Open Data Infrastructure: The Next Layer of the EdTech Ecosystem

Higher education depends on complex edtech stacks built on proprietary, opaque data models—resulting in fragile integrations, fragmented learner data, and high switching costs. These constraints slow innovation for institutions and vendors alike. This panel explores how a public-good common data model can serve as shared infrastructure for student success: an open, evolving standard that makes learner data more accessible across systems and within institutions. Drawing on recent lessons from integrating SIS and LMS data into our common data model, we’ll highlight the technical and governance patterns that make openness work at scale, including versioned domains, backward compatibility, modular connectors, automated validation, and community-driven iteration. Beyond interoperability, we’ll focus on the strategic upside. Shared data models reduce lock-in, lower integration costs, and accelerate adoption—allowing institutions to choose tools based on outcomes rather than technical constraints, and enabling vendors to bring products to market faster. We’ll introduce an emerging open-source ecosystem of schemas, mappings, and dashboards, and close with concrete pathways for collaboration to grow a common data model to support student success as a public good benefiting the sector.