Western Governors University Joins Open edX as a Mission-Aligned Organization

• By Rhea Kelly
• 03/18/25

Western Governors University is the first organization to join the Open edX project as a "mission-aligned organization" (MAO), a new category of institution-level partnership supporting development of the Open edX open source online learning platform. In its role as a MAO, WGU will contribute guidance from senior leaders and provide a team of 10 engineers as well as product management services to help accelerate advances in the platform, Open edX explained in a news announcement.

In collaboration with the global open source community and project steward Axim Collaborative, WGU will help develop additional features and capabilities of Open edX, including 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. In particular, Open edX hopes to draw on WGU's expertise to better support the needs of competency-based education.

"We are thrilled to be collaborating with Western Governors University. WGU shares our commitment to opening educational pathways to better opportunities for all students," commented Edward Zarecor, vice president of engineering for the Open edX platform, Axim Collaborative, in a statement. "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."

"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, who is joining Open edX's Technical Oversight Committee to provide strategy support, including platform architecture design, tech stack, and design templates. "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."

The Open edX project plans to add more MAOs as interest grows in shaping the platform's direction.

"We are delighted to see mission driven organizations come together to accelerate innovation around high impact solutions," said Ferdi Alimadhi, chief technology officer for Open Learning at MIT and member of the Technical Oversight Committee. "WGU's significant contribution will help all organizations leveraging the platform and continue to grow the Open edX ecosystem of contributors."