Boeing Open edX Course Converter and Data Visualization

The goal of our project was to create an easy way to convert Canvas course content to the Open edX online educational platform and add more information about the course’s progress for the instructor. This goal was given to us by Boeing who wanted to analyze the capabilities of Open edX as a free open-sourced alternative to other online educational platforms. Our project seeks to fulfill the goal by creating additional functionality into an Open edX course. The added functionality includes a course converter that allows an exported Canvas course file to import into an Open edX course with the minimum effort needed from a user. The need for a course converter is due to the differing course structures and using a converter is much faster than adding content manually. A data visualization application was also added to give more insightful information to instructors about the course’s students. The data visualization application would provide graphs and charts for the students’ total session time on a course, general geographical location, assignment submission times and other useful information. This information is not available with a normal Open edX course. The functionalities were integrated into the Open edX course structure to allow for ease of use. Additionally, we were able to add these functionalities to a cloud-based course that could be accessed by anyone. The project followed an agile development process with frequent meetings and concise documentation.