

Search

The developers have implemented the Elastic Search tool which is a popular free search engine software. The use of this tool aims to provide a functional and convenient search facility within the LMS.

Additional technology

Below is a list of additional technologies integrated into the Open edX stack technology.

EASE (Enhanced AI Scoring Engine) is a repository tool with various functions based on machine learning. The goal is for the classification of textual content (such as essays) to be quicker and more convenient.

XServer is a tool that receives codes sent by learners or trainees from the LMS and runs these codes using a separate courseware assessor.

Codejail is a standalone library that helps run untrusted code in a secure environment using Python as the execution language but can also be adapted to other programming languages.

CS or Comment Service is a separate system that is implemented for different types of comments such as full comments, nested comments, and polls to work.

Conclusion

The stack technology in Open edX is the backbone of the entire LMS platform. This technology describes a set of tools with high specialization. But with this technological synergy, Open edX can help thousands of course owners, teachers, and facilitators to create and organize thousands of courses every day. Hence, Open edX can be a stable and scalable LMS platform.

In addition, the technology architecture allows you to modernize your LMS and apply ideas to enhance a fun learning experience. But of course, qualified IT skills are needed to work with the stack technology in Open edX.

Unfortunately, hiring IT experts will certainly add a high expenditure burden for institutions or companies. Even though these expenses can be minimized by utilizing the Open edX-based LMS creation service owned by Katalis.App.

Katalis.App has experience in building Open edX-based LMSs for companies and course institutions in the Asian region. With Katalis.App, agencies, or companies only need to prepare learning themes and content and then focus on business development. While all technical matters of technology are our part. All you need is simply to contact us here and our representative will contact you to discuss your project details.