Name: The Work at the Hinge: Mini Structures and Human-Centered Open Education
Start: 2026-10-07T15:00:00-0400
End: 2026-10-07T15:30:00-0400

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

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

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OEGlobal 2026

Megan Brittany-Fruia Zara

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OEGlobal 2026

Megan Brittany-Fruia Zara

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