Loading…
All sessions are available online except round tables, special activities, and workshops.
← Back to schedule
Charting the Path: Seeding the Open Education Movement
Thursday October 8, 2026 1:40pm - 2:45pm EDT
7 DR5
ID: 33949

The open education movement itself may be the biggest legacy of the announcement made on the front page of the New York Times on April 4, 2001, “Auditing Classes at M.I.T., on the Web and Free.” The innovation and leadership of MIT and the William and Flora Hewlett and the Andrew W. Mellow Foundations, along with Creative Commons, did more than just break paths for access to learning as a public good in the digital age, they made possible the impact from countless other organizations globally. This announcement twenty five years ago accelerated a global online movement in open education. This session invites selected organizations from the early days of open education to describe their paths and impact, thanks in small part to paths opened by MIT OpenCourseWare.Panelists will tell their organization’s open education origin stories and celebrate their impact and innovation over the last two decades.Delft University Technology: TU Delft, the oldest and largest technical university in the Netherlands, is at the forefront of open and online learning and a long standing advocate for open education. One of the first opencoursewares globally, TU Delft continues to offer openly licensed course materials through its OpenCourseWare, which was launched in 2007.Open Education Japan: OE Japan represents universities and companies in Japan promoting open education and disseminating open educational resources. With its origins in the Japan OCW Consortium, OE Japan includes two early opencoursewares celebrating their 20+ year anniversaries, the University of Tokyo OpenCourseWare, the University of Kyoto OpenCourseWare and Nagoya University OpenCourseWare.Open Education Global: Today, OEGlobal connects a broad global community of open education organizations and leads international initiatives such as Open Education Week. It has its origins as the OpenCourseWare Consortium with informal meetings beginning in 2006. Mountain Heights Academy: Mountain Heights serves approximately 3,000 middle and high school students across Utah in the United States with a curriculum based on open education resources. Founded as the Open High School of Utah in 2009, it was the first K-12 school to embrace open education resources as the primary educational content for its courses.
Speakers
avatar for DeLaina Tonks

DeLaina Tonks

Executive Director, Mountain Heights Academy
Dr. DeLaina Tonks has been involved in education since 1991, as a teacher, instructional designer, and administrator. Prior to coming to Mountain Heights Academy, she taught high school French and Spanish in Upper Arlington, Ohio. DeLaina is a 2020 “Best of State – Administrator... Read More →
avatar for Katsusuke Shigeta

Katsusuke Shigeta

Professor, Information Inititative Center / Hokkaido University
Dr. Katsusuke Shigeta is a Professor at the Information Initiative Center and Director of the Data-Driven Education Initiative Center at Hokkaido University. He serves as the President of Open Education Japan (OEJ) and was previously a member of the Board of Directors for Open Education... Read More →
avatar for Willem van Valkenburg

Willem van Valkenburg

Executive Director TU Delft Learning for Life Centre, Delft University of Technology
Willem van Valkenburg is the Executive Director of the Learning for Life Centre of Delft University of Technology based in the Netherlands. The Centre offers online and blended education to empower professionals and lifelong learners worldwide. The Centre has developed more than 250... Read More →
avatar for Curt Newton

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 →
BM
Thursday October 8, 2026 1:40pm - 2:45pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA
  Panel

Sign up or log in to save this to your schedule, view media, leave feedback and see who's attending!

Tweet Share

Get help with the event

Contact event planner Event login
View support guides Find upcoming events
Create an event you'd love to attend!
Explore why organizers choose Sched • Success stories
Event App • Event scheduling • Event registration • Event ticketing • Sched forms • Call for papers • Badges • Conferences
© 2026. SCHED LLC - All rights reserved - Helping events since 2008
Conference Scheduling Software • Privacy • Terms
Share Modal

Share this link via

Or copy link