Contractor firm: EPWERY

I’ve started working at 2U as a contractor back in 2020 circa the start of the pandemic. It was a huge opportunity for me that lasted 5 years.

In all those years I’ve been part of several teams, I’ve started with the Academic Product team, developing and supporting tools like Atrio and its own internal design system Atrio UI.

Atrio team

Atrio is a set of 2U learning tools for Universities. I’ve worked in several closed-source projects:

• Academic Product: This is the backend of Atrio’s content manager.

Stack: Ruby / Ruby on Rails

• Dotlearn UI: This is the design system monorepo used by 2U which contains most of the frontend components that are used to show course content, also known as the “Player”.

Stack: ReactJS + Typescript

• Atrio UI: This is a React design system intended to contain simple components to be used across all 2U tools, similar to what the Paragon Design System is to edX Platform.

Stack: ReactJS

• CritiqueIt: Tool that allowed leaving notes in media for peer review.

Stack: ExpressJS (Backend), AngularJS (Frontend)

• Others: Several other minor interventions in projects like an analytics manager among others.

Leap team

Some time later, I’ve switched to a team and worked on a project called Leap, which was a tool that allowed to add exams to different LMS platforms, allowing universities to manage their course contents in LMS like Instructure’s Canvas, LearningMate’s Frost or Moodle. The tool allowed to add exams to the LMS by connecting through 1EdTech’s Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) specifications and have the data ready on Atrio, which was 2U’s learning platform.

And I say “was” since in November 2021, 2U acquired edX due to the potential of acquiring substantially all assets of edX, a world-leading online learning platform and education marketplace.

Here comes edX

2U’s acquisition of edX caused a large reorganization on the company, redirecting its efforts to focus their internal resources to integrate the edX platform into their own systems. This lead me to the last team I worked a year on called Cosmonauts.

Cosmonauts team

This was a former edX team with years of experience that I was so lucky to becoming a part of. The best team and the best manager I’ve ever worked with.

I will always have a special place in my heart for #this team. Very professional people, focused on the work but also caring and open to share time and effort on anyone in need. It was really easy to work with, rely on, and make the best out of every situation.

I’ve worked in several projects for edX and Open edX. Most of them are open source, so I can share some PR information for each of them:

edX

• AI Spot / AI Aside: Generative AI service that uses OpenAI to summarize media ( text, video, etc.). This allowed students to hit a button and get a summary on the current course content.

Stack: Python + Django (Backend) and ReactJS (Frontend). - [See PRs]

• Learning Assistant: Backend for an AI chat tool that uses OpenAI that allows students to ask questions in the scope of a course.

Stack: Python + Django. - [See PRs]

• Frontend Lib Learning Assistant: Frontend side of the Learning Assistant.

Stack: ReactJS. - [See PRs]

Open edX

• Frontend App Learning: Frontend for the Open edX Platform.

Stack: ReactJS + Typescript. - [See PRs]

• edX Platform: The Open edX Platform is a service-oriented platform for authoring and delivering online learning at any scale. The platform is written in Python and JavaScript and makes extensive use of the Django framework. At the highest level, the platform is composed of a monolith, some independently deployable applications (IDAs), and micro-frontends (MFEs) based on the ReactJS.

Stack: Python + Javascript. - [See PRs]

• Frontend Lib Special Exams: This is a react library responsible for extending learning app with special exams functionality, e.g. proctored/timed exams.

Stack: ReactJS. - [See PRs]

Offboarding

The reasons for my leave (as I was told) was not due to my performance, but to a corporate decision to reduce expenses. 2U’s deal to aquire edX didn’t go as planned, and after several structural changes that involved layoff waves this time it was my turn, among several other.

I’m grateful with the time I’ve worked in the company. It made me grow as a professional and I’ve met wonderful people in the way.

Referrals

Some team members kindly agreed on letting me show their references so they can provide further background or backup my story.

• Michael Roytman ([email protected]) - Sr Software Engineer I
• Simon Chen (ex 2U/edX) - Director, Software Engineering
• Varsha Menon (ex 2U/edX) - Sr Software Engineer I
• Alison Langston (ex 2U/edX) - Sr Software Engineer I