From Experiment to Enterprise�Open EdTech Case Studies
Dr Maren Deepwell, maren@reclaimhosting.com
OER26 | 22-23 June 2026 (Milton Keynes, UK)
Telling the story…
our Open EdTech Case Studies
Inspired by the conference theme “Open Practices and Pedagogical Innovation” this talk will showcase key points from several new Open EdTech case studies that show who and how institutions who are at the forefront of Open EdTech adoption develop, scale and deploy open source educational services.
Aligning value with values
For open educators and learning technologist, balancing the requirements of institutional IT and purchasing policies with the needs of educators and students presents an ongoing challenge. With cyber security, responsible use of AI and accessibility all increasingly important, is there any room left for open solutions and services alongside an institution's core digital estate?
Our aim is to offer practical insight into exactly how this is achieved and how we can align value for money when funding is scarce with the values of open education, sharing open practice, increasing equitable access to education and co-creation with students and educators.
Case Study: Center for Digital Scholarship
We are grateful to Cody Carvel, Digital Scholarship Technologist, at the Center for Digital Scholarship at Brown University Library for sharing this story of how to develop digital capabilities and their vision for what’s next.
In previous decades use of technology may have been pioneered in economics or mathematics, but today digital scholarship encompasses all disciplines.
Being inspired by what’s possible with digital tools and technologies today, prompts both faculty and students to seek the support of professionals like Cody, who help make it happen by translating academic needs into technical requirements and then implementing the resulting learning design.
Supporting a growing community with diverse needs
African Poetry Digital Portal
A long running project providing invaluable resources for the study of the history of African Poetry. This WordPress/Omeka mashup provides access to biographical information, artifacts, news, video recording, images and documents related to African poetry from antiquity to the present.
Inscription Research Tool
“The research tool aims to provide search access to “10,000 inscriptions, written primarily in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin. It provides information that is frequently not available in the extant literary texts. Recently, these inscriptions have been used to, for example, reconstruct [parts of] the ancient Roman road system.”
Experiments with AI
Experimenting with new technologies fosters creativity and scholarship, and easy access to a wider range of apps and tools is key, such as the development of an innovative new word similarity analysis tool.
Source: https://blog.reclaimhosting.com/open-infrastructure-and-digital-scholarship-at-brown-university/, Image: Screenshot of the African Poetry Digital Portal
“One of the primary objectives in digital scholarship projects is to help bring to life research findings in a way that engages a wider audience, using open source tools to create dynamic timelines, interactive graphs and visually compelling narratives. Creativity and new ideas sprout easily when there is such enthusiasm paired with technological possibilities.”
Lessons learnt
If you are looking to expand the use of digital technology for research and teaching across the Humanities and Social Sciences, here are some key points when it comes to infrastructure that supports innovation with faculty and students:
Case Study: A decade of
Domain of One's Own
We are grateful to Varshinee Krishnamurthy, global admin and Ekanatha Pai, who is new to the project as well as the current owner of the programme, Larry Dillard. All three are employees of Stanford University IT, and we appreciate their sharing this story of how to develop digital capabilities and their vision for what’s next.
Stanford University has a long track record in technological innovation and was one of the first to adopt the pioneering Domain of One’s Own program back in 2015.
This case study provides a unique insight into the impact of adopting Domain of One’s Own, how the program has developed and how it will continue to serve the needs of students and staff in future.
Quick explainer
Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) offers flexible, at-scale cPanel web hosting for institutions, educators, and students.
End users login quickly with their campus credentials and can be up and running with a domain of their choosing in a matter of seconds.
Domain of One’s Own includes access to over 100 open source applications like WordPress and Omeka, as well as key functions for managing a digital presence like DNS, Databases, and File/PHP Managers.
How the program has developed
Early adoption
To understand the current context we began by going back to where it all began: a very technically based community of staff and students using individually hosted websites since the early 90s. What started as an file management system, which offered a transient academic population the chance to host sites for classes, for research and to share work was widely adopted.
Current practice
Future direction
The Domain of One’s Own program serves a high and specific need of a growing academic community to create and disseminate information;
Regular and robust audits ensure that the program remains efficient and cost-effective as well as secure;
Long-term effective support provided by the team at Reclaim ensures that any issues that arise are resolved quickly and provides continuity for the admin team at Stanford.
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Case Study: SUNY Oneonta OpenLab
We are grateful to Ed Beck, Instructional Designer, Open and Online Learning Specialist, part of the Pedagogy, Innovation and Technology Support Team at SUNY Oneonta. Ed is also president of WPCampus, the professional organization for WordPress in Higher Ed.
This is the story of how a proof-of-concept experiment in open software became a scaled-up service that supports high-impact teaching and experiential learning for the faculty and students at Oneonta.
From the outset, the goal was to support a series of connected learning experiences over time, focused on experiential learning and capturing learning outcomes, which led Ed and the team to explore open source portfolio systems and eventually create the SUNY Oneonta OpenLab.
Institutional context
Quick explainer
“We started to consider how to collect and safely store this information across all these different opportunities and, importantly, to enable students to not only keep the portfolio throughout their time with us but also to take with them when they leave. Amongst the solutions we looked at was Commons In A Box OpenLab. We were drawn to OpenLab's flexible nature, that it could be used by multi-author organization and projects, or used to create individual portfolios. We liked how the set up future proofed our efforts."
Source: https://blog.reclaimhosting.com/case-study-suny-oneonta-openlab/, Screenshot of the SUNY ONEONTA OpenLab landing page
From experiment to scaled-up service
Stage 1:
Experimenting with
Commons In A Box OpenLab
Ed and the team evaluated OpenLab for portfolios because it's designed specifically to be used in education and has privacy control to help align with institutional policies, and could be linked to the institutional priority of experiential learning.
Stage 2:
From proof of concept to individual use cases
“We have so many projects that need to be on the web, have a website, a web tool. We have to have a solution with which we can quickly spin up and enable a site for projects, in an already supported environment and in which, when needed, educators can get help.”
Stage 3:
Moving to enterprise service
In the case of this project, the number of sites was quickly multiplying. As the number of individual use cases moved into the hundreds, the team identified a clear need to scale up the service as the logistical next step and thus the OpenLab was scaled up into an Enterprise Service.