OEGlobal 2026: Full Schedule

All sessions are available online except round tables, special activities, and workshops.

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8:45am EDT

Welcome to OEGlobal 2026 Conference

Wednesday October 7, 2026 8:45am - 9:00am EDT

Daily Welcome
Start the day with a brief conference welcome featuring important announcements, highlights, and an overview of the day's program.

Wednesday October 7, 2026 8:45am - 9:00am EDT
1 Salon MIT MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

General

Speaker Modality In-person

9:00am EDT

Keynote 1

Wednesday October 7, 2026 9:00am - 10:00am EDT

1 Salon MIT

Plenary Session
Conference-wide plenary featuring distinguished speakers and timely conversations on the future of open education. Speaker details will be announced soon.

Wednesday October 7, 2026 9:00am - 10:00am EDT
1 Salon MIT MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Plenary

Speaker Modality In-person

10:30am EDT

Keynote 2

Wednesday October 7, 2026 10:30am - 11:35am EDT

1 Salon MIT

Plenary Session
Conference-wide plenary featuring distinguished speakers and timely conversations on the future of open education. Speaker details will be announced soon.

Wednesday October 7, 2026 10:30am - 11:35am EDT
1 Salon MIT MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Plenary

Speaker Modality In-person

11:50am EDT

Creatón STEM+: A Methodological Model for Teacher-Led, Territory-Based OER Co-Creation in Latin America

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT

6 DR4

ID: 33734

Across open education initiatives, a persistent challenge remains: while access to Open Educational Resources (OER) has expanded, there is still a lack of contextualized, culturally relevant content, particularly in basic education contexts. At the same time, teachers are often positioned as users or adapters of resources rather than as authors of open knowledge.The Creatón STEM+ methodological model addresses this gap by providing a structured Open Educational Practice that enables teachers to collaboratively design, prototype and publish OER grounded in local realities. Developed and implemented across Colombia, Chile and Uruguay, the model responds to the need for cross-regional approaches to open education that are rooted in the Global South and in school-level educational contexts. Its implementation across these contexts enabled the model to be tested and analysed in diverse educational settings.The model integrates three key components: (1) a preparatory phase focused on principles of open education, inclusion, the STEM+ educational approach and the ethical use of technologies in OER creation; (2) an intensive co-creation Creatón based on a pedagogically adapted Design Thinking process; and (3) a post-Creatón phase that supports validation, refinement and publication of OER. Central to the model is the positioning of teachers as creators of situated pedagogical knowledge, working collaboratively on real socio-educational challenges from their territories.Findings from the analysis of the implementation process reveal key dimensions that shape the functioning of the model. The analysis highlights the centrality of collaborative work, pedagogical mediation and situated reflection in co-creation processes, as well as the need to structure learning beyond the intensive co-creation phase. At the same time, results show shifts in teachers’ understanding of STEM+, inclusion and open education, together with a significant increase in the perceived legitimacy of OER as a professional practice. Taken together, these findings suggest that the Creatón STEM+ methodological model not only has the potential to support the production of contextually relevant OER, but also contributes to repositioning open educational practices within teachers’ professional identity and everyday pedagogical work.This presentation will examine the methodological architecture of the Creatón STEM+ model, its core pedagogical principles and its implementation across diverse educational contexts in Latin America. It will also discuss how cross-regional collaboration can strengthen the development of contextualized open content and contribute to more equitable and sustainable open education ecosystems.The Creatón model offers a transferable framework for moving open education beyond access toward collective, teacher-led knowledge production in basic education, particularly in contexts where contextual relevance, inclusion and teacher agency are critical

Speakers

Nina Ibaceta Guerra

Researcher & Project Coordinator, CIDSTEM Institute at Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

Nina Ibaceta Guerra is a biologist and science educator with a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Chile. She is a researcher and project coordinator at the Center for Research in Science Education and STEM Education (CIDSTEM) at the Pontificia Universidad... Read More →

Anna Vater

Senior Project Manager, Siemens Stiftung

Anna Vater holds a B.A. in International Cultural and Business Studies from the University of Passau and an M.A. in Intercultural Cooperation and Communication from Munich University of Applied Sciences. She works as a Senior Project Manager at Siemens Stiftung, focusing on international... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT
6 DR4 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Catalyzing Human Connection Creativity and Curiosity to Thrive

11:50am EDT

Empowering People with Disabilities About Open Educational Resources- Bridging the Educational Gaps with Inclusive, Accessible and Innovative Practices

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT

2 Room M

ID: 30909

An estimated 1.3 billion people in the world experience some form of disability (WHO 2023). People with disabilities in many parts of the world face considerable institutional and attitudinal barriers to access education, health care, and employment, which means they are at a higher risk of poverty, inequalities, and discrimination (Asian Development Bank 2022; Department for International Development 2000; 2022; United Nations 2018; 2024; WHO, 2022; 2023). Education is a fundamental right for everyone, but individuals with disabilities face significant challenges in accessing education. The crushing reality of higher expenses of learning resources, lack of availability of inclusive and accessible resources, financial barriers, educational inequality and discrimination, and above all, limited networking opportunities deters individuals with disabilities from becoming active contributors of knowledge. The development of Open Educational Resources (OER) accelerates innovation, but not necessarily for individuals with disabilities. The available open platforms and resources are scarce and do not meet the academic needs of individuals with diverse disabilities. Furthermore, it is assumed that individuals with disabilities lack participation in developing academic and non-academic open resources due to a lack of OER awareness and limited collaborative opportunities with individuals without disabilities. Previous studies are unavailable that highlight the academic and technological challenges faced by individuals with and without disabilities and how OER can support and enhance their creativity. As a neurodivergent open education expert, I hold that unless we create opportunities for individuals with and without disabilities to collaborate, true inclusion, innovation, and equitable knowledge creation will remain unattainable.This case study on empowerment and collaboration among people with and without disabilities aims to highlight their educational and technological challenges, provide them with online training on OER, and, as an outcome, develop a collective book on OER. A total of 10 individuals with neurodivergent, sensory, and physical disabilities, mainly from Asia and Europe, were selected. These participants were either working or studying at the university level. Another group of participants included 10 professors and academics. All participants were selected via the Global Forum for Teacher Educators—a virtual forum of teachers, educators, and individuals from over 75 countries. Initially, a form was circulated and individuals who showed interest were contacted. The project started in February 2025 and ended in January 2026. In the first phase, online panel discussions were organized to identify the educational and technological challenges faced by individuals with and without disabilities. In the next phase, eight hours of accessible synchronous and asynchronous training on OER were offered, incorporating hands-on collaborative activities. As a final output, interested participants wrote chapters on diverse topics, which were then published as OER in accessible formats. Collaboration in the project was ensured through inclusive team formation, joint writing activities, peer feedback, shared online platforms, and continuous dialogue between participants with and without disabilities, enabling meaningful co-creation of knowledge. At the end of the project, a focus group discussion was organized, during which participants highlighted that OER had enhanced their creativity and enabled them to share their ideas and viewpoints with a global audience. It helped develop understanding, empathy, creativity, and awareness of each other's learning needs. It also encouraged them to continue their creative work beyond the book project by using and producing OER on topics of their interest with others. This project highlights the significance of empowering people with and without disabilities about OER and promoting inclusive knowledge creation through collaboration and shared learning. By catalyzing human connection and creativity, it demonstrates how accessible open education initiatives can bring diverse voices together to co-create knowledge and inspire innovative ideas that benefit global learning communities.

Speakers

Munir Moosa Sewani

Assistant Professor of Education and Open Education Trainer, Department of Education, Sindh Madressatul Islam University

Dr. Munir is a neurodivergent teacher, independent researcher, open education expert, disability advocate, and educational theorist. He holds a PhD in Education and currently works as an Assistant Professor of Education. He is also the volunteer Founder and Director of the Global... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Catalyzing Human Connection Creativity and Curiosity to Thrive

11:50am EDT

Procedural Planning Decision-Making in Open Education Practices

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT

4 Room T

ID: 31121

Open Educational Resources (OER) have gained widespread recognition as a strategy to reduce the financial burden of learning materials and expand access to education. Over the past decade, institutions around the world have increasingly adopted open resources to improve affordability and remove barriers to learning. As the open education movement continues to evolve, the conversation is shifting beyond the adoption of OER toward the broader implementation of Open Education Practices (OEP). While the benefits of OER are well documented—particularly in relation to cost savings and student access—less attention has been given to the institutional planning processes and leadership decisions that make these initiatives sustainable over time.This session examines how procedural planning and institutional decision-making shape the development and growth of open education initiatives. Rather than focusing solely on outcomes such as cost savings or adoption rates, the presentation highlights the strategic planning frameworks, collaborative partnerships, and implementation strategies that support long-term OEP adoption. Institutional leaders, librarians, instructional designers, and faculty members often play interconnected roles in advancing open initiatives, and their collaboration is essential to building sustainable ecosystems that support open teaching and learning.Using the experience of Kean University as a case study, this session will illustrate how institutional leadership, libraries, faculty partners, and student success teams worked together to expand open education initiatives across the institution. In 2019, only seven course sections used materials that did not require students to purchase textbooks. By Fall 2024, approximately 33% of course sections no longer required students to purchase textbooks. This significant growth was the result of intentional planning, cross-campus collaboration, faculty development programs, and the creation of institutional infrastructure such as repository systems and technological platforms that support open scholarship and knowledge sharing.The session will also discuss key implementation considerations that institutions must address when expanding OEP. These include building faculty capacity through professional development, strengthening copyright and licensing literacy, and establishing policies that address student consent and privacy when learner-generated content is shared publicly. Participants will gain practical insights into how institutions can align open education initiatives with broader strategic priorities such as affordability, student success, equity, and academic innovation.Through discussion and reflection, attendees will explore how intentional planning, institutional leadership, and collaborative partnerships can support the long-term sustainability and impact of Open Education Practices.

Speakers

Muhammad Hassan

Associate Vice President and Chief Librarian, Kean University

Dr. Muhammad Hassan is Associate Vice President and Chief Librarian at Kean University, where he leads the Nancy Thompson Learning Commons. A scholar-practitioner in educational leadership, his work centers on advancing equity, academic excellence, and social mobility through integrated... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Innovating Open Content to Democratize Knowledge

11:50am EDT

You Opened the Knowledge. The Institution Didn’t Open with It

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT

5 DR3

ID: 33478

The open education movement has pulled off something remarkable. Over the past two decades, practitioners, advocates, and policymakers have steadily chipped away at barriers to knowledge. Open courseware, open textbooks, open pedagogy, and flexible licensing have made high quality learning materials available at a scale that would have been hard to imagine a generation ago. The supply side question, how do we make knowledge available, has largely been answered.The demand side has not.Across education systems, institutions that now have access to these resources are still producing the same outcomes they were before. The materials changed. The institutions did not. In the United States, the federal government poured $190 billion into pandemic recovery between 2020 and 2024, flooding schools with resources at an unprecedented scale. The 2024 NAEP results showed no real improvement. Forty percent of fourth graders scored below basic in reading. For economically disadvantaged students, it was over fifty percent. The resources showed up. The outcomes stayed the same.This session makes a simple argument. The gap between access and impact is not mainly about resource quality, discoverability, or even adoption support, though all of those matter. It is about institutional behavior. Schools and systems are not neutral pipelines that turn inputs into outcomes. They are organizations with habits, incentives, and self-protective routines. New resources, including open ones, get absorbed into those routines long before they reach students. They get used for compliance, reporting, initiative churn, or narrative maintenance. The system consumes the resource. The student experience does not change.In my own practitioner research, I call this load bearing dysfunction. These are problems that survive every attempt to fix them because they are quietly doing something the system depends on. When a school’s inability to implement a new resource helps preserve existing roles, workflows, or power structures, that “failure” is not really a failure. It is a feature.The open education field has invested deeply in creating and spreading resources. It has invested far less in understanding the systems those resources land in. This session introduces a diagnostic framework drawn from fifteen years working inside schools and districts, along with insights from organizational theory and systems thinking. It is built around a different starting question. Not how do we get this resource into the system, but what is the system protecting that will keep this resource from ever reaching students?This is not an argument against open education. It is an argument for widening its theory of change. Opening access is necessary, but it is not enough. If the institution stays closed, access does not translate into impact. The next phase of this work is not just better content. It is learning how to see and work with the systems themselves.

Speakers

Calvin Johnson

Leadership Consultant, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education / Statewide System of Support

Calvin Johnson has spent fifteen years building and studying the internal architecture of schools and school systems. As Head of School at a charter school in Springfield, Massachusetts, he led a turnaround that removed three state-imposed conditions, produced grade-level literacy... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT
5 DR3 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Hacking the Open Ecosystem and Praxis for the Public Good

11:50am EDT

AI and the Future of Openness: Insights from the DOERS AI+OER Project

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT

7 DR5

ID: 34021

This panel session introduces the DOERS AI+OER Case Studies Project, a collaborative, multi-institutional initiative exploring how artificial intelligence is intersecting with open educational resources (OER) and shaping the future of openness. As AI tools continue to impact teaching, learning, and knowledge production, open education faces both new opportunities and urgent questions: How do we ensure that AI-enabled practices align with the values of openness and student success? What does it mean to create, adapt, and share knowledge in an era of generative systems? And how can open education practitioners lead in defining ethical, transparent, and sustainable approaches to using AI in education?The DOERS Collaborative launched the AI+OER Case Studies Project to document and examine real-world implementations at the intersection of AI and open education. Drawing on contributions from a wide range of institutional contexts and disciplines, the project centers practice-based case studies that explore how educators, researchers, and program leaders are integrating AI into open education workflows, pedagogies, and infrastructures.This session frames AI not simply as a tool, but as an opportunity for rethinking openness itself. Author/Panelists will present selected case studies that highlight diverse applications, such as using AI to support OER creation and adaptation, enhancing accessibility through automated tools, enabling new forms of student engagement and co-creation, and leveraging AI for data-informed decision-making. At the same time, the session will critically examine tensions that emerge at this intersection, including questions of authorship, intellectual property, bias, transparency, and the environmental and labor implications of AI systems.A central focus of the session is how open education values can inform the development and use of AI in ways that prioritize public good. Panelists will discuss how openness can serve as both a framework and a set of practices for guiding AI integration—emphasizing transparency in processes, openness in licensing and sharing, and collaboration across roles and institutions. They will also explore how case study methodology enables the field to move beyond abstract debates, offering grounded, contextualized insights that can inform both local practice and broader policy conversations.Each contributor will share practical insights from their work, including how they designed their projects, navigated ethical and institutional considerations, and assessed impact. The session will highlight patterns emerging across cases, as well as areas of divergence that point to the complexity of implementing AI in open education contexts.Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how AI is currently being used within open education, along with concrete examples and critical questions to inform their own work. The session will conclude with a facilitated discussion, inviting participants to reflect on how they can engage with AI in ways that not only extend the reach of open education, but also uphold and evolve its core principles.

Speakers

Kathy Essmiller

Coordinator, OpenOKState, Oklahoma State University

Kathy is an open education leader, librarian, and educator dedicated to advancing access to education and community through the adoption and creation of open educational resources (OER). As the Coordinator of OpenOKState at Oklahoma State University, Kathy collaborates with faculty... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Panel

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Exploring Emergent Technologies and the Future of Openness

11:50am EDT

From Frameworks to Futures: Rethinking OER Quality as a Shared Practice

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT

3 Room I

ID: 33068

As open educational resources (OER) continue to expand across regions, systems, and cultures, critical questions remain: Who defines quality? How do we build trust in OER without constraining openness, diversity, and innovation?Efforts to scale OER often surface tensions between the need for shared standards and the reality of local context. What does “quality” mean across disciplines, cultures, and learning environments? And how can we move beyond fragmented or implicit definitions toward a more transparent, participatory, and adaptable global vision of OER quality?This panel invites participants into that conversation through the lens of Open 4 Peer Review, a collaborative initiative across 13 partners that developed six peer-review rubrics designed to support formative, feedback-centered approaches to OER quality. Addressing areas such as accessibility, copyright, copyediting, disciplinary appropriateness, eLearning, and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), these rubrics are intentionally designed not to score, rank, or gatekeep OER. Instead, they aim to make quality more visible, discussable, and improvable through structured peer feedback.Panelists include project leads from multiple partnering institutions and one institutional representative from outside the project who is actively considering how—and whether—to adopt these tools. Together, they will explore both the promise and the complexity of shared frameworks: How can we articulate standards of quality without enforcing uniformity? How do we ensure that peer review empowers educators rather than constrains them? And what does it take to build trust in OER across systems that differ in priorities, resources, and cultural context?Rather than positioning quality as a fixed benchmark, this session reframes it as a collective, evolving practice—one that emerges through dialogue, reflection, and continuous improvement. Participants will be invited to engage with guiding questions, share perspectives from their own contexts, and consider how peer review might function as a bridge between global alignment and local autonomy.At a time when open education is both expanding and being reimagined, this session challenges us to think differently: not about how to standardize OER quality, but how to co-create it. By bringing together multiple perspectives, the panel aims to spark a broader conversation about how we can design processes, tools, and communities that support trustworthy, inclusive, and context-responsive OER ecosystems worldwide.The goal of the session is to share the rubrics with a global audience. Session participants will be invited to review and provide feedback on these rubrics. The hope of the session is that participants will consider adopting or adapting an OER quality framework.

Speakers

Wayde Oshiro

Head Librarian, Leeward Community College

Wayde Oshiro is a professor and library director at Leeward Community College, Hawaiʻi, with over two decades of experience in academic librarianship. Since 2015, he has co-led the University of Hawaiʻi Community Colleges System's OER initiative across seven campuses. He co-chairs... Read More →

Andrea Scott

Open Educational Resources Office of Learning Advancement, Salt Lake Community College

Andrea Scott is Director of Open Educational Resources in the Office of Learning Advancement and Co‑Chair of the Open SLCC Advisory Committee at Salt Lake Community College. Active in Open Education since 2013, she helped establish Open SLCC and now oversees program development... Read More →

Danielle Leek

Project Director, Scottsdale Community College

Danielle Leek, PhD, is an instructor at Johns Hopkins University. She is also Project Director for the federally funded Open 4Peer Review initiative at Maricopa Community Colleges and Founder and Principal at Danielle Leek Consulting.

Gracie McDonough

Reference/Instruction/OER Librarian, College of Southern Nevada

Gracie McDonough serves as an Instruction and Reference Librarian at the College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas. Since joining CSN, she has been a dedicated advocate for Open Educational Resources (OER), contributing to a significant increase in institutional OER adoption from less... Read More →

Debbie Baker

OER Coordinator, Instructional designer, Maricopa Community College District

Dr. Debbie Baker serves as the open educational resources coordinator and an instructional designer for the Maricopa Community Colleges (MCCCD), and has been an educator for almost 30 years. Her work has centered on reshaping traditional classroom dynamics by involving students in... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT
3 Room I MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Panel

Speaker Modality In-person
Track (Re)Inventing our Shared Global Vision Together

12:55pm EDT

Lunch

Wednesday October 7, 2026 12:55pm - 1:40pm EDT

9 7th Floor Lobby

Lunch Break
Take a break to enjoy lunch, connect with colleagues, and continue conversations with fellow conference participants before the afternoon sessions begin.

Wednesday October 7, 2026 12:55pm - 1:40pm EDT
9 7th Floor Lobby MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

General

Speaker Modality In-person

1:40pm EDT

Charting the Course: A National Research Agenda for Open Education

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT

5 DR3

ID: 33577

The open education field has grown significantly over the past two decades, yet critical gaps in evidence remain and the research landscape is fragmented. Studies are often siloed, datasets go untapped, and parallel efforts rarely connect. Without a coordinated national research strategy, the field risks repeating itself rather than building the cumulative, scalable knowledge base that policymakers, funders, and practitioners urgently need. In 2025, the National Consortium for Open Educational Resources (NCOER), a collaboration among the Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC), New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), and Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, launched a national initiative to address this challenge. The result is a comprehensive Open Education and OER Research Agenda, developed through an extensive mixed-methods consultation process involving a national survey of 126 participants and in-depth interviews with 15 researchers, faculty, librarians, system leaders, and policy stakeholders across the United States and Canada. This session will present the agenda's findings and invite the global open education community to engage with its six national research priorities: • Student Outcomes and Experiences — moving beyond affordability metrics toward deeper understanding of how students learn, engage, and persist in open environments; • Long-Term Sustainability and Institutional Support — understanding how OER programs evolve, persist, and adapt over time, including funding models, governance, and recognition systems; • Intersection of Open Education and Artificial Intelligence — examining how AI reshapes OER creation, pedagogy, student behavior, and the broader knowledge ecosystem; • Evolution of Cost-Savings and Affordability Research — updating cost analyses and expanding research on student decision-making and the long-term academic impacts of affordability; • Discipline-Specific Approaches, Needs, and Practices — identifying how disciplinary cultures and curricular structures influence OER adoption and open pedagogy; and • Research Collaboration and Shared Infrastructure — addressing fragmentation by building coordinated research systems, aligning priorities across regions, and supporting shared data and cross-institutional inquiry. Presenters will highlight key research gaps, share findings from the national consultation process, and discuss how the agenda can inform policy, practice, and investment in open education. Presenters will prioritize audience connections to broader themes of research in their context, with an emphasis on global research connections to the above themes. Participants will have the opportunity to identify priority research questions, consider how the agenda can shape their own work and partnerships, and reflect on how a shared research infrastructure might advance the global open education movement.

Speakers

Kate Baca

Policy Analyst, Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education

Kate Baca is a Policy Analyst with The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. Her work spans research and supporting Open Educational Resources and student success in post-secondary across the WICHE region. In her work at WICHE, she collaborates with a community of OER... Read More →

Amanda Coolidge

VP, Strategic Engagement and Growth, Pressbooks

Amanda Coolidge is VP of Strategic Engagement and Growth at Pressbooks, where she leads marketing, sales, and customer success and serves as product manager for the company's microcredential platform. She is the founder of Coolidge Collaborative and former Executive Director of BCcampus... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT
5 DR3 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track (Re)Inventing our Shared Global Vision Together

1:40pm EDT

Congratulations Open Education! So What Will You Do After Graduation?

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT

6 DR4

ID: 33754

Imagine open education as a wonderful being that we’ve brought into the world, guided and worried about and celebrated as it’s grown up. What might be possible if open education graduates from school and now makes its way into the wider world? How does it carry forward and build upon the lessons learned, inspirations gained, relationships grown through its nurturing time in school?Through many years of innovations, explorations, and collaborative commitments, the open education movement has established a solid footing in school-based learning, especially as a means to increase educational equity through student cost savings and more inclusive pedagogies. It’s clearly earned a spot on the Honor Roll.Alongside this foundation in academic settings, we can glimpse at dramatically expanded impact for open education in the more fluid and expansive realms of lifelong learning. What we’ve learned about creating, adapting, and using open educational resources can be enabling values for more effective, engaging and inclusive lifelong learning that reaches beyond the traditional confines of schools.In this session, we’ll look across the threshold beyond academic settings, into where open education is already meeting people where they are in informal knowledge spaces. We’ll consider how lifelong learning is evolving in social media and YouTube, Wikipedia, journalism, and community organizations. We’ll highlight some of the promising ways that open education is already showing up here through the experiences of MIT OpenCourseWare and other open knowledge programs, and take a comparative look at the methods and metrics for operating in academic vs non-academic learning settings. A concluding generative discussion will invite participants to explore together how the open education community might engage more broadly in informal lifelong learning with curiosity and intention.

Speakers

Curt Newton

Director, MIT OpenCourseWare, MIT Open Learning

Curt Newton leads MIT OpenCourseWare in supporting millions of global learners and educators every year with freely shared materials from over 2,500 MIT courses. He joined OpenCourseWare in 2004, shortly after its launch, captivated by the promise of open education, and worked as... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT
6 DR4 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Hacking the Open Ecosystem and Praxis for the Public Good

1:40pm EDT

Global South Knowledge in Northern Systems: Rethinking Teacher Integration Through Open Educational Practices

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT

4 Room T

ID: 31224

Across many education systems in the Global North, internationally trained teachers are increasingly recruited to address persistent teacher shortages and respond to growing linguistic and cultural diversity in classrooms. However, the professional integration of these educators often unfolds within institutional frameworks that implicitly privilege Northern epistemologies, pedagogical traditions, and professional norms. As a result, the knowledge and pedagogical expertise developed in the Global South frequently remain undervalued or invisible within host education systems.This presentation examines how open educational practices (OEP) can provide a transformative framework for rethinking the integration of internationally trained teachers while promoting knowledge as a global public good. Drawing on doctoral research conducted in Ontario’s French-language and French immersion school systems in Canada, this study focuses particularly on educators trained in Cameroon who are navigating professional entry and adaptation within Canadian schools.Using a blended ethnographic and critical autoethnographic methodology, the research explores how internationally trained teachers negotiate professional identity, knowledge legitimacy, and pedagogical adaptation as they transition between educational systems. The findings highlight persistent epistemic asymmetries that shape teacher integration processes, where internationally trained educators are frequently expected to adapt to dominant institutional models while their own professional knowledge remains under-recognized.The presentation argues that open educational practices—including open educational resources (OER), collaborative knowledge-sharing networks, and transnational professional learning communities—can help challenge these asymmetries by enabling more equitable forms of knowledge circulation between the Global South and Global North. Through open platforms and collaborative knowledge ecosystems, internationally trained educators can participate not only as recipients of professional development but also as contributors to global pedagogical knowledge.By situating teacher integration within broader open knowledge ecosystems, this session proposes a shift away from assimilation-based models toward a model of reciprocal epistemic exchange, in which diverse pedagogical traditions are recognized as valuable sources of educational innovation.Ultimately, the presentation highlights how open educational practices can support migrant educators, democratize knowledge production, and foster more inclusive and globally connected education systems.

Speakers

Eric Keunne

PhD Candidate & School Principal (K-12), York University (Glendon Campus), Toronto, Canada

Eric Keunne is a PhD candidate in French Studies at York University whose research examines the professional integration of internationally trained teachers in Ontario’s French-language and French immersion school systems. His work focuses particularly on educators trained in Cameroon... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Innovating Open Content to Democratize Knowledge

1:40pm EDT

OER and Knowledge Without a Market Share

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT

2 Room M

ID: 30932

In the limited funding available for the creation of open access materials, both at institutional levels and through other means, the focus has been on return on investment, on courses with high enrollment or on general education courses that would be useful for multiple institutions. This approach has made sense as it speaks very clearly to the goal of OER to lower textbook costs on a significant scale for students. However, it does not take into consideration courses with topics that contribute rather to access of materials that students would not normally receive, rather than an aggregate amount of savings. This session will consider this concept from the perspective of a medievalist. Those in my field have had an increasing problem with general medieval literature textbooks is that they are often unable – or unwilling – to keep up with the current issues in medieval studies, particularly those related to diversity, such as the relatively new approach to the global Middle Ages, and marginalized communities, such as people with disabilities. Yet, textbooks with the goal of rectifying this oversight tend to be singularly focused and do not necessarily include a broad range of sources, which makes them difficult to use as the primary book in especially a survey course. OER is particularly well-situated to remedy these issues because it does not rely on publishers who are concerned with market shares in terms of what they decide to produce, and it is flexible for multiple uses in a variety of pedagogical situations, even brief lessons. As an example, we will discuss the funding, creation, and publication of an open access textbook that serves as an introduction to medieval disability studies for undergraduates, in particular. There are very few resources for teaching medieval disability to undergraduate students because it is only now becoming a topic of consideration even at the graduate level. Thus, there is a dearth of organized textbooks that include everything needed. There is a Medieval Disability Sourcebook: Western Europe, but its aim is to provide primary sources, not serve as a textbook to the subject. This open access textbook on Medieval Disability introduces students both to the topic of disability in the Middle Ages as well as to the broader study of disability. There are introductions to the different types of sources that we can analyze, including literature, archaeology, material culture, art, etc. It focuses on physical as well as invisible disabilities, language and translation issues, social integration, treatments, and technologies, among other topics. In particular, it focuses on addressing popular misconceptions about historical disability. This open access textbook provides the missing resource that many in the field have been requesting. But yet it is a resource that is difficult to “sell” to traditional publishers because the field is itself small. This example allows us to consider the democratization of knowledge beyond the market share.

Speakers

Kisha Tracy

Professor, English Studies, Fitchburg State University

Dr. Kisha G. Tracy is a Professor and Chair of English Studies and Chair of the General Education Program at Fitchburg State University. She received her Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Connecticut. In addition to several articles, her first book was published by... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Innovating Open Content to Democratize Knowledge

1:40pm EDT

Design, Build, Share: A Panel Workshop on Open Microcredential Content and Credential Metadata

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:45pm EDT

3 Room I

ID: 33581

As the shift toward skills-based learning accelerates, educators and institutions are increasingly called to design learning experiences that are not only aligned to workforce needs but also open, adaptable, and transparent. While open educational resources (OER) have expanded access to content, there is a growing need to support the development of open, skills-based microcredential content that can be reused, adapted, and recognized across learning and employment contexts. This interactive panel and workshop session invites participants to “come invent with us” by engaging directly in the process of authoring open microcredential content.Grounded in emerging practices at the intersection of open education, microcredentials, and Learning and Employment Records (LERs), this session will move beyond conceptual discussion into hands-on application. Participants will be introduced to key considerations in designing open, skills-based content, including alignment to validated skills, structuring for modularity and stackability, and embedding metadata to support transparency, interoperability, and credential portability (Credential Engine, 2024). Building on principles of OER-enabled pedagogy (Wiley & Hilton, 2018), the session emphasizes not only access to content, but the ability for educators and institutions to actively create, adapt, and share skills-aligned learning resources.A central component of the session will be guided, experiential engagement with the Pressbooks Microcredential Authoring platform. Participants will work within a templated microcredential structure designed to support consistent, high-quality development of skills-based content. Through facilitated activities, attendees will explore how to translate skills into learning outcomes, develop aligned content and assessments, and incorporate content-level metadata that connects learning experiences to verifiable credentials. The workshop will also surface key design decisions, such as how to balance openness with institutional or industry requirements, and how to support multiple models of content sharing (open, closed, and hybrid).Panelists will provide brief framing perspectives from institutional, international, and ecosystem viewpoints, but the majority of the session will focus on participant engagement. Attendees will have the opportunity to workshop their own ideas, collaborate with peers, and receive feedback from facilitators with expertise in open education, microcredentials, and skills-based design.By the end of the session, participants will have a practical understanding of how to design and author open microcredential content, experience a platform-enabled approach to scalable content development, and gain actionable strategies for implementing open, skills-based learning initiatives within their own contexts. This session directly supports the conference track by advancing innovative approaches to open content that democratize knowledge and expand opportunities for learners across educational and workforce systems.

Speakers

Başak Büyükçelen

Chief Executive Officer, Pressbooks

Başak Büyükçelen is the CEO of Pressbooks, where she has spent the last seven years helping shape the company's direction and culture. With a background spanning consulting, manufacturing, banking, finance, film, and video games, she brings a cross-industry lens to the challenges... Read More →

Kevin Corcoran

Assistant Vice Provost, University of Central Florida

Kevin Corcoran is the Assistant Vice Provost of the Center for Distributed Learning. Kevin has over 25 years of experience in the development and support of strategies for the effective use of digital learning tools and content that focuses on quality standards and practices, student... Read More →

Amanda Coolidge

VP, Strategic Engagement and Growth, Pressbooks

Lisa Young

Founder & Principal, EduEssentials Consulting

Dr. Lisa Young is a longtime advocate for open education and learner centered innovation in higher education. She recently retired after more than 30 years with the Maricopa County Community College District, where she served in several leadership roles, including Faculty Administrator... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:45pm EDT
3 Room I MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Panel

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Innovating Open Content to Democratize Knowledge

2:15pm EDT

The California ZTC Degree Grant Program: Preliminary Outcomes and What We’re Learning

Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT

6 DR4

ID: 33763

In 2021, California made a historic commitment to college affordability by authorizing the largest public investment to date in Open Educational Resources (OER) and Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) pathways. This landmark initiative aims to reduce the financial burden of course materials and improve equitable access to higher education. Beginning in 2022, all California Community Colleges received dedicated funding to support the development, implementation, and scaling of ZTC pathways across disciplines. By 2026, colleges across the system are actively developing more than one thousand ZTC pathways, representing a transformative shift in how instructional materials are selected, delivered, and experienced by students. As the largest system of higher education in the United States, the California Community Colleges provide a unique opportunity to examine the large-scale impact of OER and ZTC adoption on student success, retention, and overall educational experience.This session will explore early findings from the ZTC grant program while also highlighting emerging research directions and unanswered questions. Participants will gain insight into how colleges are approaching ZTC implementation, including the strategies they have found most effective as well as the challenges they continue to navigate. The session will also examine how researchers are estimating cost savings across more than 100 institutions, offering a closer look at methodologies used to quantify financial impact at scale. In addition, attendees will hear student feedback from ZTC courses, providing valuable perspective on how these initiatives influence learning, engagement, and access.The session will further highlight a complementary study conducted by researchers at UC Irvine’s School of Education, supported by the Arnold Ventures Foundation, which seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of both statewide and institutional policies aimed at reducing student cost burdens. Finally, participants will receive access to instruments used for institutional and student surveys, enabling them to apply similar assessment approaches within their own contexts. Together, these insights will provide a comprehensive view of the promise and complexity of scaling ZTC pathways across a large and diverse higher education system.

Speakers

James Glapa-Grossklag

Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources and Distance Learning; and Technical Assistance Provider, College of the Canyons; and ZTC Grant Program California Community College Chancellor’s Office

James Glapa-Grossklag is Dean, Educational Technology, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning at College of the Canyons (USA). He serves as Technical Assistance Provider for the California Community Colleges' Zero Textbook Cost Degree Program, the largest-ever public investment... Read More →

Richard Arum

Professor of Sociology and Education and former dean of the School of Education at University of California, Irvine., University of California, Irvine.

Richard Arum is Professor of Sociology and Education and former dean of the School of Education at University of California, Irvine. He served as senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and director of Education Research Programs at the Social Science Research Council... Read More →

Sabrina Solanki

Research & Program Director for the Postsecondary Education Research & Implementation Institute at the University of California, Irvine., University of California, Irvine.

Sabrina Solanki is Research & Program Director for the Postsecondary Education Research & Implementation Institute at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on higher education policy, STEM education, and the evaluation of education interventions. In her current... Read More →

Alyssa Nguyen

Senior Director of Research and Innovation, The RP Group

Alyssa Nguyen is the Senior Director of Research and Innovation for The RP Group and brings over 15 years of experience in the California Community Colleges. Her work is dedicated to uncovering and implementing student-centered practices that close equity gaps and promote student... Read More →

Larry Cooperman

Consultant, University of California, Irvine

Larry Cooperman retired from the University of California, Irvine in 2020, where he directed open education from 2007-2018. Since his retirement, he has consulted the Technical Assistance Provider for the California Community Colleges Zero-Textbook-Cost (ZTC) program. Currently, he... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
6 DR4 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Hacking the Open Ecosystem and Praxis for the Public Good

3:00pm EDT

OER Beyond Gen Ed: Lessons from Washington’s Professional-Technical Programs

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT

7 DR5

ID: 31247

Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives have largely focused on general education courses such as math, English, and introductory sciences. However, professional-technical (ProfTech) programs face a different set of challenges when it comes to course materials. These fields often rely on expensive, commercial textbooks, rapidly evolving industry content, certification-aligned materials, and highly visual or technical resources.Washington State’s Open ProfTech initiative explores how open textbooks can be developed in professional-technical programs across community and technical colleges. Through statewide collaboration, faculty authors worked with instructional designers, editors, illustrators, migration specialists, copyright and OER experts, and accessibility specialists, coordinated by SBCTC, the state agency serving Washington’s community and technical colleges, to create openly licensed textbooks aligned with industry expectations.This session shares practical lessons from this initiative, including the unique challenges of developing OER in professional technical education disciplines, strategies that helped faculty authors succeed, and what other institutions or systems should consider when launching similar efforts. Rather than focusing on project details alone, the presentation highlights key insights about supporting proftech faculty, managing rapidly changing content, and building sustainable infrastructure for open publishing in technical fields.Participants will leave with practical ideas for expanding OER beyond general education into workforce and career programs.

Speakers

Boyoung Chae

Policy Associate, Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges

Boyoung Chae is a Policy Associate of Educational Technology and Open Education with the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges (SBCTC). She completed a master’s in Instructional Systems from Pennsylvania State University and a PhD in Instructional Technology... Read More →

Monique Belair

Program Administrator, Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges

Monique Belair is a Program Administrator for Educational Technology and Open Education with the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges (SBCTC). She is currently managing her second U.S. Department of Education grant for the Washington Open ProfTech Project. Monique... Read More →

Ashley Montenegro Ramirez

Program Administrator, Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges

Ashley Montenegro Ramirez is a project manager in open education and workforce development. She manages and supports the development of open textbooks for Washington’s community and technical colleges, with a focus on accessibility, quality assurance, and collaborative project management... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Innovating Open Content to Democratize Knowledge

3:00pm EDT

Open All the Way Down: A Freely Reusable Toolkit for Scaling OER, Access, and Equity

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT

5 DR3

ID: 33595

Open educational resources promise to democratize access to knowledge, but the organizational capacity to implement OER sustainably is rarely open itself. Colleges and institutions that want to launch or scale OER and Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) initiatives must typically build their infrastructure, workflows, faculty support systems, and assessment frameworks from scratch. This is its own barrier to the public good that open education aspires to serve.This session argues that opening up institutional knowledge, not just course content, is the next frontier for the open education movement. It introduces the CRC OER/ZTC Toolkit, developed at Cosumnes River College (CRC) in Sacramento, California, as a case study in what it looks like to treat implementation infrastructure as a public good.CRC serves a diverse student population in which many learners come from low-income households and communities historically underserved by higher education. Textbook costs were a documented barrier: students were delaying purchases, attempting courses without required materials, and in some cases dropping classes they could not afford. Beginning in 2021, a faculty librarian and OER coordinator began building the systems needed to address this - supporting faculty in adopting, remixing, and creating OER; developing workflows for identifying and advertising ZTC courses; and using student success data to make the case for continued institutional investment. By fall 2025, 78% of CRC course sections were designated Zero Textbook Cost, with documented gains in enrollment, course success rates, and degree completion.The CRC OER/ZTC Toolkit packages the lessons from this work into an openly licensed, freely reusable website. It includes implementation guides, faculty adoption workflows, open pedagogy resources, student focus group templates, and a data dashboard framework for tracking equity outcomes. Every element carries an open license, meaning any institution, anywhere, can copy, adapt, and redistribute the toolkit without asking permission and without starting from zero.This is the session's central contribution to the OEGlobal community: a concrete example of open licensing applied to the institutional infrastructure of OER work, not just the content.When colleges share their implementation knowledge openly, they extend the democratizing potential of open education beyond individual courses to the systems that make open education sustainable and scalable. This approach is especially significant for under-resourced institutions that lack the grant funding or staffing to build these systems independently.Attendees will have the opportunity to explore the toolkit directly and will leave with a clear understanding of its components, the equity impact data behind it, and practical strategies for adapting it to their own institutional or regional context. The session welcomes practitioners at any stage of OER work. Though it was designed for community colleges, the lessons learned could be applicable to any institution.

Speakers

Andi Adkins Pogue

Librarian, OER/ZTC Coordinator, Cosumnes River College

Andi Adkins Pogue is a faculty librarian and the OER/ZTC Coordinator at Cosumnes River College who has spent 16 years supporting equitable access to learning. She has been instrumental in building one of California's most active ZTC programs. She has authored OER, earned a Creative... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
5 DR3 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Hacking the Open Ecosystem and Praxis for the Public Good

3:00pm EDT

The Work at the Hinge: Mini Structures and Human-Centered Open Education

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT

2 Room M

ID: 31087

Open education often assumes a shared threshold, as if practitioners are all standing before the same door with the same key, the same confidence, and the same amount of time to turn the handle. They are not. For some, the door opens easily into spacious possibility. For others, it sticks, locked by uncertainty, time scarcity, inaccessible information, perfectionism, policy confusion, or the quiet fear of getting it wrong in public.This session argues that if Open Education is serious about access, it cannot reserve its gentleness for students alone. It must meet practitioners at the threshold too, attending to the tiny details where entry is either made possible or made impossible. Drawing from two semesters of program design and implementation at a Hispanic-Serving Institution, I share a practical model of “mini structures” as threshold design: an inquiry-based OER exploration mini-grant that pays faculty for rigorous search and decision-ready documentation (rather than requiring premature adoption), paired with a scaffolded sequence of mini-lessons that translate complex Open Educational Practices into bounded steps with clear outcomes, examples, and time expectations.The core claim is simple: a door is only open if someone can actually get through it. In many institutional contexts, the primary barriers are not ideological resistance. They are practical and quietly determinative: not knowing where to start, and starting alone. I highlight the hinge details that repeatedly change follow-through without lowering rigor: bounded time containers (30–45 minute work sessions with a concrete deliverable), “what counts” guidance that reduces ambiguity, risk reduction through private drafts and optional publicness, and documentation-as-scaffolding (trackers, evaluation lenses, landscape briefs) that makes decisions visible, retrievable, and shareable.Grounded in care ethics, I frame these choices as infrastructure rather than tone: care operationalized through systems that assume human variance as normal. Participants will leave with a replicable set of design patterns and a lightweight blueprint for building mini infrastructure in their own programs.

Speakers

Megan Brittany-Fruia Zara

Open Education Librarian, The University of Texas at Arlington

Megan Zara is an Open Education librarian and program designer at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Her work sits at the intersection of Open Education, access, and care ethics, with a focus on building scaffolded systems (mini-grants, mini-lessons, and decision-ready... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Catalyzing Human Connection Creativity and Curiosity to Thrive

3:00pm EDT

Students as Knowledge Creators and the Lasting Impact of OER: Sharing Examples of Extraordinary Student Work

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT

4 Room T

ID: 31395

The remarkable imprint OER has on public higher education is well documented. One indicator of this success is seen in the high-quality student work generated through OER usage. In this round table, designed for educators, creators, and anyone else curious about OER, participants will discuss open pedagogy and the value of the contributions by students to the Open field. Participants are encouraged to share examples of exceptional student-generated Open scholarship and creativity.Facilitated by long-time OER creator/collaborators, Robin Miller (CUNY), Paul Ricciardi (CUNY), and Michelle Turnbull (Bergen Community College), this session invites participants to:Discuss student-centered Open pedagogy;Experience and share examples of student work from the Open community;Share OER they've created that has been used in a class room that inspires students to contribute to the Open community;Share any other links, images and samples of student work that was born out of the Open movement.Participants may simply listen, or come to the session equipped with a link to anything they wish to share in this lively OER show and tell. Come and be inspired!

Speakers

Paul Ricciardi

Professor of Theatre Arts, Kingsborough Community College - City University of New York

Paul Ricciardi is Professor of Theatre Arts at Kingsborough Community College/City University of New York, where he teaches all levels of Acting and Voice for the Stage. Paul is also a Course Coordinator for two College Now courses, Humanities and Foundations in Theatre. Paul is... Read More →

Robin Miller

Open Educational Technologist, Graduate Center - City University of New York

I am a former OER librarian and currently work as an Open Educational Technology Specialist and the main point of contact at the City University of New York (CUNY) for the digital publishing platform Manifold https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/.

Michelle Turnbull

Professor of English, Bergen Community College

Michelle Turnbull began teaching English and the Humanities in 2005. Michelle taught high school English for 14 years in Brooklyn, NY. Currently, she teaches English as a Full Time Professor at Bergen County Community College in New Jersey. Michelle is passionate about OER and has... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Round Table

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Innovating Open Content to Democratize Knowledge

3:35pm EDT

Data in Your Neighborhood: Exploring the Potential of Secondary Data Analysis in Open Education Research

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT

4 Room T

ID: 31579

Secondary data analysis is the process of using existing data, collected by others for different purposes, to answer new research questions or examine trends. This method enables researchers to leverage an existing, rigorously collected dataset without requiring new data collection. It provides a cost-effective, time-saving way to analyze large datasets (e.g., surveys), provide deeper insights, and explore trends in data over years or decades. In this roundtable session, we discuss the purpose and value of using secondary data analysis in open education research. We ground the discussion in our experience of analyzing secondary data from a freely available dataset derived from the Ithaka S+R Instructor Survey (2024). The secondary analysis produced a more nuanced picture of faculty engagement with Open Educational Resources (OER) by correlating instructor characteristics with OER activity. The use of secondary data from a well-established national survey provides a robust foundation for exploring the OER landscape. While the field has accumulated substantial data on faculty adoption, use, satisfaction, and creation of OER, findings are often reported in aggregate, treating the faculty population as a single undifferentiated group. The breadth of the dataset, combined with the ability to examine subgroup variations, makes it possible to identify structural patterns that shape how OER is understood and adopted across higher education. This methodological approach aligns with the broader goal of advancing insight into faculty engagement with OER. Secondary data analysis expanded the potential of the Ithaka S+R Instructor survey by addressing questions that were not highlighted in their original analysis, but are of use to OER advocates. Using secondary data also allows for efficient use of resources, as the sampling, recruitment, and data cleaning processes have already been completed by the original research team. The publicly available codebooks and documentation provided by Ithaka S+R support transparency and replicability, ensuring that variable definitions and coding schemes are clearly understood. The data set we used was published and made freely available by Ithaka S+R in the database of social science datasets from Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Their data focused on instructor responses on a number of issues facing higher education; however, our interest was particular to OER. The depositing of data makes a more granular analysis possible. Participants will brainstorm potential sources of datasets for data analysis, such as government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and previous academic studies, and generate ideas for utilizing the data in study design.

Speakers

Stacy Katz

Associate Professor, Open Resources Librarian, Lehman College, CUNY

Stacy Katz is an Associate Professor and Open Resources Librarian-STEM Liaison at Lehman College, CUNY. She initiated, developed, and continues to manage the Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative for the college. Stacy’s research to date has focused on OER, particularly how... Read More →

Jennifer Van Allen

Associate Professor of Literacy Education, Lehman College, City University of New York

Jennifer Van Allen, Ed.D., is an Associate Professor of Literacy Education at Lehman College in the City University of New York. Her research focuses on effective and equitable practices for integrating technology into literacy teaching and learning, with a special interest in online... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Round Table

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Hacking the Open Ecosystem and Praxis for the Public Good

4:20pm EDT

Oak’s Open Knowledge Graph: The Missing Foundation for Curriculum-Aligned AI in Education

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT

6 DR4

ID: 33911

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming educational technology, yet most AI tools in education lack a critical foundation: they have no formal understanding of how curriculum knowledge actually fits together. AI tools can discuss topics fluently, but cannot reliably sequence learning, identify what a student needs to know before tackling a new concept, or verify that a lesson genuinely addresses the standards or objectives it claims to. They guess because, typically, national curricula have existed only as documents written for humans, not in any form that digital tools can meaningfully interrogate.This is a solvable problem. At Oak National Academy, a UK government-backed provider of free teaching resources used in three in four schools in England [1], we are building an answer. With over 100,000 open-licence resources spanning 17 national curriculum subjects, including more than 13,000 lessons, we hold a distinctive position: a large-scale, publicly trusted body of curriculum-aligned content, all freely available [2]. This session presents our work to build a knowledge graph that encodes curriculum structure in a form that AI tools can read, query, and reason about, along with the lessons we have learned so far from releasing it openly to the sector.Our knowledge graph is a structured map of how curriculum knowledge connects, specifying which concepts must come before others, how topics in one subject relate to another, and what a sequence of learning actually looks like from a pupil’s perspective. When that map is machine-readable and openly available, it transforms what AI tools can do. Rather than guessing at curriculum relationships, AI tools can query structured data. The result is AI tools that genuinely support learning progression, plan well-sequenced, coherent curriculum materials, and identify gaps in available resources. This provides the solid foundations for safe and effective AI in education in any national context. We have begun sharing our early knowledge graph capability [3] with a range of external organisations, including AI developers and edtech companies, to develop and stress-test this shared foundation.England's forthcoming curriculum refresh offers a concrete illustration of why this matters. As the curriculum changes, AI tools trained on old frameworks risk undermining rather than supporting learning. We have been supporting the Department for Education in creating a digitised curriculum, designed with structured, machine-readable capabilities, such as knowledge graphs, in mind. When available, this will significantly increase the depth and richness of our knowledge graph, enabling even more reliable and sophisticated AI applications across the sector.Open education principles are at the heart of this work: every organisation rebuilding curriculum structure from scratch is duplicating effort. A common, openly licensed foundation redirects that energy toward the applications and innovations that actually benefit learners. In this session, we will share our experience and learnings, including the architectural decisions made, the standards chosen, and our licensing strategy, to enable any institution seeking to make its domain knowledge machine-readable to build upon this work.

Speakers

John Roberts

Interim CEO, Oak National Academy

John Roberts is the interim CEO of Oak National Academy, the UK government-backed provider of free, open-licence teaching resources used in three in four schools in England. A co-founder of the organisation, he previously led the product and engineering team behind Aila, the UK's... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT
6 DR4 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Hacking the Open Ecosystem and Praxis for the Public Good

4:20pm EDT

Offline AI, Open Knowledge: Delivering OER to Schools Without Internet

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT

7 DR5

ID: 31657

Description:Across Africa, and some parts of Asia millions of learners sit in classrooms that are rich in curiosity but poor in connectivity. For these students, the promise of open education , freely accessible, world-class knowledge for anyone, anywhere, remains largely theoretical. The internet is the assumed delivery mechanism for most OER platforms, and where the internet is absent or unreliable, so too is access to open content.AXAM is an offline AI-powered learning platform built to close that gap. Developed through the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, AXAM packages high-quality open educational resources, beginning with MIT OpenCourseWare transcripts and expanding to broader OER collections, into a locally deployable system that runs entirely without an internet connection. Students interact with AXAM through a conversational AI interface powered by a lightweight large language model, asking questions, exploring concepts, and receiving contextualized responses drawn from curated OER content. No cloud. No bandwidth. No barriers.This session presents the AXAM model as both a technical case study and a provocation for the open education community. The presenter will walk through the architecture of the system: how OER content is processed, embedded, and stored in a vector database; how a quantized language model runs efficiently on low-cost hardware; and how multilingual retrieval supports learners across English, French, Swahili, and Kinyarwanda and others. Crucially, the session will move beyond the technical to examine what deployment actually looks like in contexts where infrastructure, teacher capacity, and institutional trust are all variables that no algorithm can fully anticipate.The lessons from building and testing AXAM are honest ones. Multilingual performance is uneven; Kinyarwanda retrieval lags significantly behind English, raising important questions about whose languages open AI systems are truly built for. Hardware constraints shape every design decision. Community trust must be earned before any technology is adopted. These are not edge cases; they are the core design conditions for open education in much of the world.What this session ultimately offers is a replicable framework, a set of architectural principles, deployment considerations, and community engagement strategies that any institution, NGO, or open education practitioner can adapt for their own low-connectivity context. The goal is not to present AXAM as a finished solution, but to share what has been learned in the process of building it, and to invite the global open education community into the next phase of that work.Because openness without accessibility is just a promise. And a promise that only reaches those with a stable internet connection is not yet open enough.

Speakers

Emmanuel Olimi Kasigazi

Entrepreneurial Lead, Axam AI

Emmanuel Olimi is a data and LLM engineer, open education advocate, and founder of AXAM, an offline AI-powered learning platform designed to deliver MIT OpenCourseWare and other open education content to students in low-connectivity schools across the world. Born in Uganda and now... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Exploring Emergent Technologies and the Future of Openness

4:20pm EDT

Resilience and Responsiveness: Lessons of Open Practices in Emergencies

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT

5 DR3

ID: 33611

We are living through a period of significant global instability, marked by political uncertainty, challenges to multilateralism, and increasing risks of conflict and disruption. These dynamics place pressure on education systems worldwide, raising urgent questions about how to ensure continuity, accessibility, and relevance. In this context, Open Educational Resources (OER) and broader open education practices offer a promising foundation for more resilient and adaptable systems, as they combine the affordances of digital technologies with relational, learner-centred approaches, an integration that proved essential during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper examines what lessons from open education in emergency contexts can inform the development of more robust open ecosystems globally.This study argues that effective open education systems must demonstrate two key characteristics: responsiveness to user needs and resilience to external pressures. While these qualities are widely discussed, they remain under-examined in terms of how they are enacted across different contexts. In particular, emergency settings such as conflict, displacement, or systemic disruption offer a unique lens through which to observe how open practices adapt under pressure.To investigate this, the presentation reports on findings from a qualitative comparative study of open education initiatives in both emergency and non-emergency contexts. The analysis draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with two groups: (1) learners engaging with open educational platforms, and (2) stakeholders involved in governance and decision-making processes. This dual perspective enables an examination of both user experience and systemic organisation. The findings, derived through thematic analysis, highlight patterns across contexts, with particular attention to how responsiveness to user needs and resilience to external pressures are operationalised in practice. The study is guided by two research questions:1. How do user needs in open educational platforms differ between emergency and non-emergency contexts? 2. How do governance structures and processes differ across these contexts? This research contributes to the emerging field of Open Education in Emergencies by extending its focus beyond short-term crises to include longer-term and systemic disruptions. By examining practices at the margins of education systems, it seeks to surface insights that are often overlooked in more stable contexts and to amplify perspectives that are less visible in dominant policy and research narratives. In doing so, it also aims to shift the framing of educational provision from a logic of institutional interest toward a logic of user need and long-term resilience.The expected outcome is a conceptual framework that organises effective practices into four dimensions: Relevance, Openness, Independence, and Pluralism. This framework will synthesise findings from across contexts to identify transferable strategies for designing open education systems that are adaptable, scalable, and equity-oriented. Ultimately, the research aims to demonstrate how insights from emergency contexts can inform more robust and inclusive open education ecosystems globally.

Speakers

Adriana D’Amico

Education Policy Student - Intern Researcher @ Monash Virtual School, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Adriana D’Amico is a postgraduate student currently enrolled in an Erasmus Mundus Master program on education policies from global development. During her bachelor in Economics and social sciences she took part in both advocacy activities, working with a team to promote pluralism... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT
5 DR3 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Hacking the Open Ecosystem and Praxis for the Public Good

4:20pm EDT

Can K-12 Teachers and Students Build Open Source AI Tools for Education?

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT

4 Room T

ID: 33728

There is growing consensus that creation of AI tools built specifically responsive to educational needs and pedagogically grounded are more pertinent, relevant and efficient than generative AI general-purpose tools, like ChatGPT. Even more, AI general-purpose tools also augment the possibility for AI risks to flourish in educational settings.For the creation of AI for Education tools, its also highly recommended to co-design and co-develop those tools with the end-users, teachers and students. This participatory approach looks to open the “black box” of AI and let end-users develop a critical oversight and public scrutiny on these tools, measuring expectations and recognizing the different trade-offs in place.In that context, Open Source AI is better suited for education-specific tailored tools because it enables alignment, control, and sustainability at the system level, not just performance at the model level. Open AI models can be “fine-tuned” on local curriculum and national standards, adapted to specific pedagogical frameworks or enforce desired teaching practices, integrated to existing school systems (grading, reports, LMS), it can be inspected, tested and audited due to its transparency.Opting for Open Source AI comes along with difficult challenges: to exploit its opportunities and unleash participatory “open practices” (fine tuning, distilling, RAG) to build AI for education tools requires demanding technical expertise, for example in K-12 teachers and students.This session looks to discuss about what should be the readiness standard for K-12 teachers and students to participate in the co-design, co-development and testing of Open Source AI tools for K-12 schools. So how can you offer a simplistic, easy to learn framework and a guided-through pipeline for K-12 teachers and students.Alongside end-users, how to protect student privacy with an Open Data schema, in full compliance with data protection laws and without dependency on external APIs, its to be discussed. Lastly, sustainability challenges are also to be discussed as key infrastructure is needed, because custom-built systems are harder to sustain, they can fail without permanent investment due to hidden costs (hardware like GPUs or servers, technical teams, ongoing maintenance).In sum, the session looks to identify the key aspects to consider and catch a glimpse of the context of end user readiness and technical-legal infrastructure to hold the promise that Open Source AI is the option for local educational relevance.

Speakers

Werner Westermann

Can K-12 teachers and students build Open Source AI tools for education?, International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence IRCAI

Werner Westermann Juárez works at the Civic Education Program, at the Library of National Congress of Chile since 2015. He is a History, Geography and Social Sciences Teacher and Bachelor Graduate in History (Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile) and a Master’s on Open Education... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Round Table

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Catalyzing Human Connection Creativity and Curiosity to Thrive

4:20pm EDT

Sparking Connection, Creativity, and Curiosity with the Open Education Network

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 6:00pm EDT

2 Room M

ID: 31480

Engage in creative conversation with other open practitioners as you experience unique open spaces and centers around the MIT campus and nearby Cambridge. A chance to unwind, interact, and pursue ideas while stepping outside of the confines of the traditional conference setting. Convened by the staff of the Open Education Network, who are also always happy to chat about their work and offering of support resources!

Speakers

Open Education Network

Staff, Open Education Network

The OEN is a global collective of more than 1,700 higher education institutions and consortia that partner together to make higher education more affordable and equitable through engagement with open education. We are not a vendor, a business, or even a non-profit; we are part of... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 6:00pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Special Activity

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Catalyzing Human Connection Creativity and Curiosity to Thrive

4:55pm EDT

The Seven-Year Evolution of a Z-Course Boot Camp

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT

6 DR4

ID: 33944

Since 2019, the Open Educational Resources Committee at Fort Hays State University (FHSU) has offered an annual Z-Course Boot Camp event to teach faculty interested in converting to zero-cost course materials about reasons to consider switching, project management, copyright and licensing, OER authoring tools, accessibility, (more recently) generative artificial intelligence, and publishing and sharing. The boot camp is taught by a combination of librarians and instructional designers and is aimed primarily at faculty who have received a Z-Course Grant to convert their course to use zero-cost course materials, although it is open to all faculty. This session discusses the evolution of the boot camp through several formats, from a two-day in-person event, to a synchronous Zoom event, to a one-day event, to its current form as an asynchronous course offered in Blackboard Ultra, FHSU’s LMS. The boot camp has always had a strong emphasis on feedback and revision. In its asynchronous form, the camp begins with a welcome module that introduces participants to resources available to support OER work at the institutional and state level and provides a syllabus and list of relevant terminology. Each module contains readings and/or videos, a discussion requiring participants to apply and share new knowledge and skills, and a brief survey to capture participants’ feedback and suggestions for how the module could be improved. The camp ends with a final survey and a certificate for participants who complete it. We are currently on the second iteration of the asynchronous boot camp and expect to continue to update it iteratively every year. The current iteration contains the following modules:Why Open, which contains testimonial videos from faculty and readings about student needs and behaviors around course material costsProject Management, which contains a worksheet walking participants through searching for existing OERs, readings and videos about textbook structure and elements and textbook mapping for revision projects, and an exercise in which students review an existing textbookAccessibility, which talks about current regulations and best practices and includes a reflection and persona exerciseAI and OER, which is currently fairly minimal, with a single reading and a discussion about concerns and opportunitiesCopyright and Licensing, which contains readings about evaluating copyright, requesting permission to use student work, and finding free-to-use mediaAuthoring Tools, which contains a comparison between Pressbooks and Libretexts (the two OER authoring platforms for which FHSU provides support) and instructional videos on how to use bothPublishing and Sharing, which discusses how to implement peer review, add metadata, publish, print on demand, and promote new open resources within the OER and scholarly communities

Speakers

Claire Nickerson

Associate Professor and Open Initiatives Librarian, Fort Hays State University

Claire Nickerson is an associate professor and the Open Initiatives Librarian at Fort Hays State University (FHSU) in Kansas. She also sits on Open Up Learning Kansas, the statewide OER steering committee for the Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR). At FHSU, she chairs the institutional... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
6 DR4 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Innovating Open Content to Democratize Knowledge

4:55pm EDT

From Adoption to Co-Creation: Rethinking Open Educational Practices in Latin America Through the Creatón

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT

4 Room T

ID: 33886

In Latin America, the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) has been uneven and, in many cases, under-researched. This is compounded by a strong reliance on conceptual frameworks from the Global North that do not always align with local educational realities.The issue is not only one of access or production, but of meaning: many resources fail to integrate meaningfully into classroom practices. Repositories remain unused, materials are not perceived as relevant, and experiences remain isolated. This fragmentation reveals a persistent gap between the creation of resources and their pedagogical appropriation, as well as a lack of articulation and visibility of local experiences.In this context, this round table proposes to open a discussion on how to reconfigure Open Educational Practices (OEP) in the region, shifting the focus from adoption to situated co-creation. Within this framework, the experience of Creatón STEM+ is presented as a pedagogical device based on intensive collaborative workshops to design, prototype, and publish OER, aiming to reposition teachers as knowledge producers and sustain collective knowledge-building in networks.In its current regional projection, Creatón takes shape in 2024 through a pilot experience in which teachers from seven Latin American countries co-created resources focused on comprehensive sexuality education. However, this development builds on a prior trajectory: since 2018, through Ceibal (Uruguay), Creatón has been implemented as an Open Educational Practice (OEP) in diverse contexts, exploring collaborative creation, openness, and the circulation of resources within the Uruguayan education system.This accumulation of experiences has enabled the consolidation of methodological and pedagogical insights that now support its regional expansion. From this turning point, Creatón has evolved into an adaptive methodological model, implemented in diverse contexts—urban, rural, and initial teacher education—that challenge and enrich its development.More than a methodology, Creatón STEM+ is configured as an intensive collaborative pedagogical device that fosters open educational practices. Its strength lies in three key dimensions: teacher agency and co-authorship, which shift teachers from implementers of content to designers of situated knowledge and legitimate producers of pedagogical knowledge; the legitimization of practice, whereby the use and creation of OER move from isolated individual initiatives to recognized and expected professional practices within communities; and resilience and networking, where professional learning communities help overcome teacher isolation and sustain collective innovation processes beyond individual efforts.Based on this experience, the round table will collectively explore several key questions:How can we overcome the disconnect between OER production and classroom practice?What conditions enable open practices to become shared professional norms rather than isolated initiatives?How can transferable models be designed without losing contextual relevance?What does it mean to build openness from the territory, rather than solely from global frameworks?The round table will be structured as a horizontal exchange among participants, fostering dialogue across experiences, contexts, and perspectives. Rather than presenting a closed model, the aim is to open up a practice in development, inviting participants to collectively reflect on the future of open education in Latin America and other Global South contexts.

Speakers

Juan Dimuro

Content Analyst and Developer for Learning Communities, Ceibal

Juan José Dimuro is a specialist in Instructional and Academic Design in Historical Sciences (teaching track) from the Faculty of Humanities and Educational Sciences in Montevideo. He is a designer of digital, open, and accessible educational content, with over ten years of experience... Read More →

Nina Ibaceta Guerra

Researcher & Project Coordinator, CIDSTEM Institute at Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

Anna Vater

Senior Project Manager, Siemens Stiftung

Jennifer Venegas Espinoza

Researcher & Teacher, CIDSTEM Institute at Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

Biology and Natural Sciences teacher trained at the Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV). Holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from Alberto Hurtado University and a diploma in Gender Studies from the University of Chile. PhD candidate in the Interuniversity Program... Read More →

Lorena Santos

Researcher & Teacher, CIDSTEM Institute at Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

Special Education teacher trained at the Pontifícia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV). Holds a Master’s degree in Education with a specialization in Higher Education Pedagogy. Her professional experience focuses on educational support aimed at fostering inclusive conditions... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Round Table

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Innovating Open Content to Democratize Knowledge

5:30pm EDT

Measuring Student Perceptions of Open Educational Practices in a Co-Created Course

Wednesday October 7, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT

6 DR4

ID: 33803

This session shares findings from a mixed-methods research study examining how students’ awareness, attitudes, and engagement with Open Educational Practices (OEP) shift over the course of a semester in a higher education setting. The study is grounded in an undergraduate course on Open Educational Practices at a Canadian university, where students engaged with key concepts such as Open Educational Resources (OER), open pedagogy, Creative Commons licensing, remixing, co-creation, learner agency, accessibility, and social justice. The course itself was intentionally designed as a co-created learning environment, inviting students to contribute to shared knowledge building and reflect on the role of openness in their emerging professional practice.This session addresses how students experience and interpret openness when they are not only introduced to open concepts, but also invited to participate in open practices. The research asks how student awareness of OEP changes across a semester, what benefits and challenges students identify, how willing they are to engage in open practices in the future, and what factors appear to shape positive or negative shifts in their perceptions.The study uses a pre- and post-course design that includes surveys, reflective writing, and optional follow-up interviews. Survey items explore familiarity with OEP and OER, perceived quality and usefulness, confidence, willingness to share or co-create materials openly, and views on accessibility, equity, and institutional support. Reflection and interview data add depth by highlighting how students make meaning of openness in relation to their lived experiences, academic identities, and future educational or professional contexts.In this session, attendees will be introduced to the course and research design, invited to consider key themes emerging from the data, and encouraged to reflect on what these findings suggest for open course design and student engagement. Attention will be given to the pedagogical and ethical implications of asking students to move from consumers of knowledge to contributors within open learning environments.Attendees will leave with practical insights for designing or revising courses that introduce OEP in meaningful, learner-centred ways. This session will be especially relevant for educators, educational developers, researchers, and open education advocates interested in understanding how students perceive openness, what supports deeper engagement, and how open education can be enacted in ways that are participatory, reflective, and socially responsive.

Speakers

Brandon Carson

Sessional Instructor and Research Associate, Ontario Tech University

Brandon Carson is an open education scholar-practitioner whose work sits at the intersection of teaching and learning, educational technology, and higher education change. With more than 17 years of experience in the post-secondary sector, Brandon has supported initiatives related... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT
6 DR4 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Innovating Open Content to Democratize Knowledge

5:30pm EDT

Creating and Aligning Individual-Level Incentives for Open Science Practices

Wednesday October 7, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT

4 Room T

ID: 33963

The open science movement has advanced a set of reforms aimed at making research more transparent, reliable, and trustworthy. This movement has developed a range of practices – such as open-access publishing – which promotes transparency; data sharing – which promotes reliability, preregistration – which promotes honest communication of uncertainty and error. As well as a range of other practices intended to strengthen the availability, accessibility, transparency, reliability, reusability, impacts, and trustworthiness of scientific claims, education, publications, and outputs.While the general benefits of open science to the scientific community are often lauded, the career benefits and risks of engaging in open science for individual researchers are not well understood. The aim of this round table discussion is to identify and discuss the strategies that organizations sizes can employ to support their communities of researchers in engaging with open science practices.A growing number of meta-science studies have examined the impacts of Open Science at the system level. These focus, for example, on broader effects such as citation rates and research quality; societal impacts, such as public engagement, trust, and inclusivity; and institutional impacts such as innovation and efficiency gains. These each have identified important benefits and consequences of Open Science, but primarily at the systems level -not the individual level.This session draws on these studies, along with research we have conducted that systematically summarizes perceived versus empirically observed career-related incentives and risks of engaging in open science practice and the potential causal mechanisms proposed to explain the underlying incentive mechanisms. The research systematizes evidence for the relationship between a broad range of OS practices (including sharing and producing open data and resources) and a comprehensive spectrum of individual–level direct benefits (e.g. collaborations, dissemination) and costs (e.g. time, skill acquisition) and longer-term rewards ( e.g. citation, promotion ) and risks (e.g. trusts, reputation) . During the roundtable we will: Summarize what rewards, costs, and benefits for individual researchers are known to be associated with participation in different open practices -- based on best-of-class systematic reviewsElicit from participants the current approaches that are used by their organizations to support and incent open practices; and their relationship to organizational goals. Facilitate discussion and analysis of strategies to align organizational approaches and goals with individual-level professional development rewards. In addition, a lighting-talk version of the summary presented in #1 will be made available as a pre-recorded five-minute online presentation. And participants will be provided with an annotated bibliography of resources for selecting, aligning and evaluating open practices.

Speakers

Micah Altman

Research Scientist, Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship, MIT

Dr Micah Altman is a social and information scientist at MIT’s Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship. Dr. Altman conducts research, provides public commentary, and collaborates in initiatives related to how information technologies change politics, society, and science... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Round Table

Speaker Modality In-person
Track Hacking the Open Ecosystem and Praxis for the Public Good

OEGlobal 2026

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