Name: The Structural Value of Openness: Open Infrastructure for Public Good
Start: 2026-10-08T16:20:00-0400
End: 2026-10-08T16:50:00-0400

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

The Structural Value of Openness: Open Infrastructure for Public Good

Thursday October 8, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT

8 - Dining Room 6 - 6th Floor

ID: 34004

Broadly conceived, open education is a collection of values and practices that seek to create, share, and expand access to knowledge for the public good. The work of open education happens in many ways across higher education. Faculty and students teach and learn with OER, librarians guide us through knowledge discovery and cataloging processes, and staff develop and support programming to cultivate communities of practice. Often these practices are disjointed across the institution and rarely connected to a university’s wider mission.

However, at the City University of New York, the development of the CUNY Academic Commons demonstrates the structural value of openness: how openness can serve as an infrastructural commitment and guiding principle for an institution and the knowledge that it produces.

Using the City University of New York as a case study, and in particular the open-source technological infrastructure of the CUNY Academic Commons, this presentation will explore how open infrastructure supports inclusive, student-centered pedagogical approaches, fosters faculty, staff, and student agency in knowledge creation, and connects the work within the university to its mission to serve the public good.

The City University of New York is the largest urban public institution of higher education in the United States, comprising 26 colleges spread across the five boroughs of New York City. Founded as the Free Academy 1847, CUNY has a history of openness and activism. The university’s foundational principle contends that higher education should be accessible to all the city’s residents, and despite persistent lack of funding and chronic austerity, CUNY continues to provide affordable access to higher education and serve as a transformative engine of social mobility for all New Yorkers.

In 2009, a group of CUNY faculty, staff, and graduate students used the open-source software frameworks WordPress and BuddyPress to launch the CUNY Academic Commons, a digital platform to “support faculty initiatives and build community through the use(s) of technology in teaching and learning.” Over the years, and more recently with OER funding from New York State, the CUNY Academic Commons has grown to over 50,000 users who have built 40,000+ websites and administer over 2,200 groups.

In addition to the Commons, other projects have emerged across CUNY, creating an open-source ecosystem and community of practice that develops alternatives to corporate, siloed tools for teaching and learning at CUNY.

As a community-developed and maintained platform, the CUNY Academic Commons evolves in response to users' needs and desires. Faculty teach and students take courses, some of which involve co-developing projects and public-facing resources. University staff create websites to publicize their departments and research centers. Graduate students create personalized portfolios to share their academic and non-academic work. Colleagues leverage groups to share research projects and connect across the city.

This presentation will detail how the openness and flexibility of the CUNY Academic Commons gives us a vision of what a university for the public good is and could be: diverse communities of practice facilitating and engaging in the creation of knowledge for all.

Speakers

Laurie Hurson

Assistant Director of Open Education, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY)

Laurie Hurson is the Assistant Director of Open Education at the CUNY Graduate Center's Teaching and Learning Center, where she focuses on faculty development and the implementation of open educational practices. She develops and leads initiatives including the Open Education Publishing... Read More →

Thursday October 8, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT
8 - Dining Room 6 - 6th Floor 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

Tickets

Success you have shared X tickets.

OEGlobal 2026

Laurie Hurson

Get help with the event

Success you have shared X tickets.

OEGlobal 2026

Laurie Hurson

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

Get help with the event