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All sessions are available online except round tables, special activities, and workshops.
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Wednesday, October 7
 

12:25pm EDT

Silences in the Literature: Reimagining Qualitative Methods in Open Education Research to Disrupt Epistemic Hierarchies
Wednesday October 7, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
ID: 31007

Open education research has expanded rapidly alongside the global growth of open educational resources (OER), open pedagogy, and open knowledge practices. While the field has made intentional movement towards foregrounding its research in social justice, the methods used to collect and examine data in open education often continue to reproduce dominant epistemological frameworks that privilege Western, institutional, and positivist approaches to knowledge production. Making assumptions that “there must be gaps in the literature” when certain knowledge is not published in a peer-reviewed journal is just one example of epistemological hierarchies we’ll identify as an opportunity to dismantle with new qualitative approaches. Our session will engage the audience in exploring the idea that open education research would benefit from moving beyond inherited traditional methodological “norms” and instead consider the role that critical frameworks (e.g. Black Feminist, Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Poststructuralism, Postcolonial Theory, etc.) and concepts like reflexivity, positionality, and relationality could play in democratizing the research process to intentionally uplift historically marginalized ways of knowing. This session proposes a critical reimagining of qualitative research protocols in open education in order to better align research practices with transformative values like equity, student agency, power distribution, and the democratization of knowledge that the open movement champions.Attendees will be invited to critically examine how traditional qualitative protocols like the literature review, interview design, consent processes, data ownership, and authorship conventions have a tendency to reinforce epistemic hierarchies. The session will present practical strategies for researchers seeking to shift toward more inclusive and ethically grounded approaches, but it will also create space for participants to come together and brainstorm what it might look like, for example, to center open and participant-controlled data practices as well as reflexive transparency concerning positionality and power in the research process.
Speakers
avatar for Jasmine Roberts-Crews

Jasmine Roberts-Crews

Lecturer, Ohio State University
Dr. Jasmine Roberts-Crews is an educator, speaker, writer, and scholar advocate.She earned her bachelor's degree in communication studies and Spanish at the University of Michigan, her master's degree in communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and doctorate... Read More →
avatar for Lindsey Gwozdz

Lindsey Gwozdz

Assistant Dean of Libraries, Community College of Rhode Island
Lindsey Gwozdz joined CCRI in 2024 as the Assistant Dean of the Library, having spent 11 years prior as an Associate Professor and the Scholarly Communications Librarian at Roger Williams University. She also serves as the Fellow for Open Education at the New England Board of Higher... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

12:25pm EDT

The Impact of Open Textbooks in Taiwan: A Personal and Institutional Journey
Wednesday October 7, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
ID: 31961

The increasing cost of commercial textbooks, combined with rapidly changing student learning behaviors and widespread access to unauthorized digital materials, has created an urgent need to rethink how learning resources are developed and delivered in higher education. In Taiwan, these challenges have driven a national and institutional shift toward Open Textbooks (OTB) as a more equitable, flexible, and sustainable solution. This session will present a comprehensive overview of how Taiwan has advanced Open Textbook adoption through a combination of policy support and grassroots engagement. The movement was influenced by international open education advocacy, notably the 2018 lecture tour in Taiwan by James Glapa-Grossklag, which introduced practical models from the California Community Colleges system. Building on this foundation, the Taiwan Open Course and Education Consortium launched national initiatives (2019–2021; 2022–2024), further supported by the Ministry of Education’s Second Phase of the e-Learning Movement Project (2022–2025), involving 37 universities in promoting OTB adoption. At the institutional level, this session will highlight the implementation of Open Textbook initiatives at National Taipei University of Technology since 2021. These include structured programs for course adoption and collaborative OTB co-creation. To date, 46 faculty members have adopted 64 open textbooks across their courses, and 51 book reviews have been published to support wider dissemination and faculty engagement. In addition, two active communities are currently co-developing new open textbooks tailored to local educational contexts. Beyond presenting these initiatives, this session will offer a multi-perspective reflection on OTB adoption, incorporating insights from students, faculty, and administrators. It will explore how open textbooks enhance accessibility, support real-time content updates, and enable innovative teaching practices. The session will also address common challenges, including faculty readiness, sustainability, and quality assurance. Participants will gain practical strategies for initiating or scaling Open Textbook initiatives within their own institutions. The session is particularly relevant for educators, administrators, and policymakers interested in open education, digital learning, and equitable access to knowledge. By combining evidence-based outcomes with lived experiences, this session aims to provide transferable insights that support the global movement to democratize education through open content.
Speakers
avatar for Ta-Wei Li

Ta-Wei Li

Assistant Professor, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Ta-Wei Li is an Assistant Professor of Applied Chemistry at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and served as Director of the Open Education Office from 2014 to 2021. From 2017 to 2021, he led the Taiwan Open Courseware and Educational Consortium (TOCEC) as President, helping... Read More →
avatar for Yu-Lun Huang

Yu-Lun Huang

Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Yu-Lun Huang received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Information Engineering from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, in 1995 and 2001, respectively. She has been a member of Phi Tau Phi Society since 1995. She is now an associate professor in the Department... Read More →
avatar for Jicheng Sun

Jicheng Sun

Project Manager, National Taipei University of Technology
Mr. Jicheng Sun is a Project Manager in the Office of Academic Affairs at National Taipei University of Technology (NTUT), Taiwan. His work focuses on promoting innovative teaching and digital learning initiatives across the university. He oversees multiple institutional projects... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

1:40pm EDT

The Leading Edge of Open Education: Meet the 2026 Awardees of the OE Awards for Excellence
Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:45pm EDT
ID: 33277

By the start of this conference, Open Education Global will have announced the winners of the 2026 Open Education Awards for Excellence, the fifteenth year of this community driven program to recognize the people, projects, and practices that exemplify open education in action. We bring together representatives of this years awardees from both ones present at the conference and others who will join is online. Each will share conversational style an overview of the work for which they were recognized, but also to share what motivates them. This is an opportunity for those attending the conference to extend congratulations, for the awardees to express appreciation, and most importantly to build stronger interconnections within the open education community.Since 2011, the OEAwards have recognized over 300 individuals, projects, and practices. Over the past few years, we have been sifting the awards from a "competition" like focus on the "winners" to a celebration and making visible all-- the details of hundreds of nominees are shared. Furthermore, the program is extending itself into an ongoing encouragement all year long of "micro-recognition" as expressions of gratitude for the often invisible work that makes open education possible.Join us for a conversation with the people identified through the program who are modeling in action what Open Education does around the world.
Speakers
avatar for Marcela Morales

Marcela Morales

Executive Co-Director, Open Education Global
Marcela is an avid promotor of access to knowledge and a true believer in the power of education to transform lives and societies all around the world.  She believes that education is an essential, shared, and collaborative social good for which we are all responsible.As Co-Executive... Read More →
avatar for Alan Levine

Alan Levine

Director of Community Engagement, Open Education Global
Alan Levine explores the potential of new technologies for education. In 1993 he set up a web server on a Mac SE/30 at the Maricopa Community Colleges and has not left since. His current role is Director of Community Engagement at Open Education Global. Before that he provided consulting... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 1:40pm - 2:45pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

2:15pm EDT

Empowering Secondary Education via Open Higher Education Modules: The UHCOOL Framework
Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
ID: 31964

The rapid evolution of global education standards has placed unprecedented pressure on secondary schools to deliver specialized, high-quality elective curricula. While universities possess an abundance of digital expertise, translating this knowledge into accessible K-12 formats remains a significant hurdle. Traditional digital initiatives, such as standard MOOCs, often fail to achieve meaningful impact in high school settings because they lack integration with local teachers and pedagogical adaptability. This results in a structural discrepancy where rural and under-resourced schools remain isolated from higher education’s intellectual wealth.To address this, we present the "University/High-school Collaboration On Online Learning" (UHCOOL) framework, spearheaded by the "ewant" open education platform. UHCOOL moves beyond simple content sharing to establish a sustainable governance model for digital knowledge transfer. Its primary goal is to democratize access to advanced subjects by transforming complex university-level curricula into modular, flexible Open Educational Resources (OER) specifically tailored for secondary education.The operational core of UHCOOL is a collaborative nexus involving universities, secondary schools, and industry partners. Rather than delivering a "one-size-fits-all" curriculum, the project utilizes a sophisticated dual-layered digital architecture. By providing each high school with a localized Open Learning Environment (OLE) based on the Moodle platform, the system empowers local educators to act as curators rather than just facilitators. Teachers can access high-level university "benchmark courses"—including videos, assessments, and slide decks—and then adapt or merge these modules with their own localized teaching strategies. This ensures that university faculty's expertise is supported by high school teachers' classroom management skills.The effectiveness of this decentralized OER model is evidenced by its rapid adoption. A flagship course on semiconductor technology, for instance, bridged the gap for nearly 2,000 students across 51 schools in its first year, with participation expected to nearly double by 2025. Feedback indicates that providing a robust "pedagogical skeleton" allows teachers to focus on student engagement and critical thinking rather than starting curriculum design from scratch.In conclusion, the UHCOOL initiative illustrates that the true democratization of education lies in the balance between openness to resources and local pedagogical autonomy. By reframing university content as adaptable modules within a cross-institutional framework, we provide a scalable solution for educational equity. This model serves as a vital blueprint for leveraging OER to ensure specialized knowledge is a public good accessible to all learners, regardless of location.
Speakers
avatar for Ken-Zen Chen

Ken-Zen Chen

Associate Professor and Associate Director of HERO Center, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Ken-Zen Chen serves as an Associate Professor at the Institute of Education, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU), Taiwan. His scholarly work focuses on digital learning ecosystems, institutional collaboration, and the practical application of Open Educational Resources... Read More →
YJ

Yun-Chia Jasmine Chang

Professor and Director of HERO Center, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Professor Yung-Chia Chang is a faculty member in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and a key contributor to the HERO Center’s work on open higher education resources. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial... Read More →
WL

Wei-I Lee

Research Fellow of HERO Center, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Wei-I Lee is a professor in the Department of Electrophysics at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and has served as the director of the Research Center of Higher Educational Resources for Openness (HERO Center). He obtained his B.S. in Electrophysics from National Chiao Tung... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

2:15pm EDT

Listening to Teachers: A U.S.–Finland Collaboration to Develop Open AI Literacy Resources
Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
ID: 31135

An Erasmus-supported collaboration between Mount St. Joseph University (United States) and Laurea University of Applied Sciences (Finland) brings multidisciplinary students together to explore artificial intelligence and digital innovation through international, project-based learning. In shared courses offered across both institutions, students work in global teams during the semester to design and prototype AI-related projects that address real-world problems. Through this project-based learning model, students engage in iterative design, collaborative problem solving, and reflective discussion about the social and ethical implications of artificial intelligence. These collaborations culminate in intensive project weeks in which students travel between campuses, refine their ideas through collaborative workshops, and present their work to international audiences. The partnership emphasizes experiential learning, cross-cultural collaboration, and the development of practical solutions to emerging technology challenges. Through these experiences, students gain exposure to different educational systems, technological perspectives, and cultural approaches to innovation while developing skills in teamwork, communication, and applied AI literacy.This session foregrounds the role of international academic exchange in shaping these learning experiences. The Erasmus partnership allows students to move beyond virtual collaboration and participate in short-term study-abroad exchanges where they work together in person during intensive project weeks. These exchanges provide opportunities for students to experience different educational cultures, develop intercultural communication skills, and engage directly with peers from other national contexts. For institutions seeking to integrate emerging technologies into global learning initiatives, the project offers a model for combining study-abroad programming, collaborative coursework, and interdisciplinary innovation.As part of this collaboration, students also contribute to the development of open educational resources (OER) designed to support educators navigating generative artificial intelligence in teaching and learning. Working alongside faculty mentors, students translate their project experiences into openly licensed teaching materials that provide practical guidance on ethical AI use, assignment design, and responsible integration of AI tools. Because these materials are openly licensed, they can be freely shared, adapted, and improved by educators around the world. In this way, OER not only disseminates the outcomes of the project but also creates opportunities for ongoing global collaboration, enabling educators in different countries to build upon shared materials and contribute new perspectives and practices.These student-generated resources are informed by a qualitative study examining how K–12 teachers are currently navigating generative artificial intelligence in their classrooms. Interviews with teachers across subject areas and school contexts reveal how educators are redesigning assignments, establishing boundaries for acceptable AI assistance, and negotiating new expectations for academic integrity as student AI use expands. These insights help ensure that the resulting OER materials address real classroom needs rather than abstract policy debates.This presentation will be of particular interest to educators and program leaders interested in global exchanges, short-term study abroad, and international collaborative learning. By connecting student mobility, project-based learning, and open educational resource development, the project demonstrates how global partnerships can create meaningful learning experiences while contributing openly licensed teaching materials that support educators navigating generative AI in classrooms worldwide.
Speakers
avatar for Rebecca J. Allen

Rebecca J. Allen

Chair of Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, Mount St. Joseph University
Rebecca J. Allen, PhD, is Assistant Professor and Chair of Computer Science and Mathematics at Mount St. Joseph University. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on artificial intelligence in education, participatory research, and open educational resources that support equitable... Read More →
BB

Brook Batch

Asst. Professor, Mount St. Joseph University
Dr. Brook Batch is an Assistant Professor of Social Computing at Mount St. Joseph University. Her research explores the intersection of technology and education, with a focus on computing education, students’ development of research and writing practices, and the use of generative... Read More →
TU

Tero Uusitalo

Senior Lecturer, Laurea University of Applied Sciences
MSc Tero Uusitalo is a Senior Lecturer in the Business Management Department at Laurea University of Applied Sciences. His research focuses on working life connected pedagogy, international research, development and innovation as well as the development and application of artificial... Read More →
TT

Taru Tallgren

Senior Lecturer in Degree Programme in Business Management, Laurea University of Applied Sciences
Taru Tallgren is a Senior Lecturer in the Business Management Department at Laurea University of Applied Sciences. Her research focuses on working‑life‑connected and coaching‑based pedagogy, as well as pedagogical innovations that support flexible open learning models and equitable... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

3:00pm EDT

How Open Should Open Be? The AI Question for Archives, Repositories, and Open Scholarship
Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 4:05pm EDT
ID: 34865

Libraries, archives, and mission-driven publishers have been key players in the global movement to increase open and equitable access to scholarship and to primary source materials. One key question that stewards of archival and general collections, and publishers of scholarly content, must wrestle with today is whether the principles behind making content open for individual readers and users can be applied to LLMs and generative AI tools. Concerns over loss of provenance, control, and lack of attribution bump up against a conviction that the high quality content stewarded by research libraries, archives, and scholarly publishers would enhance the quality of output produced by AI tools. As AI systems seek access to scholarly content for training data, long-standing assumptions and values about openness, stewardship, control and provenance are being challenged and reexamined. In this panel discussion, we bring together different perspectives on the core question of whether and how scholarly content should be open for AI use.Panelists:Dave Hansen, Executive Director of Authors Alliance, argues that control and gatekeeping are the wrong approach for libraries and archives, and instead asserts that “building the infrastructure that supports open, accountable research of every kind.” will be the most values-aligned and productive role for the library community.Alison Muddit, Chief Executive Officer of the Public Library of Science (PLOS), asserts that AI and open access are not naturally in tension; but/and that a mission-driven publisher like PLOS must take seriously the fact that AI intensifies the need for rigor, transparency, and signals of trustworthiness. She emphasizes the responsibility to ensure that the scholarly record functions as trustworthy infrastructure for both human and machine reasoning.Chris Bourg, Director of Libraries at MIT, is a global leader in open scholarship and an advocate for the public mission of knowledge institutions. At MIT, she is co-chair of the MIT Working Group on Scholarly Content and Generative AI, and a member of the MIT Committee on AI in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training. Panel facilitator: Mike Furlough, Executive Director of HathiTrust, works with dozens of member libraries to steward over 19 million digitized items from their collections, recognizing that memory institutions have a responsibility to make collections broadly accessible for all modes of research. However, emergent modes of research have brought new, more urgent demands for access to those collections, which in turn pose new questions regarding sustainable stewardship.
Speakers
avatar for Chris Bourg

Chris Bourg

Director of Libraries, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Chris Bourg is the Director of Libraries at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she is also the founding director of the Center for Research on Equitable and Open Scholarship (CREOS). Prior to assuming her role at MIT, Chris worked for 12 years in the Stanford University... Read More →
MF

Mike Furlough

Executive Director, HathiTrust
Furlough leads an organization that includes over 90 academic and research institutions working to transform scholarship and research in the 21st century. The partnering institutions currently own and maintain a trusted digital repository of more than 11 million volumes, digitized... Read More →
avatar for Dave Hansen

Dave Hansen

Executive Director, Authors Alliance
David Hansen is the Executive Director of Authors Alliance, a nonprofit that aims to support authors who want to see their works widely distributed for the benefit of the public. Authors Alliance has led efforts to secure copyright exemptions for text data mining researchers and has... Read More →
AM

Alison Muddit

Chief Executive Officer, Public Library of Science
Since June 2017 Alison has been Chief Executive Officer of the Public Library of Science (PLOS), an organization on a mission to drive open science forward with measurable, meaningful change in research publishing, policy, and practice. Prior to PLOS, Alison served as Executive Director... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:00pm - 4:05pm EDT
3 Room I MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

3:35pm EDT

From Classrooms to Careers: Equipping Today’s Students with the Workforce Skills of Tomorrow Through OER
Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
ID: 33396

Across disciplines and institutions, instructors face growing challenges related to student engagement and academic integrity. These challenges are compounded by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and rapidly shifting workforce demands. AI enables students to produce work that is not their own in seconds. Meanwhile, our workforce requires students to develop an ever-increasing set of skills and knowledge in order to obtain entry-level jobs. Traditional print textbooks and resources cannot keep up. Rather, these rapidly evolving technologies and workforce needs require students to learn from the most engaging, up-to-date, and relevant resources possible — like OER!Drawing on global data from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, this session highlights the skills and competencies increasingly valued by employers worldwide. We’ll share practical strategies for customizing OER to support skill development, respond to emerging technologies, and meet local and industry-specific needs, all while maintaining academic rigor and relevance.Attendees will move beyond theory to practical application. This session progresses from a high-level overview of workforce skill trends to the creation of customized, ready-to-use, openly licensed classroom materials. Participants will receive a template they can plug into the generative AI of their choosing (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) to create five ready-to-implement, skill-building activities rooted in the emerging skills and competencies noted in the Future of Jobs Report 2025. These activities are also designed to meet course objectives, incorporate OER content, and drive meaningful student engagement.This session showcases how AI can serve as a co-pilot in OER creation rather than a threat to academic integrity, offering a proactive stance on emerging technology. Ultimately, this gives instructors hands-on experience with the skills the labor market requires of their students (i.e., AI literacy). Additionally, by focusing on universal workforce skills, this session is accessible to educators at various stages of OER adoption and inclusive of diverse global disciplines, from agriculture to nursing to finance.Participants will leave this session being able to:Identify the key challenges college educators are facing, including maintaining student engagement, managing the impact of AI, and equipping students with ever-changing, in-demand career skills.Analyze emerging workforce skills and trends from the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 and apply them to specific academic disciplines.Explain how OER can be customized to support skill development while maintaining academic rigor.Apply a structured AI prompt template to generate 1) skills-based learning activities aligned with course objectives, open content, and industry-specific needs, and 2) aligned instructional support materials (e.g., grading rubrics, scaffolding for struggling students).Refine AI-generated activities to ensure they support individual course contexts, follow accessibility best practices, and meet activity design preferences.
Speakers
avatar for Lindsay Josephs

Lindsay Josephs

Marketing and Communications Lead, OpenStax, Rice University
Lindsay Josephs (she/her) is the higher education marketing and communications lead at OpenStax, the world’s largest publisher of OER textbooks. Lindsay creates and manages marketing campaigns for OpenStax's 60+ college textbooks and reading engagement tool, Assignable. She’s... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

3:35pm EDT

From Vision to Impact: A Change Approach Toward Accessible Digital Educational Resources
Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
ID: 32293

At HAN University of Applied Sciences, we aim to create an ecosystem where students and educators have effortless access to high‑quality learning resources, open, semi‑open, and commercial, so they can assemble the optimal blend for their teaching and learning needs. At HAN, we believe that education should be accessible to everyone. In a time when it can sometimes be difficult to determine what is true and what is false, it is up to us to provide students with reliable information. Preferably through learning materials in various formats, so that students can choose the materials that suit them and enrich their studies. It’s also about using public resources wisely. Why keep reinventing the wheel? If we openly share and reuse the best materials, we gain in both quality and efficiency.Rather than positioning openness as a standalone objective, HAN has developed a institution‑wide approach that embeds Open Educational Resources (OER) into everyday practice. This approach is grounded in five pillars: support, professional development, recognition & rewards, change management, and technical infrastructure.1. Support. We provide hands‑on guidance to educators and teams as they search for, select, create, and share educational resources. We are setting up a Content Support Team (CST) to assist instructors and teams. This support covers educational, legal, aesthetic, and technical questions, allowing instructors to focus on the content itself. 2. Professional development. To strengthen OER literacy, we invest in targeted training programmes that help educators navigate copyright, Creative Commons licensing, accessibility requirements, and open pedagogical practices. To underpin this approach, we developed a competency profile for OER, grounded in existing frameworks and literature, as the foundation for our professionalisation programme. Modular workshops, e-learning, coaching trajectories, and learning communities build confidence and enable sustainable adoption. 3. Recognition and rewards. OER creation and sharing often remain invisible forms of academic labor. At HAN, we address this by recognizing contributions to open knowledge within workload models, team goals, and performance dialogues. Faculty who develop openly licensed materials, improve existing resources, or experiment with open pedagogy receive acknowledgment consistent with the broader recognition and rewards movement in higher education.4. Change management. To achieve openness on a larger scale, cultural, structural, and behavioral changes are necessary. That is why we are adopting a structured approach to change management to align leadership, foster faculty engagement, dispel misconceptions about open licenses, and establish a clear governance framework. Managers are coached in this process as part of the change initiative. The faculties develop their own implementation plans, ensuring that their chosen approach fits within the existing challenges within the faculty.  5. Technical infrastructure. Finally, a sustainable OER ecosystem depends on robust, architecture-aware technology. HAN strives to create an integrated environment in which faculty and students can discover, combine, and reuse materials from various repositories and platforms. We prioritize a single HAN learning materials repository where all learning materials are stored, from which quality checks can be performed, and from which they can then be easily shared openly.
Speakers
avatar for Marijn Post

Marijn Post

Policy Advisor Learning with Technology, HAN University of Applied Sciences
Marijn Post is a leading expert in OER with extensive experience in digital learning and open education policy. In 2022 she won the national (SURF) Award for her work in the field of OER. She developed strategies for recognizing and rewarding OER contributions, but also developed... Read More →
avatar for Marja Versantvoort

Marja Versantvoort

Projectmanager HAN approach Digital Educational Resources, HAN University of Applied Sciences
Master’s in EducationIn 2016, Marja led a five-year national flagship project. This was a collaboration among 17 Dutch bachelor’s programs in Nursing, aimed at creating a community centered on the open sharing and collaborative development of educational resources. Following that... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
6 DR4 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

4:20pm EDT

Practicing Rebellion: Strategies to Sustain Open Education Leadership
Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 5:25pm EDT
ID: 33975

The Rebus Luminary Fellowship for Education Leaders brought together fifteen postsecondary leaders across Canada and the United States for a three-month program dedicated to collective learning and renewal. Together in the winter and spring of 2026, we witnessed transformation in one another and ourselves through three online synchronous sessions and a three-day in-person summit. Our inquiry focused on individual and collective liberation. We developed an honest assessment of disparity in higher education, drawing on real-time pressures in our workplaces to track and examine the distribution of power at the systems-level. Rebus Luminary Fellows serve in multiple leadership roles within education institutions and organizations, ranging from directors to program leads to design specialists. Our community offers valuable perspectives rooted in our own leadership needs and educational contexts. We also dedicated time for inner work, personal reflection, and discussion, fueling visions of possible futures.In this hybrid panel, Rebus Luminary Fellows speak candidly about the challenges of leading open education initiatives, including isolation, burnout, and overwork. We also detail the newly acquired liberatory strategies that continue to make a difference for us in our daily work. In particular, the panel invites participants to consider the miracle of shifting perspective, deep values alignment, and moving from extractive to generative practices. Panelists will examine how these new practices, which started out as suggestions and flashes of curiosity, contribute to restorative, playful, and inventive leadership. Panelists will also discuss realistic methods for sustaining a cross-regional community of practice following the formal completion of a program. Fellows remain committed to nurturing our relationships and continued shared growth, but navigate active schedules and lead multiple projects. To this end, we share innovative ways to nourish and protect meaningful connection across the distance. We invite participants to replicate and experiment with examples of our asynchronous and synchronous engagement for ongoing interaction in your own communities.  This session offers both solidarity and strategy. Methods for inclusive hybrid interaction include: open-ended Menti questions and polls to gauge participant priorities and special interests in leadership and collective transformation; a shared online document for real-time note-taking to ensure participation is open and equitable for online participants; and voicing the Meeting Chat comments aloud at regular intervals to ensure multiple means of access to the contributions of online participants. Come away with concrete practices for sustaining yourself and your communities, as well as affirmation that we are not alone in this work.
Speakers
avatar for Christina Hendricks

Christina Hendricks

Professor of Teaching and Academic Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology., University of British Columbia Vancouver
Christina Hendricks is a Professor of Teaching in philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, where she also serves as the Academic Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology. She has been an open education practitioner, advocate, and researchers... Read More →
avatar for Christine Rickabaugh

Christine Rickabaugh

Open Education Librarian, University of Arkansas Libraries
Christine Rickabaugh is a former early childhood educator who traded crayons and glitter for Pressbooks and Creative Commons licenses — and hasn't looked back. Now the Open Education Librarian at the University of Arkansas Libraries, she leads the university's OER program, chairs... Read More →
avatar for Joan Giovannini

Joan Giovannini

Manager of Faculty Development with Instructional Design, Engagement, and Support (IDEAS), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Joan Giovannini is Manager of Faculty Development with Instructional Design, Engagement, and Support (IDEAS) at University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she leads institution‑wide initiatives that support evidence‑based, and technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Joan designs... Read More →
avatar for Allison Buckley

Allison Buckley

Program Specialist, Southern Regional Education Board
Allison Buckley manages and supports the work of open educational resources and the Education Technology Cooperative, where she aids in increasing open educational resources awareness at the local and national levels. She joined SREB’s postsecondary education team in 2024 as a... Read More →
avatar for Ginelle Baskin

Ginelle Baskin

Assistant Professor and Open Education Librarian, Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU)
Ginelle Baskin is the Open Education Librarian at Middle Tennessee State University, where she leads campus initiatives to advance textbook affordability and the adoption of open educational resources (OER). She works closely with faculty, departments, and campus partners to support... Read More →
avatar for Veronica Vold

Veronica Vold

Education Consultant, Equinox Learning Design, LLC
Veronica Vold, PhD, created Equinox Learning Design, LLC to champion equity in higher education. With Open Oregon Educational Resources, she led an instructional design team and created statewide initiatives for accessibility and design justice. As an education consultant, she provides... Read More →
avatar for Brandon Carson

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 4:20pm - 5:25pm EDT
3 Room I MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

4:55pm EDT

How Open Is a University? A Framework for Comparison
Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
ID: 34812

In 2024, the State Distance University of Costa Rica added the word “open” to its institutional description, a change that carries numerous implications that are not always clear to those both inside and outside the institution.At the end of that year, we have the incredible opportunity to be part of a publication called the Handbook of Open Universities Around the World—the only university in Central America to participate—and this experience allows us to analyze just how open the UNED of Costa Rica really is.Furthermore, this Handbook “provides rich analytical perspectives on the status and challenges of single-mode distance learning universities as an educational phenomenon while unpacking the premise of ‘openness’ itself.” (Mishra, Sanjaya & Panda, Santosh, 2025).Analyzing how openness manifests itself across 47 universities worldwide from various fields and perspectives provides us with numerous experiences, best practices, methodologies, and procedures that will ultimately allow us to improve our open practices in areas as diverse as: “business models and finances, operations, instructional systems, enrollment patterns, learner support, quality assurance, professional development, and others.” (Mishra, Sanjaya & Panda, Santosh, 2025).This is why we wish to share UNED’s experience in analyzing its openness within the framework proposed by the editors.
Speakers
avatar for Diana Hernández Montoya

Diana Hernández Montoya

Coordinator of the Fabrication Laboratory and OER Hub, Universidad Estatal a Distancia de Costa Rica
Diana is a teacher focused on human talent, innovation, and technology. Currently works doing research and is the coordinator of the Fabrication Laboratory (Fab Lab) of the Universidad Estatal a Distancia. She has degrees in preschool and primary education, educational technology... Read More →
avatar for Ana María Sandoval Poveda

Ana María Sandoval Poveda

Member of the Fabrication Laboratory and OER Hub, Universidad Estatal a Distancia de Costa Rica
Mathematician, educator, editor, and makerAna María is an academic producer and researcher at the Kä Träre Fabrication Laboratory. She received her professional training at the University of Costa Rica (UCR), in the School of Teacher Education (Faculty of Education) and the School... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
5 DR3 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

4:55pm EDT

OER: The Twelfth High Impact Practice
Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
ID: 33896

At the culmination of a two-year, multi-institutional study that included almost 700,000 student records for analysis, AAC&U has added OER to its list of High Impact Practices (HIPs). HIPs are well-established practices that lead to positive student outcomes, namely for students historically underserved in higher education. It is our hope that in naming OER as a HIP, institutional leaders will pay attention to the positive impacts OER can bring to their campuses and organize to institutionalize OER in new and exciting ways. We seek to advance movement on UN Sustainability Goal 4: Quality Education to ensure all learners have access to quality learning materials.In this presentation, we will summarize the key findings of our study, focusing on course withdrawal rates, course grades, and time to completion. We found that context matters very much in predicting the rate of withdrawal in courses with OER, but in most cases, withdrawal rates were lower in courses that used OER, especially at doctoral institutions, and we note key differences in withdrawal rates when OER are merely adopted versus revised, remixed, or created. Most notably, in regards to course grades, the number of A’s increased in every context where OER were used versus not.  We also noted decreases in the time to credential, especially at community colleges for students that took more than four years to finish their credential–for students that took 6 or more OER courses during their course of study, they finished their credentials on average almost a year faster than those that took zero OER courses. Additionally we will highlight findings from our instructor survey, representing the voices of over 200 individual instructors that transitioned to OER over the course of the study period. The survey captured their motivations and experiences in implementation, as well as their perceptions on how well their OER implementation went based on those motivations and support structures. We also examined how teaching practices changed after using OER.We will also provide recommendations for leveraging OER as a HIP on your campuses to advance OER initiatives and programs as an equity strategy to help all students, but especially those that have been historically underserved by higher education. AAC&U as an organization advocates to democratize higher education as a public good, and the addition of OER to the current list of HIPs is a strategic choice to support OER in higher education as not only an affordability strategy for students, but to help students persist and succeed in their education.
Speakers
avatar for C. Edward Watson

C. Edward Watson

Vice President for Digital Innovation, American Association of Colleges & Universities
Dr. C. Edward Watson is the Vice President for Digital Innovation. He provides leadership for the association’s national and state-level advocacy to advance quality in undergraduate student learning. This includes programming and a scholarly agenda that focuses on general education... Read More →
avatar for Jessica Chittum

Jessica Chittum

Assistant Vice President for Curricular and Pedagogical Innovation and Director of VALUE Operations, American Association of Colleges & Universities
Jessica Chittum, PhD, is the Assistant Vice President for Curricular and Pedagogical Innovation and Director of VALUE Operations in the Office of Curricular, Pedagogical, and Digital Innovation (OCPDI) at AAC&U. In this role, Jessica engages in project management, research, professional... Read More →
avatar for Heather Miceli

Heather Miceli

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, American Association of Colleges & Universities
Heather Miceli is the Assistant Director of the Institute on Open Educational Resources and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at AAC&U in the Office of Curricular, Pedagogical, and Digital Innovation. Her current work at AAC&U is focused on OER adoption as an equity strategy for student... Read More →
avatar for Beth Perkins

Beth Perkins

Assistant Director for Research and Assessment, American Association of Colleges & Universities
Beth Perkins, PhD, is the Assistant Director for Research and Assessment in the Office of Curricular, Pedagogical, and Digital Innovation at AAC&U. She provides methodological, analytical, logistical, and implementation support to the AAC&U VALUE Scoring Collaborative. In addition... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

5:30pm EDT

California to the World: Co-Creating an Open Educational Equity Toolkit for Global Use
Wednesday October 7, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT
ID: 33124

In 2024, OEG recognized the Open for Antiracism Program as an outstanding program for inclusive excellence. In moving OFAR beyond its base in California, what does it look like when open education for equity moves to other US and global contexts? This panel presents the Open for Antiracism (OFAR) Toolkit—a collaborative, openly licensed resource rooted in five years of program data from the California Community College system—as a living prototype for how the open education community can collectively advance UNESCO Sustainable Development Goal 4: inclusive and equitable quality education for all.OFAR began as professional development to help educators examine the relationship between OER, open pedagogy, and educational equity. The OFAR Toolkit extends that work into a freely adaptable Canvas Commons course to assist educators, institutions, and administrators in adapting our research-backed model for their own communities and contexts. The Toolkit is designed to resist one-size-fits-all definitions of equity—because equity looks different depending on the place, institution, and individual. This session features an OFAR coach who has guided educators through the program's community-of-practice model; two adapters localizing OFAR for distinct contexts; and the project's leadership team. Together, panelists will share what OFAR has accomplished, what it cannot accomplish alone, and how open collaboration is reinventing its possibilities via the Toolkit.Session StructureThe panel has four segments: (1) the project leadership introduces OFAR's five-year research base, outcomes data, and core design principles; (2) Our lead coach discusses the community-of-learners model at the program's core: how cohort structures, mentorship, and sustained professional relationships create conditions for genuine pedagogical transformation—and what requires local roots to replicate; (3) Two adapters share how they are localizing the Toolkit for their own educational communities: what they changed, what they kept, and what tensions arose between the Toolkit's assumptions and their own contexts. They speak directly to the SDG 4 challenge of building equity frameworks across borders without imposing them; and (4) The session closes with structured audience dialogue. Attendees are invited to reflect: What terms, practices, or structures would you change? What does equity-centered open pedagogy look like where you are? What can we build together that none of us can build alone? This segment draws on the Toolkit's "Room to Grow" framework, modeling the reflective and collaborative spirit the resource is designed to cultivate.
Speakers
avatar for James Glapa-Grossklag

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 →
avatar for Cindy Domaika

Cindy Domaika

Academic Engagement Partner, Nicolet College, WI
Cindy Domaika is a long-time higher-education professional at Nicolet College who specializes in open educational resources (OER), socially-just academics, and service-learning. Her work centers on expanding affordable and equitable access to education through zero-textbook-cost initiatives... Read More →
avatar for Joy Shoemate

Joy Shoemate

Director of Online Education, College of Canyons
Joy Shoemate is the Director of Online Education at College of the Canyons where she supports instructors’ successful integration of technology into teaching and learning to promote student success, persistence and completion in distance education courses. She also oversees the... Read More →
avatar for Laura Dunn

Laura Dunn

Director, Open for Antiracism
aura Malia Dunn, Ph.D. is a scholar of Pacific-Asian religions, contemplative practice, and educational equity. She is the Co-Director of the Open for Antiracism Program (OFAR), a statewide professional development initiative for California Community Colleges, and faculty at the University... Read More →
avatar for Jamie Thomas

Jamie Thomas

Lead Coach and Course Facilitator, Open for Antiracism
Dr. Jamie Thomas is OFAR Lead Coach and a Lecturer in Linguistics and TESOL at CSU Dominguez Hills. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics, with a focus on African languages, and she has been proud to support OFAR as a coach since 2021. In 2022, Jamie was recognized with the Distance... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT
3 Room I MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

5:30pm EDT

EdTech, Open Values: Preparing Open Educators for AI, and the Next Big Thing
Wednesday October 7, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT
ID: 33918

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into education, educators face significant challenges in understanding how to effectively and ethically incorporate these tools into their teaching practices. Issues such as privacy, surveillance, intellectual property, plagiarism and policy gaps create uncertainty around AI use in the classroom. Additionally, educators lack structured guidance on how to align new integrations with the principles of open pedagogy, which emphasize student-centered learning, access to education, and public engagement. Without support, educators risk implementing emerging technologies in ways that may compromise educational equity, student autonomy, and ethical standards. But these are not new issues, and considering AI as if it were a unique challenge risks us thinking there must be a uniquely AI-focused solution. Instead, libraries and educators need a framework for understanding new and emerging educational technologies in a way that centers our values. Today it’s AI, but education has always been and will continue to be impacted by new and emerging technologies. Some (like with Wikipedia and the World Wide Web) will be empowering and useful, others (like Second Life or NFTs) will be distracting and disruptive. Many new technologies will be a mix of all of these pressures.  In order to prepare librarians to understand the opportunities and challenges created by new technologies, and guide educators as they develop new practices and pedagogies, we have adapted our Open Pedagogy Incubator program to use AI as a case study to introduce a framework for evaluating new technologies. This framework equips librarians and educators with the tools needed to a) understand and evaluate the technical affordances and legal implications of these technologies, b) explore the new pedagogical opportunities created or foreclosed by these technologies, and c) build a plan for engaging with (or putting aside) new technologies in a way that centers open values of inclusion and student-centered impact in the classroom and for lifelong learning. With support from the IMLS and our state library we supported our first online cohort in the spring of 2026 and led a series of workshops across our state in the summer. These cohorts brought together educators from across the state, including academic librarians, community college educators, and public librarians. Together we developed and expanded a framework for open values in edtech and explored strategies for incorporating that framework into our communities of practice. This panel brings together participants to discuss their experiences, introduce the framework, and share lessons learned from this program.
Speakers
avatar for William Cross

William Cross

Director, Open Knowledge Center, North Carolina State University
Will Cross is a medium-sized pile of diplomas in a trench coat. He serves as the Director of the Open Knowledge Center at N.C. State University, an instructor at UNC Chapel Hill, and a Senior Policy Fellow at American University's Washington College of Law. Will holds a law degree... Read More →
avatar for David Tully

David Tully

Principal Librarian for Student Affordability, North Carolina State University Libraries
David is the Principal Librarian for Student Affordability at NC State University Libraries, focused on advancing student success by reducing the financial barriers to higher education. Through leadership in open education and strategic fundraising, he works to expand access to affordable... Read More →
avatar for Katya Mueller

Katya Mueller

Libraries Fellow, North Carolina State University Libraries
Katya Mueller (pronounced KA-tee-uh MAW-luhr) is a Libraries Fellow (2024-2027) at North Carolina State University Libraries. She works on the Libraries’ open education initiatives in supporting the use of OERs in coursework and designing programs that empower faculty to meaningfully... Read More →
avatar for Campbell Barnes

Campbell Barnes

Graduate Research Assistant, North Carolina State University Libraries
Campbell Barnes is the Graduate Research Assistant for the Open Knowledge Center at NC State University Libraries, where she supports faculty and student success through open educational initiatives. She is a facilitator on the Open Pedagogy Pit Stop and Open Pedagogy Incubator programs... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA
 
Thursday, October 8
 

11:05am EDT

Connecting the Opens in Europe: From Strategy to Alliance-Building for Knowledge as a Public Good
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
ID: 32921

Across Europe, open education has often developed alongside, rather than together with, related movements such as open science, open access, and open knowledge policy. Yet in a period marked by rapid digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and pressure on public-interest infrastructures, fragmentation is becoming a strategic weakness. This session examines how “connecting the opens” can provide a stronger foundation for open education by linking policy, practice, and community across sectors.The presentation draws on three connected strands of work. First, it discusses SPARC Europe’s Connecting the Opens position paper (https://zenodo.org/records/17572650), which makes the case for intentionally aligning Open Science and Open Education to build a more equitable and future-oriented higher education system in Europe. Second, it presents insights from the feasibility work for a possible European Open Education Alliance (https://zenodo.org/records/18862080), which identified strong support for a broader coordinating structure able to strengthen policy coherence, infrastructure conversations, shared understanding, and collective action across countries. Third, it reflects on the contribution that community-based activities can make to sustaining exchange, experimentation, and implementation, exploring the European Network of Open Education Librarians as an example of this approach.Rather than presenting these as separate initiatives, the session argues that they represent three layers of the same change strategy: conceptual alignment, ecosystem coordination, and community practice. Taken together, they suggest that open education can gain greater visibility, legitimacy, and impact when understood not as an isolated field but as part of a wider movement to uphold knowledge as a public good.The session will offer participants a strategic framework and practical insights for thinking about how open education communities can connect across institutional, national, and thematic boundaries. It will be of interest to policymakers, network leaders, librarians, educators, and open practitioners seeking ways to move from dispersed activity toward durable collaboration.
Speakers
avatar for Paola Corti

Paola Corti

Senior Open Education Expert, SPARC Europe
Paola Corti is a Senior Open Education Expert at SPARC Europe, and she manages the European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL); she supports librarians in taking action to implement the UNESCO OER Recommendation. She also works part of her time at Politecnico di Milano (Italy... Read More →
avatar for Vanessa Proudman

Vanessa Proudman

Director, SPARC Europe
Vanessa Proudman is Director of SPARC Europe, working to make Open the default in Europe. Vanessa has well over 20 years of experience in international, national and regional policymaking and advocacy in the areas of Open Access, Open Science, Open Culture and Open Education with... Read More →
avatar for Paul Stacey

Paul Stacey

Independent Consultant, https://paulstacey.global
Based in Vancouver Canada Paul Stacey is an independent consultant on open education and the strategic use of open in education, science, culture and other sectors. From 2022 through to current times Paul helped SPARC Europe connect Open Science with Open Education through their... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

11:05am EDT

From Campsite to Commons: Reimagining Who Builds and Owns Open Knowledge
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
ID: 33568

For decades, National Geographic Education has translated the work of Explorers, storytellers, educators and community leaders, into classroom-ready resources, reaching millions of educators and learners worldwide. But like many institutions, we found ourselves “making camp”: Publishing high-quality content that was widely accessed, yet largely static. Difficult to adapt, remix, or meaningfully co-own across contexts.This session explores what it takes to move from that campsite to a true commons.In partnership with the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), we are building the PowerED by National Geographic Society Hub on OER Commons: Not just as a repository, but as a participatory ecosystem. This shift is not primarily technical; it is cultural. It asks: Who builds knowledge? Who adapts it? Who owns it?At the center of this work is a reimagining of authorship. National Geographic Explorers are no longer only sources of expertise; they are co-creators alongside educators and, increasingly, learners. Together, they design open educational resources that are intended to be adapted: across geographies, cultures, and learning environments. An Explorer’s fieldwork becomes not a finished product, but a starting point for collective knowledge-building.We will share key strategies that have supported this transition from publishing to shared ownership:Designing modular OER templates that invite remix, localization, and reinterpretationBuilding capacity through an OER Fundamentals Academy, where educators learn to license, adapt, and publish their own workUsing platform analytics (e.g., remixing, downloads, global participation) to understand how knowledge moves and evolvesCreating feedback loops that position educators and communities as contributors—not just consumersParticipants will engage with real examples from the hub, including co-created lessons on topics such as volcanism and cultural storytelling, and see how these resources evolve as they are remixed and recontextualized. We will also share early insights from our academy model, where participants reported increased confidence in contributing to OER and a stronger sense of belonging within a global knowledge community.Ultimately, this session invites a shift in perspective: What if open education is not a collection of resources, but a shared space we build and rebuild together?
Speakers
avatar for Tyson Brown

Tyson Brown

Director, National Geographic Society
Tyson Brown leads the Dissemination, Platforms and Explorer Experience team for the National Geographic Society. In this role, he contributes to the organization’s strategic plan, leads product development and marketing for a library of materials, and delivers delightful content... Read More →
PC

Patrick Cavanagh

Manager, Content Design, National Geographic Society
Patrick has been with the Education division of National Geographic Society for ten years. His background is in graphic design, and he also has training and experience in project management. He co-leads the Society's OER initiative.
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

11:50am EDT

Sometimes Open Isn’t Enough: Leveraging Library Resources in an Oer Ecosystem
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT
ID: 33637

While OER initiatives in higher education have historically emphasized openly licensed materials, many institutions, states, and consortia have been adopting course material affordability initiatives (sometimes called Zero Textbook Cost, or ZTC initiatives). This broader focus includes OER, library-licensed materials, items used within the bounds of fair use/fair dealing, and other free-to-use options – sometimes with all-rights-reserved copyright, and sometimes behind paywalls requiring user authentication. This focus on affordability rather than openness responds to the real-world problem of expensive course materials but also raises new questions about librarians’ roles in upholding the values of the open movement.For many academic librarians, affordability initiatives represent both an opportunity and a tension. On one hand, this approach can scale affordability efforts more quickly by allowing the use of library collections and other existing materials. On the other hand, these approaches may move institutions away from the long-term goals of openness, remixability, and public access that have historically defined the open education movement. Librarians working in this space must often balance pragmatic affordability solutions with broader commitments to open knowledge, ultimately considering whether course material affordability initiatives are hacking the open ecosystem or undermining it.This panel will feature three librarians from different institutions, all of whom are tasked with solving the real-world problem of textbook costs for students and all of whom sometimes recommend “closed” content to reduce the cost of course materials. By hearing the voices of librarians working at different public institutions – a four-year regional university, a large land-grant university, and an urban research university – we will explore the tensions of closed content in an OER world. Panelists will briefly describe their institutional contexts and the strategies they use to support affordability initiatives, followed by a moderated conversation exploring the philosophical, practical, and strategic questions that arise when affordability rather than openness becomes the primary goal. In addition to a Q&A period at the end of the session, panelists will invite attendees to share their thoughts throughout the panel to encourage engaged conversation. Some of the issues to be explored include:What tensions and challenges exist in a space where affordability is the goal, rather than openness?How do librarians define and communicate the differences between affordable course materials and OER?Do affordability initiatives expand or dilute open education goals?What strategic tradeoffs do librarians face in the context of affordability and OER?What specific strategies do librarians use to leverage library collections as course materials?How can librarians leverage relationships with their campus stores to advance affordability goals?How do affordability and OER initiatives enhance or compete with automatic textbook billing programs?By examining these questions through multiple institutional perspectives, this panel will offer participants a nuanced look at the evolving landscape of affordability work in academic libraries. Attendees will gain practical insights into how librarians are navigating the intersection of affordability and OER initiatives, communicating these concepts to faculty and administrators, and making strategic decisions about course materials in complex policy and institutional environments.
Speakers
avatar for Cheryl Casey

Cheryl Casey

Open Education Librarian, University of Arizona
Cheryl Casey has led OER initiatives at the University of Arizona since 2014. She’s active in the OER community as a trainer for the Open Education Network (OEN) and one of the instructors for the OEN's Certificate in Open Education Librarianship. She holds a a Master’s in Library... Read More →
avatar for Anna Crosswhite

Anna Crosswhite

Affordable Course Materials Librarian, Central Washington University
Anna Crosswhite serves as the Affordable Course Materials Librarian at Central Washington University. Her work focuses on affordable course materials including Open Access (OA), Open Educational Resources (OER), and library licensed eBooks. She holds a Bachelors of Social Work (BSW... Read More →
avatar for Nancy A. Henke

Nancy A. Henke

Open Education Librarian, University of Colorado Denver
Nancy A. Henke is the Open Education Librarian at the University of Colorado Denver where she works to advance initiatives related to Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) and Open Educational Resources (OER). She earned her degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Iowa... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

12:25pm EDT

Digital Resilience of ePortfolios for Open Education – Lessons for the Future
Thursday October 8, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
ID: 31780

The focus of this session is to describe, discuss, and debate the collaborative process that was used to publish an edited open-access, online book on ePortfolios that consists of 43 chapters from 85 authors around the globe and was published in 9 months. The goal of the session is to provide “lessons learned” that others can use to publish their own collaborative open-access books and resources.The book is entitled Digital Resilience of ePortfolios During and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons for the Future, and it delves into the transformative role that ePortfolios have played during and after this global crisis.  We have both previously experienced the challenges of academic book publishing: financial cost, extended time to publication, and restricted access for readers.  Thus, we selected the Pressbooks publishing platform for this book to decrease the financial cost (virtually zero with an institutional license), increase publication time (9 months), and increase access (online open access).We sent out a global call for chapter proposals via international listservs in November 2024.  Based on this invitation, we received 73 proposals in January 2025 from authors around the globe who were passionate and curious about the international use of ePortfolios.  During the month of February, we reviewed the proposals and sorted them into 8 themes.  We then invited authors from 47 proposals to submit full chapters.  These authors submitted the first draft of their chapters in May.  These chapters were then anonymized, converted to a Google Doc, and placed in a unique Google folder for each chapter.  Each author was then required to peer review two related chapters using a peer review template created in Google Docs.  This peer review process took place during the months of June and July and ended with the selection of 43 chapters for the book.  At the beginning of August, each chapter team was provided access to their Google folder, which contained the two peer reviews.  Authors then revised their chapters and uploaded their revised work along with a table describing how they had addressed the required revisions. In September, we reviewed each of the revised chapters, suggested final revisions, and then received preprint approval from each of the author teams.  We then finalized publication, copyright, and accessibility criteria with our institutional library, resulting in the launch of our open access, online book in October 2025 during International Open Access Week.There are four main lessons learned that we would like to share with others from the collaborative, open-access, online publishing experience:Clarity and communication (everyone is clear on expectations of the publication process (e.g., peer reviews) and receives constant and consistent communication about the process).Planning and timelines (a clear plan has been established and communicated with the authors, with an emphasis on the importance and rationale for timelines (deadlines)).Review process integrity (importance of ensuring anonymity throughout the peer review process)Operational challenges (importance of having a support team (e.g., IT and librarians) to overcome publishing challenges (e.g., copyright and accessibility issues)).
Speakers
avatar for Norm Vaughn

Norm Vaughn

Professor, Mount Royal University
Norman Vaughan, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Education at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  He has co-edited the Digital Resilience of ePortfolios During and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic (2025) book as well as co-authored Principles of Blended... Read More →
avatar for Mphoentle Modise

Mphoentle Modise

Associate Professor, University of South Africa
Mpho-Entle Puleng Modise, PhD, is a multi-award-winning Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instructional Studies, College of Education, at the University of South Africa. Her research areas include digital transformation in open distance e-learning, faculty and... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

1:40pm EDT

Charting the Path: Seeding the Open Education Movement
Thursday October 8, 2026 1:40pm - 2:45pm EDT
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 →
Thursday October 8, 2026 1:40pm - 2:45pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

2:15pm EDT

Multilingual Glossary – an OER Addressing Social Injustice in Learning Pharmacology at Nelson Mandela University
Thursday October 8, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
ID: 33338

South Africa has 12 official languages and a multilingual population, with IsiZulu (24.4%) and isiXhosa (16.3%) being the largest languages, and English (8.7%) being one of the least spoken languages in the country [1]. Nevertheless, English dominates the academic learning and teaching across all public universities, with some South African Higher Education Institutions also offering courses in Afrikaans [2].Academic achievements are influenced by numerous factors and linguistic barriers have been extensively documented as significant obstacles to student success [3]. The Bachelor of Pharmacy student cohort at Nelson Mandela University is demographically and culturally diverse.  English does not represent the primary language of communication among the students therefore overcoming the language barrier requires deliberate and targeted pedagogical intervention to ensure equitable academic outcomes. Pharmacology modules in the Bachelor of Pharmacy, are presented in English, posing a significant linguistic challenge for students with poor command of this language.  The disparity between the language of instruction and students’ primary language can create a comprehension and learning gap, which can be seen as a form of social injustice. A thorough understanding of pharmacological terms is key for pharmacy students to engage more easily with the material and achieve better academic results.  This understanding increases confidence in the topic and helps graduates improve collaboration with other healthcare professionals in the workplace, ultimately optimising patient therapeutic outcomes and quality of life.The multilingual glossary was compiled through a comprehensive review of nearly fifty pharmacology reference books, journals, and publications. Upon reviewing the definitions, the researchers focused on simple, understandable English terminology, thereby facilitating translation into South African indigenous languages, which lack specialised medical terminology.This glossary will be a tool that students can easily engage with and will incorporate the referenced English definitions of some of the most commonly used pharmacology terms and their translation into isiZulu, isiXhosa and Afrikaans. The glossary project rollout and growth is being constructed in similar ways as Together, an openly licensed, free and collaborative picture book project funded via the Global Open Education Graduate Network. As an Open Educational Resource (OER), Together has been used to create international learning communities and foster engagement in learning [4] [5]. Our multilingual glossary of pharmacological terminology is being developed to address the linguistic challenge experienced by pharmacy and health science students in South Africa, whilst simultaneously establishing a foundation for both local and global collaboration to enhance learning among healthcare professionals requiring pharmacological knowledge. The multilingual glossary is envisioned to not only be a reference tool but also an Open, dynamic, contributory platform through which users may add terminology and translations across multiple languages, including all the other indigenous South African languages. Current outputs do not reflect the wealth of languages and diversity the landscape engages with [6]. If the medium allows, an audio pronunciation of each term will be considered. The use of the glossary as a mobile application could facilitate convenient content accessibility. Besides being a study resource, the tool could be used in game-based learning pedagogies or the gamification of learning.
Speakers
avatar for Gino Fransman

Gino Fransman

Project Leader: OpenEdInfluencers, Nelson Mandela University
Gino Fransman is the founder of the Open Education Influencers project (https://openedinfluencers.mandela.ac.za) at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. He is the current Africa Hub Coordinator for the UNESCO Open Education for a Better World [OE4BW] program, plus both a mentor... Read More →
avatar for Doina Naude

Doina Naude

Nelson Mandela University
Doina Naude is an academic professional and clinical pharmacy expert based in South Africa. With over two decades of experience spanning clinical practice, pharmaceutical industry, and higher education, she brings a unique blend of practical expertise, intercultural perspective, and... Read More →
avatar for Janet Barry

Janet Barry

Nelson Mandela University
Janet Barry is a registered pharmacist and academic based in South Africa, currently serving as Stream Coordinator of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the Bachelor of Pharmacy programme at Nelson Mandela University. She holds a B.Pharm degree (1995) from the University of Port Elizabeth... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

2:15pm EDT

The Pit Stop Program at NC State: Where Emerging Educational Technology Meets Open Practice
Thursday October 8, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
ID: 33663

As emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR) reshape the educational landscape, what is their impact on core open educational practices? This session explores the development and outcomes of the Open Pedagogy Pit Stop program at NC State University, a cohort initiative that builds upon a successful incubator model to integrate interactive technologies with open pedagogy. The program is designed for instructors who have identified a specific teaching problem they want to address through the application of emerging technologies in an open pedagogy framework. Rather than viewing emergent tools in isolation, our program examines their practical and ethical implications within the framework of open education. We will share key curriculum decisions, successes, and challenges encountered while cultivating a supportive, cross-campus community of practice. This community-centric approach demonstrates how, when purposefully aligned with open principles, interactive technologies such as AI and VR can deepen human connections among faculty and staff while supporting student creativity and curiosity.At the heart of the Pit Stop program is a collaborative cohort model designed to break down institutional silos. By bringing together an interdisciplinary group of faculty and staff for a shared incubator experience, the program transforms isolated experimentation with AI and VR into a robust community of practice. This peer-to-peer environment provides a safe space to grapple with the ethical and practical implications of emerging tools, ensuring participants feel supported as they co-create, troubleshoot, and redesign their courses around open pedagogy principles. By the end of Pit Stop, participants will have developed a tangible, technology-enhanced teaching solution rooted in open pedagogical principles. They will leave the program with both a practical deliverable and the confidence to apply emerging tools in support of student-centered learning.The team of facilitators includes representatives from the NC State University Libraries, the Office for Faculty Excellence, and DELTA (Digital Education and Learning Technologies Applications). Pit Stop is free of charge to NC State faculty, thanks to grant support from the NC State Foundation & the Betsy Etheridge Brown Open Education Resource and Pedagogy Endowment.Session attendees will receive a practical roadmap for developing similar programs at their own institutions. We will cover strategies for combining new technologies with open education principles to achieve community-driven, impactful outcomes, alongside methods for documenting resulting innovations for scholarly dissemination. Pit Stop’s results to date will highlight the program’s positive impact on both faculty development and student engagement, offering a strong, reproducible model for advancing a culture of openness through the ethical and intentional application of emergent technologies.
Speakers
avatar for Maria Gallardo-Williams

Maria Gallardo-Williams

Director of Faculty Development, North Carolina State University
Maria Gallardo-Williams, PhD, is the Director of Faculty Development in the Office for Faculty Excellence at North Carolina State University. With a background in chemistry education, she spent most of her academic career as a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry. During... Read More →
avatar for David Tully

David Tully

Principal Librarian for Student Affordability, North Carolina State University Libraries
David is the Principal Librarian for Student Affordability at NC State University Libraries, focused on advancing student success by reducing the financial barriers to higher education. Through leadership in open education and strategic fundraising, he works to expand access to affordable... Read More →
avatar for Katya Mueller

Katya Mueller

Libraries Fellow, North Carolina State University Libraries
Katya Mueller (pronounced KA-tee-uh MAW-luhr) is a Libraries Fellow (2024-2027) at North Carolina State University Libraries. She works on the Libraries’ open education initiatives in supporting the use of OERs in coursework and designing programs that empower faculty to meaningfully... Read More →
avatar for Tyler Kroon

Tyler Kroon

Research Librarian for Engineering, North Carolina State University Libraries
Tyler Kroon is a Research Librarian for Engineering at North Carolina State University. He plans and teaches library instruction sessions, research workshops, and provides research consultation services for engineering students and faculty. He serves as the library liaison to the... Read More →
avatar for Campbell Barnes

Campbell Barnes

Graduate Research Assistant, North Carolina State University Libraries
Campbell Barnes is the Graduate Research Assistant for the Open Knowledge Center at NC State University Libraries, where she supports faculty and student success through open educational initiatives. She is a facilitator on the Open Pedagogy Pit Stop and Open Pedagogy Incubator programs... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

3:00pm EDT

Open Publishing in Practice Across Europe
Thursday October 8, 2026 3:00pm - 4:05pm EDT
ID: 33888

In this panel, leaders from institutions across Europe will share how they are building and scaling open publishing networks to support institution-wide publishing initiatives — and what those efforts mean for knowledge as a public good.Each panelist will showcase their open catalogs, highlight key Open Educational Resources (OER) projects, and offer a behind-the-scenes look at how open publishing is being implemented across different national and institutional contexts. We'll explore how and why each institution chose to launch their initiatives, the types of publishing they support, and how they are working to advance institutional goals around openness, access, and teaching innovation.Attendees will hear what each team is most proud of, lessons learned along the way, and what's next for open publishing at their institutions. Whether you're just getting started with open education or looking to scale an existing program, this session offers practical insights and perspectives from across Europe on building sustainable open publishing infrastructure.
Speakers
avatar for Celine Peignen

Celine Peignen

Deputy Librarian, Technological University of the Shannon
Celine Peignen is the Deputy Librarian and Open Education Librarian at the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS), where she has worked in the library sector for over 15 years. She has been a driving force behind TUS's open education strategy, securing funding from the National... Read More →
MF

Maura Flynn

Open Educational Resources Librarian, Technological University of the Shannon
Maura Flynn is the Open Educational Resources (OER) Librarian at the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS), where she leads the development and promotion of open publishing and open education initiatives across the institution. She is the founder of TUS Open Press, the university's... Read More →
avatar for Amanda Coolidge

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 →
KM

Kirstine McDermid

Open Education Resources Manager, University of Leeds
Kirstine McDermid is dedicated to fostering inclusive and equitable learning pathways through open education. With expertise in Pressbooks, instructional technologies, WordPress, course design, accessibility, copyright, and licensing, she supports educators in adapting and creating... Read More →
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Jane Saunders

Associate Director: Content and Discovery, University of Leeds
Jane is responsible for the Libraries’ main research and teaching collections. (Rare books and archives fall under the remit of our Cultural Collections). She manages the Libraries’ information resources budget, which buys the books, journals, databases and digitised collections... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 3:00pm - 4:05pm EDT
3 Room I MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

3:35pm EDT

Activating Open Collections for Education: Developing Decolonial OER from Cultural Heritage Collections
Thursday October 8, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
ID: 32593

As museums and archives increasingly release digital collections under open licenses, millions of cultural heritage objects are now freely accessible online. Yet their pedagogical potential remains largely untapped, and educators often face challenges discovering, contextualizing, and integrating these materials into teaching.Since its launch in 2022, Curationist enables global users to search more than 5.4 million objects from the open-access collections of museums and archives worldwide, connecting curious minds to the histories, stories, and ideas these works inspire. Building on this foundation, Curationist is developing Open Educational Resources (OER) that activate museum collections for use in educational settings.This work responds to persistent gaps in educational materials about cultural heritage in regions shaped by colonization and political conflict. Cultural heritage in these contexts is often vulnerable to loss, displacement, and contested interpretation. At the same time, curricula frequently simplify these histories or rely on archival records shaped by colonial frameworks. Accessible resources that foreground Indigenous knowledge systems and multi-language cultural heritage remain limited.This session shares Curationist’s approach to developing open educational materials for undergraduate students that explore cultural heritage and at-risk histories in times of conflict. Using openly licensed museum objects and archival materials, these resources encourage critical engagement with how conflict, colonization, and cultural resilience shape the preservation and interpretation of heritage.Grounded in a collaborative and decolonial model of knowledge production, this initiative brings together educators, scholars, and community contributors to develop educational content while redistributing resources. By activating open museum collections for teaching and learning, this approach offers a model for expanding access to cultural heritage and democratizing knowledge through open education.
Speakers
AF

Amanda Figueroa

Platform Director, Curationist Foundation
Amanda Figueroa works at the intersection of cultural heritage, digital access, and community engagement. Her work focuses on making collections more accessible, contextualized, and usable for diverse audiences. She brings experience in bridging institutional collections with public-facing... Read More →
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Nicole Malli

Community Director, Curationist
Nicole Malli is the Community Director at Curationist, where she brings extensive experience in cultural heritage, community partnerships, and public programming to expand engagement with open access collections. With a background in cultural anthropology, she focuses on building... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

3:35pm EDT

Building the Next Generation of Open Educators: Open Textbooks, Networks and Conversations for the Future
Thursday October 8, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
ID: 33737

The #RhodesMustFall student protests of 2015 highlighted the alienation that students in South Africa experience at universities whose colonial origins still dominate institutional culture, resulting in societal and institutional injustices that make it challenging for students to transition to university (Luckett and Shay, 2017). Ten years on, despite a variety of institutional responses to address the issues, transformation is still a work in progress. Open education is considered a global response to address social injustices in Higher education (HE) such as lack of access to quality, localized, relevant teaching and learning materials. Interviews with open textbook authors and student co-creators have shown the authoring process enabled pedagogical change, collaboration with multiple authors and students (Cox et al. 2024).Student voice was amplified and acknowledged during the protests. The inclusion of student voice can continue to bring about transformation and is essential for shaping conversations about the future of HE considering students are embedded in their lived realities and are uniquely placed to understand the needs of their communities. This presentation will address the question: How do we partner with students in OER authoring and bring students into conversation about open education and the future of higher education?There is a growing body of literature describing student partnership but previous work has not included student recognition for co-creating curricula and course materials and how to bring students into conversation with open education practitioners.  This presentation will introduce students as partner models and specifically relate them to openness. Three examples of partnership will be introduced, a University of Cape Town pilot project: student fellowships in Digital Open Textbooks for Development. An exciting example of student authorship process in open textbook production “Science is tough but so are you” (Willmers et al. in press). The UNITWIN network of Open Education (UNOE) will be described, including its objectives. The important new and different approach of UNOE has been to begin its collaborative multi-national work with a project enabling student voice.Interviews were carried out with academic authors and students. Students also wrote their own reflections on their experiences. The current UNOE student fellowships project will include outputs and documents collected during the process and reflections of the student co-ordinator responsible for growing the student network. Student fellowships at UCT highlighted the strong student voice concerned with issues of social justice and building sharing resources into future HE systems. The findings from interviews revealed the power of open textbook initiatives to serve as vehicles for promote multilingualism, ‘localisation’ (including translation), epistemic representation and institutional change (Masuku et al. 2025). This presentation highlights a pathway for Open Education sustainability, renewed focus on epistemic justice through open education and students as partners. This research and practice has implication for democratising knowledge, authoring content for specific contexts and circumstance. UNESCO student fellows project if designed to build an open community of academics and students who can support and guide new types of content, knowledge and network for sustainable open education with the aim of addressing epistemic injustice.
Speakers
avatar for Glenda Cox

Glenda Cox

Building the next generation of open educators: open textbooks, networks and conversations for the future., University of Cape Town
Associate Professor Glenda Cox works in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She leads the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative at UCT. She holds the UNESCO chair in Open Education and Social Justice and... Read More →
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Nico Pampier

Student, University of Caoe Town
Advisor on Sustainable Development | AI Enthusiast| SDG 16 Youth Leader | Human Rights and Education Advocate | UN Youth Representative from South Africa | UNHCR Young Champion for Refugees | Current UNESCO Unitwin network on Open education student fellowship co-ordinator
Thursday October 8, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

4:55pm EDT

Beyond Open Access: The CARE–KNOW–DO Framework for Transformative Open Education
Thursday October 8, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
ID: 33905

What if openness meant more than access?Open education has made knowledge available to millions — but availability is not transformation. This interactive session introduces the CARE–KNOW–DO framework: a decade in the making, empirically validated across four continents, and built on a deceptively simple proposition: that responsible values, open knowledge, and sustainable action are not separate goals but a single, integrated process of meaningful learning.Who this session is forResearchers, project coordinators, and network leaders who design, study, or advocate for open education — and who want models that do more than describe openness, but actually operationalise it by catalysing its impact.The problem we're addressingOpen education has a well-documented gap: it excels at content delivery but rarely connects affective-cognitive learning with social responsibility and real-world action. Curricula align with SDGs on paper; learners rarely feel it in practice. CARE–KNOW–DO was built specifically to close that gap.What CARE–KNOW–DO is — and what it has doneDeveloped across four major international projects — EC-funded weSPOT (2013–15), ENGAGE (2015–17), CONNECT (2020–24), and the ongoing METEOR (2025–) — the framework has evolved from early inquiry-based learning designs to AI-enhanced, socially impactful open education ecosystems. Its reach is not theoretical:Implemented in 80+ schools across Latin America, Europe, and Africa.Engaged 55,000+ learners, educators, and community partners, with particular reach into underserved regionsDemonstrated measurable gains in engagement, participation, and progression.Extended to education in emergencies through the CatchUp programme — evidence of its relevance where equitable learning recovery matters most.Recognised with the 2025 Open Education Award for Excellence (Open Practices — Open Pedagogy).What makes it originalMost frameworks treat engagement, knowledge, and action as a sequence. CARE–KNOW–DO demonstrates — through large-scale empirical work — that they are interconnected dimensions, not steps. Change one and you change all three. That insight has direct consequences for how we design curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment across open education and digital transformation, including emerging technologies such as AI.In practice, it means: real-life challenges tied to the SDGs, genuine co-creation of knowledge with families and communities, and ethical, critical engagement with emerging technologies — including AI-Unplugged approaches and human-led AI-supported knowledge mapping.What you'll do in this sessionThis is not a presentation with a Q&A bolted on. You will:Encounter the framework through international. implementation examples — including crisis contexts and AI-enhanced designs.Share your own practices advancing Agenda 2030 and SDG-aligned research or proposals.Apply structured reflection to map CARE–KNOW–DO onto your own institutional, network, or project context — including future proposals.Leave with a concrete starting point — not just inspiration.The bigger pictureBy bridging research, policy, and practice, this session contributes to a shared and urgent question: what does open education owe the world beyond open access? The answer CARE–KNOW–DO proposes is both ambitious and achievable — and this session is the place to pilot it.
Speakers
avatar for Alexandra Okada

Alexandra Okada

Associate Professor on Global Education and Digital Transformation, The Open University
Dr Alexandra Okada is Associate Research Professor in Global Education and Digital Transformation at The Open University UK and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is an internationally recognised expert in open learning and AI for sustainable futures, focusing on equity... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
5 DR3 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

4:55pm EDT

How Can Open Education and Artificial Intelligence Be Sustained to Build a Better World?
Thursday October 8, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
ID: 33726

The Open Education for Better World OE4BW (https://oe4bw.org/) program was born in 2017 after the second World OER Congress held in Ljubljana, Slovenia.OE4BW is a international, online and tuition free mentoring programme with the goal to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) through the development of Open Education projects in a yearly cycle.After 8 years implemented, it has developed 420 projects by 607 participants from 53 countries, based on voluntary work of a committed group of coordinators and prestigious and high-skilled mentors. Till today, the program has been mostly sustained by the UNESCO Chair in Open Education, Mitja Jermol, and the UNESCO National Commission of Slovenia.Although the continuous work and relative success in some countries like India, the program struggles to strengthen its mission/vision accordingly to its growth and opportunities, posing serious questions on its future sustainability. Also, OE4BW has been allocated as a program in the International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence IRCAI, which obliges and challenges to shift focus towards AI development and deployment.This session will present and discuss the previous attempts and the results of workshops to create a short and mid-term strategy mission for OE4BW (2030), complemented by a sustainability model that creates value and revenue. This sustainability model has to be the foundation to uptake new opportunities within IRCAI, embrace AI in its foresight as a core component, build on successful projects, hubs and countries, exploit recent promising partnerships, explore recognition and credentialing practices.The discussion should lead to connect a lifelong-learning, participatory Open Education approach to enhance design, development and deployment of AI, specially in contributing to the achievement of the SDGs. There is the assumption, also to be discussed, that the focus of AI development should be orientated for solving educational needs and challenges, like continuous teacher-professional development aligned to AI Competence for Teachers (UNESCO). But the underlying questions in these and other scenarios is: how can it be sustainable?
Speakers
avatar for Werner Westermann

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 →
Thursday October 8, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
8 DR6 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

4:55pm EDT

When Open Content Moves Beyond Vision: Tactile and Multisensory Design for Accessibility
Thursday October 8, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
ID: 33897

Most educational content is often created assuming that learning primarily happens through vision. My work in graphic design has been shaped by a related question: how can communication go beyond just vision? This question arose because I experienced a vision problem caused by retinal detachment. While visual approaches work for many people, they can also create barriers for learners with visual impairments and for contexts where visual access is limited or unreliable. This session explores how graphic design can expand open content by engaging touch, material, and physical interaction.Drawing from practice-based research in tactile and multisensory design, the presentation introduces methods for creating accessible learning materials that go beyond visual methods. Examples include 3D-printed tactile graphics, embossed typographic systems, and hands-on learning tools that can be produced using accessible fabrication techniques and shared as open resources. These approaches demonstrate how design can turn information into physical forms, enabling learners to access content through multiple sensory channels.This session positions accessibility not only as a requirement, but as a generative strategy for innovating open content. Open education has made significant progress in improving access through open licensing and digital distribution. However, much of this content remains visually dependent. Expanding open content to include tactile and multisensory formats can better support diverse learners, including those with visual impairments, as well as those working in environments where screens, bandwidth, or visual attention are limited.The presentation will address how these materials can be shared, adapted, and reproduced. By sharing design files, utilizing common tools like desktop 3D printers or embossing techniques, and encouraging local adaptation, educators and practitioners can create context-responsive learning materials. This method supports the larger goals of open education by supporting not only access, but also participation and co-creation.Attendees will gain an understanding of how graphic design can help develop new types of open content that are inclusive, adaptable, and scalable. The session encourages participants to rethink the role of design in open education, not just as a tool for visual communication, but as a way to shape how knowledge is experienced, shared, and understood across different sensory and material conditions.
Speakers
avatar for Taekyeom Lee

Taekyeom Lee

Associate Professor of Graphic Design, Indiana University
Taekyeom Lee is an award-winning interdisciplinary graphic designer and design educator whose work explores emerging technologies, digital fabrication, and accessible visual communication. He is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Indiana University Bloomington and received... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA
 
Friday, October 9
 

11:05am EDT

From Quality to Transparency: Leveraging AI for Assessment and Version Tracking in Open Educational Resources
Friday October 9, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
ID: 32776

Open Educational Resources (OER) are designed to be openly reused, revised, and remixed, resulting in continuous and often decentralized evolution of content. While this dynamic nature is central to the ethos of open education, it also creates persistent challenges related to quality assurance, transparency, and the fair recognition of contributors. In current OER ecosystems, quality evaluation is frequently manual, subjective, and difficult to scale, while existing versioning mechanisms primarily document structural changes without capturing their semantic, pedagogical, or epistemic impact. As a result, it remains unclear how individual contributions influence the overall quality of a resource over time.This presentation proposes two novel perspectives: 1. AI-driven content quality assessment and 2. AI-based version tracking. Building on recent advances in generative AI and natural language processing, we explore how large language models and semantic evaluation techniques can be used to assess textual OER along multiple criteria. These criteria are operationalized to enable systematic, scalable, and partially explainable assessments that approximate human judgment while maintaining consistency across large collections of resources.Crucially, this work extends the role of quality assessment beyond static evaluation. By comparing successive versions of an OER, AI-based assessments can be used to measure how specific edits influence quality dimensions. Based on this foundation, the presentation introduces an AI-driven approach to version tracking that integrates semantic comparison with quality-aware evaluation. The proposed framework identifies meaningful changes between versions, classifies them according to their functional and pedagogical relevance, and links them to shifts in quality metrics. Overall, this research positions AI not as a replacement for human judgment, but as an augmentative tool that can enhance transparency, scalability, and fairness in OER practices. It offers a conceptual and technical foundation for rethinking how quality, contribution, and evolution are interconnected in the next generation of open educational infrastructures.
Speakers
avatar for Shahla Rasulzade

Shahla Rasulzade

PhD candidate, DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education
I am Shahla Rasulzade, a PhD candidate in Computer Science and a system architect working on the OERInfo project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). My research focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence and Open Educational Resources... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
6 DR4 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

11:05am EDT

Innovating Open Simulation: Transforming Healthcare Education Through Open Content, Access, and Equity
Friday October 9, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
ID: 33834

Healthcare education increasingly relies on simulation to prepare learners for real-world clinical practice. However, the cost of simulation technology has grown rapidly, often outpacing even textbook expenses and creating significant financial barriers for many programs and students. Educators must recognize the range of higher-education costs that extend well beyond the price of textbooks.Despite its educational value, published simulation resources frequently fail to meet the diverse needs of healthcare learners and providers. Many scenario libraries are proprietary, restricted to specific vendor platforms, and limited by access controls, rendering them inaccessible for adaptation or public use. Additionally, commercially developed scenarios often lack representation of specialty populations, including Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and socioeconomically diverse groups. Simulations must reflect diverse populations to prepare healthcare providers to deliver equitable, patient-centered care. A lack of diversity in simulation scenarios limits learners’ ability to practice inclusive and culturally responsive care.A consistent framework for simulation design, delivery, and evaluation is essential to ensure high-quality learning experiences. Embedding standards of best practice in simulation supports alignment with educational theory and intended learner outcomes. Such frameworks also enhance reproducibility and promote equity across programs, increasing the accessibility and adaptability of simulation in varied healthcare contexts.Simulation as a learning modality encompasses multiple components, including electronic health records (EHRs) for clinical decision-making and documentation, facilitator guides, operational logistics, learner materials, and structured prebriefing and debriefing. Because EHRs are integral to clinical practice, their inclusion in simulation enhances authenticity and better prepares learners for realistic workflows.Open Educational Resources (OER) offer a promising paradigm for healthcare simulation. Using platforms such as Pressbooks, educators can develop openly licensed simulation content that is modular, customizable, and globally accessible. Open digital frameworks reduce financial barriers, foster collaboration, and support innovation across institutions and disciplines.This presentation will highlight an in-progress undergraduate nursing simulation exemplar being developed as a comprehensive, openly licensed resource adaptable for programs worldwide. The project demonstrates how a fully developed OER simulation including integrated EHR materials, facilitator guides, and learner resources can advance global accessibility, curricular alignment, and equitable learning across diverse settings.The presentation will also describe key principles for developing OER-based simulation that reduce barriers and increase access. Presenters will provide practical examples of adapting open simulation resources for diverse contexts and discuss strategies for building collaborative networks that support sustainability and ongoing development. Participants will leave with actionable strategies to transform simulation education within their own settings.
Speakers
avatar for Teresa Connolly

Teresa Connolly

Associate Professor, University of Colorado Anschutz College of Nursing
Dr. Teresa Connolly is an Associate Professor of Teaching at the University of Colorado College of Nursing on the Anschutz Medical Campus. She has been a nurse for over 20 years, a professor for 13 years, and has worked with open educational resources (OER) for more than 7 years... Read More →
avatar for Fara Bowler

Fara Bowler

Associate Professor, University of Colorado Anschutz College of Nursing
Dr. Fara Bowler is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado College of Nursing, where she serves as Assistant Dean of Clinical Simulation Science and Senior Director of Clinical Partnership and Placements. With over a decade at the institution, she has led innovative simulation... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

11:05am EDT

Scaling OER Peer Review with Artificial Intelligence: A MERLOT Pilot Study
Friday October 9, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
ID: 33987

Open educational resources (OER) are expanding rapidly across disciplines and repositories, yet the peer review systems designed to evaluate them have not scaled at the same pace. As a result, many high-quality OER remain unreviewed, limiting their discoverability, credibility, and adoption. Because peer review typically relies on volunteer disciplinary experts, communities such as the Biology Editorial Board of MERLOT face persistent backlogs of materials awaiting evaluation. In addition, OER are sometimes perceived as lower quality simply because they are inexpensive and relatively easy to produce, despite the rigor of many existing resources. This project explores whether artificial intelligence  (AI) can meaningfully support OER peer review workflows while maintaining the rigor and transparency expected in scholarly evaluation. In partnership with industry collaborators, we are piloting an AI-assisted review system that applies the MERLOT Peer Review rubric to OER. The system uses structured prompts to guide AI in generating rubric-aligned draft reviews addressing key evaluation dimensions: quality of content, potential effectiveness as a teaching tool, ease of use, and accessibility.Importantly, the goal of this work is not to replace expert reviewers but to investigate how AI might augment human review processes. The AI generates structured preliminary evaluations that can assist with summarizing materials, rubric alignment, and draft review generation. Human reviewers then assess the AI-generated reviews using the same rubric criteria to determine whether the AI evaluation is coherent, accurate, and useful for disciplinary review boards. A composite review containing both AI and human review would be submitted as the final review. The study design compares AI-generated reviews with expert human peer reviews across a sample of OER drawn from established repositories such as MERLOT, OpenStax, and the Open Textbook Library. Pilot testing begins with a small set of materials to refine workflows and prompt design, followed by a larger evaluation set allowing comparison of scoring alignment between AI and expert reviewers. Key metrics include agreement between AI and expert ratings across rubric dimensions, reproducibility of AI scores across repeated evaluations, and rubric-based assessments of the clarity and completeness of AI-generated reviews.Additional system capabilities include automated citation verification through open databases such as PubMed and the Directory of Open Access Journals, link validation to identify outdated or broken resources, and analysis of visual elements. These tools allow AI to assist with time-consuming review tasks while preserving the need for disciplinary expertise in evaluating scientific accuracy and pedagogical appropriateness.This presentation will describe the design of the AI-assisted review workflow, the process of translating a human peer review rubric into structured AI prompts, and preliminary findings from early pilot testing. We will also discuss limitations and ethical considerations, including where AI evaluation is reliable, where it requires human oversight, and how AI-supported review might responsibly scale peer review capacity within open education ecosystems.By examining how AI can support, but not replace, expert peer review, this work contributes to broader conversations about the future of open knowledge infrastructures and the responsible integration of emerging technologies into open education systems.
Speakers
MP

Michael Plotkin

Associate Professor, Department Chair. Co-Editor MERLOT Biology Editorial Board, Mt. San Jacinto College
Michael Plotkin is associate professor and department chair of biological sciences at Mt. San Jacinto College in California. He is an active member of the college’s honors enrichment program and has held roles in several OER initiatives, including serving as a reviewer for the California... Read More →
avatar for Medora Huseby

Medora Huseby

Associate Professor, Colorado State University
Medora Huseby is a member of the teaching faculty in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology at Colorado State University, where she focuses on open educational practices and student engagement in open education. She chairs the Open Educational Resources (OER) Committee... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

11:05am EDT

The 20-Year Journey of Open Education in Japan: Moving from Institutional Initiatives Toward a Nation-Wide Collaborative Ecosystem
Friday October 9, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
ID: 33739

Open Education (OE) in Japan has reached a significant turning point, marking 20 years since the launch of OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiatives. This session provides a comprehensive overview of the Japanese OE movement, focusing on the collaborative efforts led by member universities of Open Education Japan (OEJ). By reflecting on twenty years of history, this presentation analyzes the ongoing journey of Japanese higher education institutions as they strive to move beyond individual institutional repositories toward a nationwide collaborative ecosystem.The journey began in 2005 with the formation of the Japan OCW Consortium (JOCW), involving early adopters such as the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Osaka University, Keio University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Nagoya University, alongside Hokkaido University. This initial phase focused on the "openness" of high-quality lecture materials through institutional OCW platforms. The second phase of this retrospective examines the expansion into Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Since the establishment of JMOOC in 2013, OEJ member universities have played a pivotal role in diversifying open content, leveraging their unique academic strengths to contribute to a collective pool of open knowledge. The session will also detail OEJ's collaborative governance model. Unlike top-down mandates, Japan’s OE movement has been characterized by a bottom-up, community-driven approach. This network has facilitated the exchange of usable knowledge and best practices, serving as a foundation for the collaborative framework that the community is currently endeavoring to solidify. A distinctive highlight of this inter-university synergy is the development of the cross-university OCW search system (https://search.oejapan.org). This platform was established to bridge fragmented institutional efforts, allowing users to search across the diverse OCW repositories of multiple universities from a single entry point. By aggregating metadata and providing a unified search interface, this initiative serves as a tangible example of how Japanese institutions are collaborating to improve the discoverability and accessibility of open resources, moving closer to a shared national infrastructure. Finally, the presentation addresses future prospects and the persistent hurdles to achieving a fully integrated ecosystem. While significant progress has been made through systems such as the cross-university portal, the transition to a resilient, nationwide network remains a work in progress. Key topics include the impact of generative AI, the shift toward Open Educational Practices (OEP), and the necessary policy shifts to sustain this collaborative vision. 
Speakers
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 Takaya Yamazato

Takaya Yamazato

Professor, Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Nagoya University
Dr. Takaya Yamazato is a Professor and Deputy Director at the Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Nagoya University, Japan. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Keio University in 1993. He joined Nagoya University as an Assistant Professor in 1993 and later served... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 11:05am - 11:35am EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

11:50am EDT

Who Maintains the Commons? A Hybrid Panel on Hacking OER for Shared Stewardship
Friday October 9, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT
ID: 33906

If open educational resources are to serve the public good in fields where knowledge shifts from semester to semester, we must stop treating them like books and start treating them as commons that require ongoing care. This hybrid panel brings together OER authors, administrators, and platform developers to hash out what it would actually take to build infrastructures for shared maintenance and governance—economically, technologically, and culturally. Our starting provocation comes from recently published work on OER as dynamic digital commons (Daly, Ahmad, & Schneider, 2026). The panel uses that work as a shared reference point, but panelists will bring their own experiences to bear from authoring, administering, and building the tools that hold OER together.Three clusters of questions will structure the conversation. First, on economic flows: why does funding still stop at creation and one-way adoption, and what would it look like for grants, consortial dues, or platforms like Open Collective to sustain maintenance labor over years rather than weeks? Second, on technology: current OER platforms are designed for publication and adaptation rather than collaboration, lacking the version control, upstream contribution, and contributor identification features that open source communities rely on. What would it take for platforms to integrate these affordances without losing the accessibility that has made tools like Pressbooks successful? Third, on culture: how do we shift adopter expectations from passive reading to active participation, and what role should governance documents inside OER themselves play in signaling that shift?Audience engagement is central to the session design. After brief opening positions from each panelist (roughly fifteen minutes total), the moderator will open the floor using a hybrid-friendly format that blends live microphone questions with a shared online document and chat channel, so that in-person and remote attendees contribute on equal footing. We will pose two or three targeted prompts to the audience, for example, asking participants to name one maintenance obstacle they have encountered in their own work, and feed responses back into the panel discussion live.By the end of the session, attendees will have heard multiple grounded perspectives on challenges to OER maintenance, a working vocabulary for discussing OER as dynamic digital commons, and a short list of concrete next steps they can bring back to their own institutions, platforms, and funding bodies.
Speakers
avatar for Nathan Schneider

Nathan Schneider

Associate Professor, Department of Media Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
Nathan Schneider is an associate professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads the Media Economies Design Lab and the MA program in Media and Public Engagement. He is the author of four books, most recently Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for... Read More →
avatar for Cheryl Casey

Cheryl Casey

Open Education Librarian, University of Arizona
Cheryl Casey has led OER initiatives at the University of Arizona since 2014. She’s active in the OER community as a trainer for the Open Education Network (OEN) and one of the instructors for the OEN's Certificate in Open Education Librarianship. She holds a a Master’s in Library... Read More →
avatar for Diana Daly

Diana Daly

Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, College of Information Science, University of Arizona
Dr. Diana Daly has authored open educational resources including Humans R Social Media and Decoding Deception, and a scholar in information science focused on literacies in new media technologies including artificial intelligence, and on information trust, misinformation, and information... Read More →
avatar for Amanda Coolidge

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 →
avatar for Nancy A. Henke

Nancy A. Henke

Open Education Librarian, University of Colorado Denver
Nancy A. Henke is the Open Education Librarian at the University of Colorado Denver where she works to advance initiatives related to Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) and Open Educational Resources (OER). She earned her degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Iowa... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

12:25pm EDT

Critical Open Educational Practices: Beyond Access, Toward Pedagogical Transformation
Friday October 9, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
ID: 33846

What does it actually look like when an educator stops asking “how do I cover the content?” and starts asking “who is this course designed to serve?” That question, and the work that follows, is at the center of this session.This presentation draws on findings from a qualitative case study of seven educators from the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MinnState) system, along with the presenter’s experience facilitating a Community of Practice focused on Critical Open Educational Practices (Critical OEPs). Grounded in critical pedagogy, Critical OEPs provide a framework organized around four pillars: collaborative dialogue, critical reflection, inquiry-based learning, and transformative action. This study offers a practice-based account of how educators take up Critical OEPs over time within a structured Community of Practice. The session highlights key findings related to how educators came to understand and use Critical OEPs in their teaching, how this work shaped their pedagogical decisions, and how they connected it to broader questions about purpose, equity, and responsibility in education.Educators moved into this work through multiple pathways. Some were responding to the cost of course materials and questions of access. Others brought years of experimentation with teaching practices, commitments to equity and learner belonging, or disciplinary traditions that already emphasized collaboration and applied learning. Rather than adopting a new model, many recognized that they were already doing parts of this work and began to name and extend those practices.As educators engaged with Critical OEPs, they described ongoing negotiation of authority and learner agency. Grading became a central site of this work, including experimentation with specifications grading, revision policies, and project-based assessment. Classroom dialogue raised similar questions about how much structure to provide and how to support meaningful participation. Equity was not discussed in the abstract. It appeared in decisions about removing financial barriers, making expectations visible, and responding to the realities learners bring with them into the classroom, including prior educational experiences and access to support systems.This work does not happen outside of institutional conditions. Workload, course size, technology systems, and policy expectations shaped what was possible in any given semester. Within these constraints, the Community of Practice functioned as a critical support structure. Participants described it as a space of instructor care, where collaboration replaced isolation and where reflection led to concrete changes in teaching. Several participants left with redesigned courses, new assessment approaches, and plans for continued leadership in open and equity-focused work. While grounded in a specific institutional context, these findings speak to broader questions about how open practices are taken up across diverse educational settings.This session offers a shift in how open education can be understood and supported. It moves the conversation beyond access and resource use toward pedagogy, authority, and responsibility. It also highlights the importance of creating structured spaces where educators, instructional designers, and others supporting open education initiatives can think together about practice and take action within the realities they face.Attendees will be invited to reflect on their own entry points into open practice, identify practices they may already be using, and consider one next step for extending Critical OEPs in their own contexts.
Speakers
avatar for Lori-Beth Larsen

Lori-Beth Larsen

Doctoral Candidate (expected April, 2026), Winona State University
Lori-Beth Larsen is a doctoral candidate in Education at Winona State University. Her research focuses on critical pedagogy, open education, and the question of what teaching is actually for. Her dissertation, Critical Open Educational Practices, is a qualitative case study exploring... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

12:25pm EDT

DocIAComp. Artificial Intelligence and Open Education: Toward a Teaching Competency Framework
Friday October 9, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
ID: 33768

The integration of generative artificial intelligence into education has rapidly reshaped the conditions under which teaching and learning take place, bringing renewed urgency to the question of the competencies teachers need to engage with it in pedagogically meaningful, critical, and responsible ways. At the same time, many of the existing conceptual and implementation frameworks associated with educational technology approach this issue from a predominantly technical or instrumental perspective, with limited connection to normative or pedagogical approaches, including those related to open education. In this context, the challenge is no longer simply to learn how to use AI tools, but to define the knowledge, skills, and attitudes teachers require in order to integrate them within complex, situated, and ethically grounded educational settings. In response, this paper presents DocIAComp, a teacher competency framework for the pedagogical use of artificial intelligence in education, grounded in the principles of open education. The framework is based on the premise that teacher competence in AI cannot be reduced to technical mastery or effective tool use alone, but must be understood in relation to a broader set of principles and practices associated with open education, including openness, reuse, adaptation, accessibility, collaboration, co-creation, and ethical responsibility. From this perspective, open education is not limited to access to resources, but encompasses forms of knowledge production, review, and circulation that are being profoundly transformed by the presence of AI. Accordingly, the framework situates the pedagogical use of AI in direct relation to open educational resources, open educational practices, inclusion, cognitive justice, and the preservation of human agency in education. The study adopted a sequential qualitative design with empirical validation in three stages: first, a systematic review of international and regional frameworks and guidelines on teacher competencies, artificial intelligence, and open education; second, the development of a preliminary competency chart based on that review; third, its validation through surveys administered to students and graduates of the postgraduate program in Educational Technology at the Technological University of Uruguay (UTEC), followed by a theoretical-empirical triangulation of the resulting data to consolidate the final DocIAComp framework. The resulting framework is organized into eight competency areas: Professional Engagement with AI; Curation, Creation, and Adaptation of Educational Resources with AI; Pedagogical Design with AI; Mediation and Support of Learning with AI; Open, Authentic, and Transparent Assessment with AI; Ethics, Rights, Data, and Licensing in AI Ecosystems; Inclusion, Accessibility, and Cognitive Justice with AI; and Research, Openness, and Continuous Improvement with AI. These areas provide institutions with a concrete instrument for diagnosis, teacher education, curriculum design, and the development of institutional policies, with criteria that are transferable across diverse regional and institutional contexts. The paper concludes that DocIAComp constitutes an original contribution that centers attention on open educational practices as a way of harnessing the potential of AI without relinquishing equity, human agency, and the public value of knowledge, thereby offering a grounded and replicable roadmap for education on a global scale.
Speakers
avatar for Giovanna Gabriela da Rosa Suárez

Giovanna Gabriela da Rosa Suárez

Departamento de Innovación y Emprendimiento, Universidad Tecnológica (UTEC), Uruguay
PhD in Informatics in Education from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS, Brazil), with a Master’s degree in Technology and Society from the Federal Technological University of Paraná (UTFPR, Brazil), and postgraduate specializations in Educational Technology and... Read More →
avatar for Sofía Rasnik Favotto

Sofía Rasnik Favotto

Centro Universitario Regional Litoral Norte, sede Paysandú, Universidad de la República del Uruguay (UdelaR)
PhD in Informatics in Education from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS, Brazil), with a Master’s degree in Technology-Mediated Educational Processes from the National University of Córdoba (Argentina), and a Doctorate in Law and Social Sciences from the University... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

1:40pm EDT

From Collections to Classrooms: Unlocking Cultural Heritage for Open Education
Friday October 9, 2026 1:40pm - 2:45pm EDT
ID: 35081

Millions of cultural heritage objects from museums, archives, and community collections have been digitized and made openly available. This growing body of open access material has already enabled new forms of research and discovery. For example, scientists have used digitized butterfly collections to track the impacts of climate change over time.Yet these collections are rarely designed with educators in mind. Educators, in turn, often lack the tools, context, and pathways needed to meaningfully incorporate these materials into teaching and learning. The result is a paradox: a vast and valuable body of open knowledge remains underused, even as demand for adaptable, culturally grounded learning resources continues to grow.This session invites participants to explore a central question:What would it take for open cultural heritage to become active building blocks for teaching and learning?Drawing on Curationist’s work at the intersection of museums, open knowledge, and digital access, this session will examine the structural, technical, and pedagogical barriers that limit reuse. These include challenges related to metadata quality, rights clarity, platform design, discoverability, and the lack of educator-centered pathways for engagement.Through a combination of framing, case examples, and facilitated discussion, participants will explore how educators, cultural institutions, and open education practitioners can work together to bridge these gaps. The session will surface practical insights and shared challenges across sectors, with a focus on moving from access to meaningful use.Participants will be invited to reflect on their own experiences and contribute ideas for tools, practices, and collaborations that could better connect open collections with open education ecosystems. The goal is not only to identify barriers, but to begin outlining a more integrated and participatory approach to open knowledge—one where cultural heritage materials are not just available, but actively used, adapted, and brought into learning environments.
Speakers
avatar for Jennryn Wetzler

Jennryn Wetzler

Director of Learning and Training, Creative Commons
Jennryn Wetzler leads global learning and training initiatives at Creative Commons, with a focus on open education, copyright, and equitable access to knowledge. She works with educators, institutions, and governments to support the adoption and effective use of open educational resources... Read More →
AF

Amanda Figueroa

Platform Director, Curationist Foundation
Amanda Figueroa works at the intersection of cultural heritage, digital access, and community engagement. Her work focuses on making collections more accessible, contextualized, and usable for diverse audiences. She brings experience in bridging institutional collections with public-facing... Read More →
avatar for Christian Dawson

Christian Dawson

Executive Director, Curationist Foundation
Christian Dawson is Executive Director of the Curationist Foundation and a leader in advancing open access to cultural heritage. His work focuses on connecting museum collections with broader digital knowledge ecosystems to support more inclusive and meaningful public engagement... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 1:40pm - 2:45pm EDT
3 Room I MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

2:15pm EDT

Generative AI for Mathematics Open Educational Resources: Developer and Educator Perspectives
Friday October 9, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
ID: 33183

This panel will report about an ongoing project about generative AI in OER use and creation in mathematics. Each speaker will share about their specific areas of responsibility and findings from the project. Cristina Heffernan will present about the ASSISTments platform. ASSISTments is a Standards-aligned math practice and assessment solution that provides timely feedback to students and data to teachers. This data is used by teachers to inform their formative assessment practices. We feel that formative assessment should be integrated into tier one (whole-class, grade-level) instruction. The introduction of a highly rated and used open educational resource, Illustrative Mathematics, has enabled us to do just that. This presentation will share our story from a research project to a competitive product in the K-12 market, supporting the implementation of Illustrative Mathematics in schools that want a proven tech solution.Candace Walkington will present on ideas for using generative AI in OER creation. Generative AI introduces new possibilities for creating open educational resources that are tailored to learners’ interests, experiences, and learning needs. I will discuss how our team is implementing systems for AI-powered context personalization of math problems into OER, as well as systems for integrating AI-generated visuals into OER. Such approaches can improve the quality and relevance of OER materials, both in K-12 and in higher education. They can allow students to better be engaged by and understand difficult mathematical tasks.Jiabao Wen will present on interviews with educators on using generative AI for visuals in OER. Both K-12 mathematics teachers and college mathematics instructors often use problems in their courses that involve visuals – images that show math properties or relationships, or that illustrate real-world contexts. AI offers new opportunities for educators to generate new visuals for mathematics learning on-the-fly, to support their students’ needs. I will discuss a series of 30 interviews we conducted with mathematics instructors who use OER where they described their needs related to AI image generation to accompany OER materials, and tested and reacted to current AI image generation approaches.Virginia Clinton-Lisell will present on interviews with OER developers in this project. Ten mathematics OER developers were interviewed about their use of generative AI and tried AI tools for visual creation. Based on analyses of the interviews, there was varied adoption of AI tools by OER developers for their workflow process, with some enthusiastic about AI and others reporting little to no use. Common complaints about the generative AI tools demonstrated were the lack of accuracy and concerns that the images would not be accessible across functional diversity.
Speakers
avatar for Candace Walkington

Candace Walkington

Annette and Harold Simmons Centennial Chair and Professor, Southern Methodist University
Dr. Candace Walkington is an Annette and Harold Simmons Centennial Chair, Professor, in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Southern Methodist University, specializing in mathematics education. Dr. Walkington conducts research on technology-enhanced approaches to mathematics... Read More →
avatar for Virginia Clinton-Lisell

Virginia Clinton-Lisell

Associate Professor, University of North Dakota
Dr. Virginia Clinton-Lisell began her career in education as an ESL teacher in New York City. She then obtained her PhD in Educational Psychology with a minor in Cognitive Science at the University of Minnesota where she was trained in educational research. She has published over... Read More →
avatar for Cristina Heffernan

Cristina Heffernan

Co-Executive Director and Co-Founder, ASSISTments
Cristina began her teaching career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Gabon, Africa. Since then she has felt at home working with and for educators with a special passion for middle school math. In 2003, Cristina was the go-to advisor for the work her husband Neil was starting at WPI... Read More →
JW

Jiabao Wen

PhD student, Southern Methodist University
Jiabao Wen is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Southern Methodist University. His research focuses on generative AI in K–12 mathematics education, with particular attention to multimodal AI, visual representations, and the design of AI-supported learning... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

2:15pm EDT

French Ministerial Strategy for OER and Open Education in Higher Education: National Recommendations and Actions Plan
Friday October 9, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
ID: 33871

The French ministerial roadmap 2023-2027 for digital technology in higher education sets out 26 measures aimed at strengthening five principles:  sovereignty, security, digital responsibility, open data, and the use of cloud computing. Among these, measures 9 and 10 focus on promoting open educational resources (OER) and developing a national strategy for open education. These actions are coordinated within the framework of the Digital Committee for Student Success and Institutional Agility (COREALE), whose role is to steer digital transformation and promote student success. This presentation addresses the foundations, operating methods, stakeholders, recommendations and actions plan from measures 9 and 10, which build a national framework for French universities and higher schools from public sector. Those two measures aim to achieve the following two objectives: “Improving the visibility and interoperability of educational resources by promoting open educational resources” (measure 9) and “Developing a national strategy for Open Education” (measure 10). As with the ministerial digital strategy’s other measures, the approach is bottom-up in order to define deliverables based on a broad consensus, designed and validated in collaboration with stakeholders and experts in the field of documentation and of pedagogical and digital engineering. The first national deliverable of measure 9 (Massou & Boulet, 2025) proposes 12 recommendations based on training needs for academic staffs and students, considering pedagogical collaborations and technical environments to cover the complete life cycle of OER (5R). It clarifies which open licenses, metadata and permanent identifiers are relevant for OER to improve their openness, interoperability and visibility in other resources’ catalogs. It insists also on accessibility and multilingual issues. This deliverable was expanded to include an action plan in 2026 with two methodological guides (on legal and documentation matters) and a digital platform to facilitate indexing of OER (using standards of metadata). The second national deliverable of measure 10 will consist on recommendations to build a national strategy on open education in higher education, similar to the national plans for open science launched by our ministry in 2018 and 2021. The following topics will be addressed in a broader and ecosystem-based approach of open education: Awareness-raising, communication, and promotion; Regulation, funding, and business models; National and international partnerships; Professional development for teachers and support staff; Accreditation and recognition of open learning; Research and evaluation; Governance and management support. The action plan that will follow this deliverable will involve the practical implementation of this national strategy starting in 2027 across the entire French higher education system.
Speakers
avatar for Luc Massou

Luc Massou

Scientific advisor, Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Space (France)
Luc Massou is full professor of Information and Communication Sciences at University of Lorraine (France) and serves as a scientific advisor to the General Direction for Higher Education and Professional Integration (DGESIP) at the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, and Space... Read More →
CJ

Céline Joiron

Vice-President, University of Picardie Jules Verne (France)
Céline is Vice-President of the Association of Digital Vice-Presidents for Higher Education and Research (VP-Num) in France and she is also the Executive Vice-President for Digital Strategy and Artificial Intelligence at University of Picardie Jules Verne. She is an associate professor... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

2:15pm EDT

Intentional Design for Open Authorship: Building Infrastructure, Community, and Time to Write
Friday October 9, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
ID: 33833

In this session, we invite Open Education program managers to rethink how to support OER creation and authors to re-envision their creation process. Open educational practices (OEP) are more than “putting an OER online” or putting an open license on your original in-copyright work. Ideally, OEP should permeate an entire project through thoughtful design of methods for selecting, supporting, and empowering learners — including authors. To ease the authorship process and center these OEP, VIVA developed the VIVA Rapid Publishing Program. This program identifies a gap in available OER in an area of high need for Virginia higher education, then assembles a team of subject-matter experts from around the state, provides infrastructure and synchronous in-person and online support for writing, and oversees the peer-review and publishing processes. The program includes preparatory meetings which precede a week-long in-person writing sprint, followed by peer review and iterative meetings to discuss potential revisions.In this presentation, we showcase open practices used in the program, such as intentional inclusive selection of project participants, support for authors-as-learners, and consensus-building on what to create and how. Our work addresses issues common to collaborative authoring of an open textbook in an attempt to reduce the sense of “overwhelm” when writing a lengthy work. Authors are guided along a highly structured yet responsive development process. This support streamlines processes of building an author team and scheduling time with your team; identifying and writing to your audience; setting tone, style, and tense; and deciding what content, pedagogical devices, and figures to include. The writing process is also collaborative–asking authors to create together and review each other’s work, rather than working in silos. By providing this time, space, and structure, we hope to provide an environment in which authors 1) form connections with other authors whom they previously may not have known, 2) can focus solely on writing–a rare occurrence in today’s busy society, 3) and experience freedoms and feedback needed to unlock both creativity, critical thinking, and productivity. In realizing these three goals, the program catalyzes what we believe are necessary conditions for the development of an OER with broad applicability and impact. This presentation provides an overview of the program, including the motivations behind the development and how we developed the structure. It will then showcase the inaugural cycle of the program, in which a team of ten developed a Leadership Studies textbook during 2025 and 2026.  Members of the team will share their experiences and how this process benefited (or didn’t) their writing process. While we focus on our experience, we hope to provide a framework for anyone interested in running their own writing sprint, and we will share a toolkit for those wishing to replicate the program in their own contexts.
Speakers
avatar for Anita Walz

Anita Walz

Associate Professor, Assistant Director of Open Education and Scholarly Communication Librarian, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Anita Walz is Associate Professor, Assistant Director of Open Education, and Scholarly Communication Librarian in the University Libraries at Virginia Tech. She received her MS in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has worked in... Read More →
avatar for Jessica Kirschner

Jessica Kirschner

Digital Publishing Coordinator, VIVA (Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium)
Jessica Kirschner is the Digital Publishing Coordinator at VIVA, Virginia’s academic library consortium. In this role, supports the publication efforts of VIVA's Open and Affordable Course Content program. Jessica began her career working in the acquisitions department at SUNY Press... Read More →
avatar for Joshua Marsh

Joshua Marsh

Research and Instructional Librarian, Liberty University
Dr. Joshua Marsh is currently an Associate Professor at Liberty University, where he also serves as an Applied Research Chair in the School of Education. Dr. Marsh holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Kentucky, a Master’s Degree in Education from Western... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
2 Room M MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

3:00pm EDT

UHCOOL: A Sustainable Governance Model Bridging University OER and K-12 Blended Learning
Friday October 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
ID: 33508

While the expansion of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has democratized access to higher education, their integration into K-12 environments remains challenging. Literature consistently indicates that K-12 learners require structured teacher support and blended classroom integration rather than independent, isolated online study. Furthermore, the true challenge of OER initiatives lies not merely in facilitating "open sharing," but in establishing "sustainable management" through institutional governance, platform support, and localized pedagogical adaptation. Existing collaborative models primarily focus on higher-education-to-higher-education partnerships, leaving a critical research gap regarding cross-level governance frameworks for University-High School-Platform collaborations.To address this gap, this presentation introduces the UHCOOL initiative, an innovative, research-backed governance model developed by Taiwan’s HERO Center and the "ewant" MOOC platform. UHCOOL transforms university-level intellectual capital into adaptable, open-access learning modules specifically designed for integration into formal high school curricula. Rather than treating this initiative as a simple course promotion, our research positions UHCOOL as a systematic, cross-educational blended learning model. In this ecosystem, the "ewant" platform serves as a central hub, while high school Open Learning Environments (OLE) and localized teacher communities function as the core governance mechanisms supporting student engagement.Our research utilizes a proposed Multi-level Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) framework to empirically validate the effectiveness of this integration. Drawing on a dataset of 661 participants (596 students and 65 teachers) across diverse subjects, including Introduction to Medicine and Semiconductor Principles, we examine the critical pathway from classroom-level interventions to individual student outcomes. Specifically, the study investigates how different modalities of teacher support—such as progress monitoring, worksheet adaptation, and classroom discussion—directly influence students' log-based MOOC learning behaviors, including video completion rates and supplementary study time. We hypothesize that these learning behaviors subsequently impact learning outcomes, course evaluations, and ultimately, students' long-term intention to utilize OER platforms. By moving beyond the simple question of whether blended learning is effective, this presentation explores the specific structural and pedagogical conditions under which it succeeds in a cross-institutional context. Attendees will gain valuable insights into designing sustainable governance models that bridge the gap between higher education resources and K-12 practical applications, transforming fragmented OER use into a cohesive and impactful digital learning ecosystem.
Speakers
avatar for Ken-Zen Chen

Ken-Zen Chen

Associate Professor and Associate Director of HERO Center, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Ken-Zen Chen serves as an Associate Professor at the Institute of Education, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU), Taiwan. His scholarly work focuses on digital learning ecosystems, institutional collaboration, and the practical application of Open Educational Resources... Read More →
HC

Haoyi Chen

Postdoc Research Fellow, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Dr. Haoyi Chan is a postdoc research fellow at HERO Center of National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. She specializes in learning analytics and quantitative research methods for management research.
YJ

Yun-Chia Jasmine Chang

Professor and Director of HERO Center, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Professor Yung-Chia Chang is a faculty member in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and a key contributor to the HERO Center’s work on open higher education resources. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial... Read More →
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Wei-I Lee

Research Fellow of HERO Center, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Wei-I Lee is a professor in the Department of Electrophysics at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and has served as the director of the Research Center of Higher Educational Resources for Openness (HERO Center). He obtained his B.S. in Electrophysics from National Chiao Tung... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

3:35pm EDT

From Evidence to Understanding: Aligning OER Research with Disciplinary Practice
Friday October 9, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
ID: 33953

This panel brings together contributing authors from OER Research Case Studies: A DOERS Project to explore how the future of openness is being shaped through research that is grounded in disciplinary context and expressed through shared, field-specific language. As open education continues to mature, one of the central challenges is not simply generating evidence of impact, but communicating that impact in ways that resonate across academic and professional communities.  The DOERS Collaborative includes state-, system-, and province-level open education leaders across North America who are committed to advancing student success through scalable, evidence-informed open education initiatives. This case study volume reflects that mission by documenting how contributors from a range of disciplines and institutional roles design and implement research on open educational resources (OER). The panel presentation will bring together authors whose work spans multiple fields and methodological traditions, each offering insight into how openness is interpreted, studied, and applied within their respective contexts.  Aligned with the conference theme, Exploring Emergent Technologies and the Future of Openness, this session focuses on the future of openness as a communicative and translational challenge. Panelists will share how they frame research questions, select methodologies, and interpret findings in ways that align with the established research languages of their disciplines, including learning science, nursing, social science, chemistry, psychology, and other professional fields. By doing so, these scholars position open education not as a parallel or niche movement, but as integral to broader scholarly conversations about student success, access, and institutional effectiveness. A central thread of the discussion will be the role of shared vocabulary in advancing open education research. Panelists will reflect on how aligning OER research with ongoing subject-matter conversations and established disciplinary frameworks can bridge gaps between open education advocates and other scholars in the field. They will also share strategies for translating open practices into the language of disciplinary research, enabling broader recognition, uptake, and sustainability.  Each author/panelist will offer practical insights from their chapter, including how they developed research questions within their disciplinary context, navigated methodological choices, and collaborated across roles to ensure their work was both rigorous and relevant. Rather than focusing solely on outcomes, the panel emphasizes process: how researchers adapt, localize, and communicate their work to ensure it contributes meaningfully to the scholarship of both their field and the evolving landscape of open education.  Attendees will leave with concrete strategies for situating open education research within their own disciplinary and institutional contexts, using shared language to foster understanding, collaboration, and impact. The session will conclude with a moderated discussion, inviting participants to consider how the future of openness depends not only on what we study, but also on how and with whom we communicate that work.
Speakers
avatar for Kathy Essmiller

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 →
avatar for Jennifer Pate

Jennifer Pate

Director of OpenEd, Texas A&M University
Jennifer supports student success by leading textbook affordability initiatives for her campus and supporting broader OER efforts across the A&M system. She is a Founding Fellow with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's OER Fellowship program, a member of the Open Education... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
3 Room I MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

3:35pm EDT

Open as Resilience: Collaborations, Storytelling, and Solidarity in Contexts of Crisis
Friday October 9, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
ID: 33503

In challenging political climates, Open Education is more than a public good - it is an act of resilience and in some cases, resistance. By amplifying voices from disrupted and conflict-affected contexts, open practitioners can foster connection, reciprocal learning, and meaningful global support.This session explores the Open as Resilience webinar series, co-created by the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER), the North American node of Open Education Global, and SPARC Europe’s European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL), which centers educators working within conditions of conflict and instability. Through collaborations with colleagues in Ukraine,Palestine, and beyond, this work has made local experiences more visible while building pathways for sustained, cross-organizational support.Emerging from partnerships within ENOEL, and evolving in response to the ongoing war in Ukraine, this initiative demonstrates how distributed collaboration can adapt to changing needs. Open practitioners have leveraged existing resources, formed new partnerships, and responded to locally identified priorities through small but impactful actions.Bringing together voices from ENOEL, CCCOER, as well as a new voice, who will bring the perspective from a different generation researching Open practices in emergencies, this session highlights the role of storytelling as a tool for resilience, advocacy, and connection. Building on this work, we will also share insights from our Stories as Resistance workshops, which invite participants to engage in storytelling as a reflective and collective practice. We will explore how storytelling has shaped collaborations, including MIT Open Learning’s work with Ukrainian librarians to translate open textbooks from MIT OpenCourseWare into local language.We invite attendees to commit to discussion and engagement on topics around the opportunities and challenges of storytelling in open practice, including, but not limited to, the nuances of addressing sensitive topics and approaches that respect contextual needs, risks, and cultures.
Speakers
avatar for Paola Corti

Paola Corti

Senior Open Education Expert, SPARC Europe
Paola Corti is a Senior Open Education Expert at SPARC Europe, and she manages the European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL); she supports librarians in taking action to implement the UNESCO OER Recommendation. She also works part of her time at Politecnico di Milano (Italy... Read More →
avatar for Heather Blicher

Heather Blicher

Director, Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER), Open Education Global
Heather Blicher is the Director of the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER) with Open Education Global, where she leads efforts to expand and support Open Education across community and technical colleges in North America. A passionate advocate for access, equity, and collaboration... Read More →
avatar for Adriana D’Amico

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 →
Friday October 9, 2026 3:35pm - 4:05pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA
 
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OEGlobal 2026
From $195.00
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