As we wrap up another powerful Learning Impact conference, it’s natural to reflect on the past year—a year defined by momentum, shared purpose, and an unwavering commitment to putting people at the heart of everything we do.
My first day as CEO was at Learning Impact 2024, and when I returned this year, the difference was unmistakable. Learning Impact 2025 pulsed with energy, optimism, and bold new ideas. It’s clear we’ve entered a new era at 1EdTech.
In my opening address, I said
“If you’ve noticed a shift at 1EdTech, you’re not imagining it. It’s deliberate. Yes, we’re still deeply committed to our mission of making edtech work better for everyone through open standards.
But the way we do it is evolving. We’re leading with more:
- Energy
- Openness
- Collaboration
- And yes — more fun.”
We’re building an approachable, human, and joyful community. Innovation doesn’t have to feel like a checklist—it can feel like momentum, connection, and movement. This year’s progress proves what’s possible when our members and the broader community drive the work forward together.
Keeping Learners and Educators at the Center
Across plenary sessions, working groups, and hallway conversations, one message echoed again and again: we share a deep and collective commitment to the people who matter most—learners and educators.
As we advance technologically and structurally, we continue to ensure that our innovation in education and lifelong learning remains grounded in real, human needs.
Expanding a Culture of Collaboration
Over the past year, we’ve seen what can happen when the 1EdTech community unites across boundaries—across institutions, sectors, and continents. Our progress was shaped by collective energy, shared goals, and open partnerships:
- We launched the Women in Data in EdTech Network (WIDEN), a program designed to empower women in data roles through structured professional development, impactful networking, and meaningful mentorship opportunities. WIDEN reflects our broader commitment to inclusion and leadership development across the edtech space.
- We deepened our partnership with the Ed-Fi Alliance to better align and integrate our data standards for K–12 education. This collaboration allows districts and states to manage learner data more holistically and efficiently, strengthening support for educators and students.
- We are collaborating with the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee to align and integrate complementary elements of xAPI and Caliper Analytics®, enabling more consistent and effective learning data exchange. With the DXtera Institute, we are advancing standards that enhance administrative interoperability, support teaching and learning analytics for improved efficacy, and lay the groundwork for responsible AI integration across educational systems.
- In the next few weeks, we will make several exciting announcements about partnerships in the bridge between education and employment and into the future of work.
- We've joined forces with 12 other leading national organizations in higher education and workforce in the LER Accelerator coalition to empower campuses to design, develop, and scale systems that support more accessible, transparent, and learner-centered Learning and Employment Records and digital credentialing practices.
- We’re collaborating with six other leading edtech organizations—CAST, CoSN, Digital Promise, InnovateEDU, ISTE, and SETDA—as part of the EdTech Quality Collaborative to ease the burden on educators, schools, and district leaders by establishing a set of common quality indicators for edtech products and services and providing validations that products have met these indicators.
- The Learning Impact Labs Mini-Summit (formerly The Empirical Educator Project) brought together researchers and faculty focused on real-world teaching challenges. The event helped forge actionable partnerships across education sectors by spotlighting practical, data-driven proposals.
And we’re just getting started.
Scaling Global Impact
The strength of our collaborative community and relevance of open standards is also underscored by the significant traction 1EdTech’s open standards are gaining across international markets.
- International members are expanding their adoption of key 1EdTech standards, including Edu-API™, LTI®, OneRoster®, CASE®, QTI®, Open Badges, and CLR Standard®. This global momentum illustrates the relevance of open standards in creating equitable, scalable, and interoperable learning environments.
- In Europe, we now have a dedicated Executive Director and a European representative on the Consortium's Board of Directors. Furthermore, we have committed resources to engage in multiple interoperability initiatives through projects like EDEH, QualityLink, and EduXS. Going forward, we look forward to strengthening relationships across geographic Europe and contributing to interoperability efforts across standards between the 1EdTech ecosystem and the European Learning Model.
- In Latin America, we partnered with the Ibero-American Association of Edtechs (IAAE) to launch 1EdTech LATAM, raising awareness of and implementing 1EdTech’s open interoperability and digital credential standards in Latin American countries. The collaboration includes other founding partners, Instructure, POK—Proof of Knowledge, PowerSchool, and Territorium.
- We also see new opportunities around the globe as we reconsider the role of the 1EdTech Foundation, under the leadership of our new Executive Director. The work is just beginning, so stay tuned!
Fueling Innovation Through Open Standards
All of these efforts show the unmatched potential of open standards to reduce friction, enable flexibility, and accelerate innovation across the digital learning landscape.
To that end, we launched several new initiatives this year:
- The new Build Portal is a developer-focused hub of technical resources and self-service tools, including a diagnostic and certification suite. It’s never been easier for developers to build for 1EdTech standards from day one.
- Updates to the TrustEd Apps Management Suite, which provides certification and data privacy profiles of over 12,600 applications, now give institutions more control and customization. This makes procurement and product evaluation simpler, faster, and better aligned with local needs.
- The Uniform ID Framework has now been implemented across all certified products in the 1EdTech Product Directory. This is a significant leap forward in syncing data across platforms—reliably, securely, and at scale.
These aren’t just new features—they reflect our community’s ongoing commitment to making the edtech ecosystem more usable, trusted, and connected. With that same spirit, anyone can check the operational status of our services and subscribe to updates on our new status web page.
Looking Ahead: AI, Data, and the Future of Interoperability
While we've made tremendous progress, we are just at the beginning of a transformative moment in digital learning—especially when it comes to artificial intelligence and the data ecosystems that support it.
Over the past year, we’ve laid critical foundations for the responsible use of AI in education:
- Partnering with Georgia Tech on the AI-ALOE Project, we have developed a reference architecture for a data pipeline that leverages Edu-API, LTI, and Caliper to capture learner data from multiple, disparate agentic AI applications. These data inform and validate the positive impact on adult learners in online education.
- At Learning Impact, we presented a draft AI Data Context Standard that provides clarity, consistency, and governance for how AI tools access and interpret learning data across systems. The community resoundingly supported our proposal to launch a working group and accelerate the push to release the standard later this year.
- Real-time data bindings—already in pilot—lay the groundwork for real-time integrations, helping educators improve onboarding of students and resources, and access the insights they need, when they need them.
These are early but essential steps toward building an AI-integrated future grounded in openness, equity, and trust.
A Year of Changemakers—and a Call to Keep Going
What stood out most to me at Learning Impact 2025 wasn’t just the energy in the room—it was the shared leadership on display. This community is filled with changemakers: people stepping up to drive solutions, take risks, and tackle systemic challenges together.
One theme that resonated deeply was Conway’s Law: the systems we build mirror how we collaborate. To create more unified, equitable systems, we must organize our work to reflect those same values.
That’s exactly what this community is doing—every day.
The Road Ahead
The journey to achieve our vision of a global future where open, interoperable technology seamlessly amplifies the impact of digital learning is far from over, and with learners at the center, and collaboration as our foundation, we’re building something lasting.
We’re building it together.
Thank you for being part of an incredible year. Let’s keep the momentum going.
About the Author
Curtiss Barnes
Curtiss Barnes, CEO of 1EdTech, has more than 30 years of experience in the education industry, with expertise spanning enterprise systems, instructional solutions, and education technology. He has held leadership roles at universities, technology start-ups, large enterprises, and educational publishing companies. Curtiss holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Clark University.
