The STACK Professionals Network: Building a Community of Practice for Sustainable Implementation

Santiago Borio, Konstantina Zerva, Juma Zevick and Georg Osang

Introduction

From its conception, STACK was designed with a clear purpose: to enable and empower educators to take ownership of their assessment, saving time while creating high-quality tasks that support learning activities. The main aim of STACK was to place powerful digital assessment tools directly in the hands of teachers and lecturers, so that technology could serve pedagogy.

Over time, however, the sophistication that makes STACK valuable also revealed a challenge. Authoring effective questions requires both mathematical and technical expertise, as well as significant time investment, making it difficult for many lecturers to adopt STACK as an online assessment tool. Despite this, STACK usage continued to grow by motivated educators who put effort into creating high-quality questions and often sharing materials.

As the STACK project grew, adoption increased steadily, and today more than 2,000 institutions worldwide use it to deliver rigorous and meaningful assessments in mathematics and other STEM disciplines. Many of these institutions have even created dedicated professional roles focused primarily on STACK authoring, management, and integration. When this “professionalisation” of STACK usage began to spread, it became clear that these practitioners needed a space to connect, exchange knowledge, and coordinate their efforts. The natural next step was to create a network that would recognise and support the professionals working on STACK implementations around the world.

The STACK Professionals Network was established in late 2022 to meet that need. It provides a regular forum where STACK professionals, technologists, and educators can exchange ideas, share practice, address challenges, and influence the wider development of STACK. The importance of the network has been recognised by the wider STACK community and has strengthened not only individual implementations but also the long-term sustainability of the STACK project itself.

Origins and Motivation

The idea for the network became more apparent in 2022. By that time STACK had reached a level of adoption, partly influenced by the need for online assessment during the Covid pandemic, that made collaboration not just desirable but essential.

Institutions across continents were developing their own workflows, question banks, and support models, often solving the same problems independently. Discussions within the STACK community identified a gap between the technical development of the software and the practical challenges of using it within institutions. There was a clear need for a space where professionals responsible for implementation, training of colleagues, and managing question repositories could learn from one another and coordinate their contributions.

The first meeting, held in December 2022, marked the beginning of this discussion. Participants soon realised that although their institutional contexts were different, they faced similar challenges: how to maintain question quality, how to train staff efficiently, and how to advocate for institutional support. The meeting confirmed a shared appetite for ongoing collaboration, and the network began to take shape.

By mid-2023, regular meetings were established, drawing participants from several institutions, mainly, though not exclusively, from European and UK universities. The group positioned itself as a bridge between practitioners and developers, ensuring that institutional needs and experiences could feed directly into the ongoing development of STACK.

Structure and Regular Activity

The Professionals Network now meets approximately every two months. Each meeting has the following structure:

  • Short institutional updates
  • A focused topic for discussion
  • Open sharing of resources and ideas

Topics have ranged from training and professional development to governance, hosting, and interoperability, evidencing the many aspects involved in using STACK. The discussions are informal yet purposeful, often resulting in practical outcomes such as shared documentation, example workflows, and coordinated communication with the core development team.

All meetings are openly documented on the STACK website, creating a growing archive of institutional knowledge. These reports not only ensure transparency but also serve as a collective learning resource, showing how institutions around the world adapt STACK to their specific needs.

A defining characteristic of the network is its inclusivity. Participants include both long-established users and those at the very start of their journey. This mix creates a rich environment for mentoring and cross-pollination. This is enhanced by the annual face-to-face Professionals Network meeting held as part of the yearly STACK conference, adding to the sense of community and collaborative working ethos.

Achievements and Impact

In just a few years, the Professionals Network has had a clear impact on both the scale and quality of STACK implementation. Accelerating adoption: By sharing technical and pedagogical experience, the network has shortened the learning curve for new institutions. Case studies discussed during meetings have helped universities and colleges design smoother onboarding processes and avoid common pitfalls.

  • Improving sustainability: The exchange of best practices in hosting, question management, and training has strengthened institutional resilience, ensuring that STACK implementations are not reliant on a single champion but embedded within wider teams.

  • Influencing development: Feedback from network meetings has directly informed the STACK roadmap, particularly around institutional support, integration with learning platforms, and enhancements to documentation. The network’s collective voice helps ensure that improvements address concrete, well defined needs.

  • Building capacity: Regular discussions around staff roles, recognition, and workload distribution have elevated the visibility of STACK professionals within their institutions, highlighting their contribution to educational innovation.

Some developments of the STACK project that emerged from Network discussions over the last year and now have been implemented include:

  • Saving a ‘broken’ STACK question: it is now possible to save a question that contains errors in its code for editing at a later stage.
  • The text-based PRT: an option to see the PRT in a text-based format and copy it into the feedback nodes of a different question, or into a second PRT within the same question, is currently being developed and an initial implementation has been drafted.
  • The “sticky footer”: now it is possible to see the “Save” and “Preview” button pinned at the bottom of the viewport in the browser so it’s not necessary to scroll all the way down the page.
  • Extend the STACK library: the Network provided feedback, helped with the organisation, reported issues, and currently members are working on new libraries, for example, a set of questions for Real Analysis.
  • Improved documentation: members of the network have updated the offline STACK guide documentation. STACK API: it is now possible to embed STACK questions in online resources such as online textbooks, notes, and websites.

These achievements go beyond logistics. The network has cultivated a culture of openness and shared ownership, where successes are celebrated and challenges analysed constructively. This collaborative spirit is one of STACK’s defining strengths, and the network gives it structure and continuity.

A Catalyst for Broader STACK Development

Within the wider STACK community, the Professionals Network occupies a distinctive position. It complements both the Developers Team, which drives technical innovation, the Researchers Network, which focuses on educational research on STACK impact, as well as the regular STACK users, who supports everyday teaching practice. Its focus on institutional implementation makes it a vital connector between these two worlds.

As adoption expands globally, the network’s contribution has become increasingly strategic. Many large-scale or cross-institutional implementations, for example, the collaboration that emerged between Durham University, The University of Edinburgh, and IDEMS International on proof comprehension questions, leading to the Parsons Block development, have drawn on the shared experience and guidance circulating through the Professionals Network.

In doing so, the network plays a quiet role in maintaining the integrity and longevity of the STACK project. It ensures that innovation is not fragmented, but collective, considering needs from varied contexts and users.

Looking Ahead

The Professionals Network continues to develop in response to the needs of its members. Recent meetings in 2025 have focused on new areas of collaboration, such as forming regional clusters, creating shared professional development resources, and supporting new adopters through mentoring. There is increasing recognition that, as STACK expands, the work of the professionals who implement and support it is as important as the ongoing technical development of the software.

Looking ahead, the network aims to strengthen links with research and evaluation activities, helping institutions demonstrate the educational impact of STACK. It also plans to contribute to shared resources, including Open Question Banks and the STACK Library. Throughout these initiatives, the network remains guided by the same core principles of shared ownership, professional collaboration, and open exchange in support of effective learning.

The Network, from its inception, became part of the official STACK project, gaining its place as a key pillar of STACK development and implementation. Many Network members have clear support from their universities, which has developed a range of career paths through institutional recognition, for example, individuals initiating and contributing to research projects through grant funding.

Conclusion

The STACK Professionals Network demonstrates what makes the STACK project unique: it is an open-source tool supported by an active community of educators, professionals, and a strong Development Team. By connecting those who implement and expand STACK in different contexts, the network turns individual efforts into shared expertise. STACK’s success is measured not only in software or question banks, but also in the growing global community of professionals who make meaningful, formative assessment possible for thousands of learners.

In an ecosystem built on openness, the Professionals Network promotes real collaboration, proving that the sustainability of educational technology depends as much on people as on software.