Apereo Foundation Partners with University of Minnesota to Advance Sustainable Open Source Ecosystem for Interactive Mathematics Education
Collaboration supported by the National Science Foundation’s POSE Program will strengthen governance, community development, and long-term sustainability of the Doenet platform.
Princeton, NJ — [August 26, 2025] — The Apereo Foundation today announced its participation as a key partner in the Distributed Open Education Network (Doenet) project, funded under the National Science Foundation’s Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) Phase I program. Doenet is a collaborative project involving the University of Minnesota, The Ohio State University, and Cornell University. The initiative aims to establish a robust, sustainable, and accessible open source ecosystem for richly interactive mathematics curricula.
Doenet is an open, data-driven educational technology platform that enables the creation, sharing, and classroom use of highly interactive mathematics activities through its unique, platform-agnostic markup language, DoenetML. With a growing community of educators and thousands of shared activities, Doenet is poised for a critical transition from early-stage development to long-term sustainability. Partnering on Doenet reflects Apereo’s mission to help academic open source projects mature into enduring, community-driven solutions that serve institutions and learners worldwide.
Apereo’s Role
As part of the POSE grant, Apereo will provide comprehensive Open Source Ecosystem Readiness Assessment and Strategy Advising to help Doenet’s leadership strengthen the project across five sustainability domains: legal, community, governance, technical infrastructure, and non-technical infrastructure. Apereo’s work will include:
- Governance Development: Advising on open source governance models, decision-making structures, and codes of conduct.
- Community Engagement: Supporting strategies for awareness, onboarding, adoption, engagement, and measurement of community health.
- Sustainability Planning: Guiding Doenet in assessing funding models, fiscal practices, and potential revenue-generating services.
- Technical & Operational Best Practices: Enhancing development, release management, and documentation workflows to align with industry standards.
- Final Sustainability Model: Collaborating on a comprehensive plan that aligns organizational structure, stakeholder goals, and community growth objectives.
“Our partnership with Doenet embodies Apereo’s mission to sustain and grow open source innovation in education,” said Patrick Masson, Executive Director of the Apereo Foundation. “Together, we’re ensuring that high-quality, accessible mathematics education will remain open and available for years to come.”
Building for Long-Term Impact
In addition to ecosystem advising, the partnership will support Doenet’s Intermediate Algebra Sustainability Case Study, exploring turnkey, open source curricular solutions that integrate seamlessly into classrooms while remaining freely available. These efforts aim to increase adoption across secondary and post-secondary education, including reaching underserved populations.
Duane Nykamp, Director of Strategic Initiatives, Mathematics Center for Educational Programs, and Associate Professor, School of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota, as well as the founder of Doenet, shared these sentiments after the NSF grant was announced:
“We're excited to partner with Apereo to develop plans for Doenet's long-term sustainability. Their expertise, coupled with support from NSF, will help us build the infrastructure and community necessary to grow the instructor-driven platform. We look forward to enabling the creation of freely available interactive activities for any classroom.”
About Apereo Foundation
The Apereo Foundation is a global, non-profit organization dedicated to advancing open source software in higher education. Through community development, project incubation, and sustainability services—including Foundation-as-a-Service and OSPO-as-a-Service—Apereo supports institutions, projects, and researchers in creating innovative, collaborative, and impactful solutions. https://www.apereo.org/
About Doenet
The Distributed Open Education Network (Doenet) is an open-source, data-driven educational technology platform enabling instructors to author, share, and deliver richly interactive mathematics activities. Doenet’s open, platform-agnostic approach ensures accessibility, longevity, and adaptability across a wide range of educational contexts. https://www.doenet.org/
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant. No. 2449139. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Media Contact:
Michelle Hall
Communications Manager | Apereo Foundation
michelle.hall@apereo.org