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Subject: Exploring Emergent Technologies and the Future of Openness clear filter
Wednesday, October 7
 

11:50am EDT

AI and the Future of Openness: Insights from the DOERS AI+OER Project
Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT
ID: 34021

This panel session introduces the DOERS AI+OER Case Studies Project, a collaborative, multi-institutional initiative exploring how artificial intelligence is intersecting with open educational resources (OER) and shaping the future of openness. As AI tools continue to impact teaching, learning, and knowledge production, open education faces both new opportunities and urgent questions: How do we ensure that AI-enabled practices align with the values of openness and student success? What does it mean to create, adapt, and share knowledge in an era of generative systems? And how can open education practitioners lead in defining ethical, transparent, and sustainable approaches to using AI in education?The DOERS Collaborative launched the AI+OER Case Studies Project to document and examine real-world implementations at the intersection of AI and open education. Drawing on contributions from a wide range of institutional contexts and disciplines, the project centers practice-based case studies that explore how educators, researchers, and program leaders are integrating AI into open education workflows, pedagogies, and infrastructures.This session frames AI not simply as a tool, but as an opportunity for rethinking openness itself. Author/Panelists will present selected case studies that highlight diverse applications, such as using AI to support OER creation and adaptation, enhancing accessibility through automated tools, enabling new forms of student engagement and co-creation, and leveraging AI for data-informed decision-making. At the same time, the session will critically examine tensions that emerge at this intersection, including questions of authorship, intellectual property, bias, transparency, and the environmental and labor implications of AI systems.A central focus of the session is how open education values can inform the development and use of AI in ways that prioritize public good. Panelists will discuss how openness can serve as both a framework and a set of practices for guiding AI integration—emphasizing transparency in processes, openness in licensing and sharing, and collaboration across roles and institutions. They will also explore how case study methodology enables the field to move beyond abstract debates, offering grounded, contextualized insights that can inform both local practice and broader policy conversations.Each contributor will share practical insights from their work, including how they designed their projects, navigated ethical and institutional considerations, and assessed impact. The session will highlight patterns emerging across cases, as well as areas of divergence that point to the complexity of implementing AI in open education contexts.Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how AI is currently being used within open education, along with concrete examples and critical questions to inform their own work. The session will conclude with a facilitated discussion, inviting participants to reflect on how they can engage with AI in ways that not only extend the reach of open education, but also uphold and evolve its core principles.
Speakers
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 →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

4:20pm EDT

Offline AI, Open Knowledge: Delivering OER to Schools Without Internet
Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT
ID: 31657

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

Emmanuel Olimi Kasigazi

Entrepreneurial Lead, Axam AI
Emmanuel Olimi is a data and LLM engineer, open education advocate, and founder of AXAM,  an offline AI-powered learning platform designed to deliver MIT OpenCourseWare and other open education content to students in low-connectivity schools across the world. Born in Uganda and now... Read More →
Wednesday October 7, 2026 4:20pm - 4:50pm EDT
7 DR5 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

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
 

10:30am EDT

AI Enhanced Open Pedagogy: Empowering Students as OER Creators in Mathematics
Thursday October 8, 2026 10:30am - 11:00am EDT
ID: 34040

Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Pedagogy have long emphasized learner agency, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. As generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools become increasingly integrated into educational contexts, there is a timely opportunity to examine how these tools can be leveraged ethically and productively within open educational practices. This session presents an exploration of AI‑enhanced Open Pedagogy in undergraduate mathematics courses, where students were positioned not as passive consumers of content, but as creators of openly licensed knowledge.In this study, students engaged in renewable assignments that contributed directly to the OER community. Learners created mathematical problems, explanations, and learning resources, openly licensed their work, and agreed to shared it publicly. AI tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot were used as learning partners, supporting brainstorming, exploring alternative solution paths, generating practice questions, and refining explanations. Students were explicitly guided to use AI critically such as verifying outputs, reflecting on reasoning to ensuring that all final submissions demonstrated their own understanding.Survey results revealed that the majority of participants preferred this AI‑enhanced Open Pedagogy approach over traditional assignments. Students reported reduced stress, improved confidence, stronger conceptual understanding, and deeper engagement with the material. Many learners highlighted how AI tools supported metacognitive processes such as self‑checking answers, identifying gaps in understanding, and simplifying explanations for broader audiences. Importantly, students consistently emphasized that AI did not replace learning, but rather supported reflection and critical thinking.Participants also expressed enthusiasm about contributing to openly available resources and valued the authenticity of producing work that extended beyond the classroom. However, findings showed that student‑created OERs were often limited in format, underscoring the need for intentional design strategies. This session highlights the importance of brainstorming diverse, interdisciplinary, and creative OER formats with students early in the course to fully realize the potential of Open Pedagogy.The session will conclude with practical lessons learned, ethical considerations for AI use in open contexts, and future directions, including integrating student‑created questions into platforms such as MyOpenMath for global sharing.Key takeaways for attendees include:Practical strategies for integrating AI tools into Open Pedagogy while preserving academic integrity and learner agencyDesign principles for renewable assignments that promote creativity, reflection, and opennessStudent perspectives on AI use in OER creationActionable ideas for expanding the scope and impact of student‑generated OERsThis session offers an early but promising model for how AI‑enhanced Open Pedagogy can support active learning and transform mathematics education within the global open education movement.
Speakers
avatar for Virginia Thompson

Virginia Thompson

Associate Professor, CUNY York College
Professor Thompson currently teaches 100‑level gateway courses in the Mathematics & Computer Science Department at York College. She coordinates all Mathematics General Education (GE) courses, which includes orienting new faculty to the curriculum, updating syllabi, choosing textbook... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 10:30am - 11:00am EDT
8 DR6 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

11:50am EDT

A Massachusetts Initiative to Connect OER with Responsible AI Use
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT
ID: 33662

As open education continues to evolve, practitioners are being asked to rethink how emergent technologies, particularly generative artificial intelligence (AI) can strengthen, rather than undermine, the core values of openness. This session explores how open educational practices can adapt to rapid technological change while remaining grounded in human connection, creativity, and the public good.The session draws on the Career and AI Readiness while Remixing Open Textbooks through an Equity Lens (CA-ROTEL) initiative, a collaborative project bringing together faculty and support teams across multiple institutions in Massachusetts. The project is supported by a $1.98 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to adopt open-source textbooks and create ancillary materials for general education courses that are applicable across public college systems. Framingham State University is the lead recipient and has partnered with UMass-Lowell and Northern Essex Community College on the initiative. CA-ROTEL integrates open educational resources (OER), ethical uses of generative AI, and career-connected learning into general education courses that serve diverse learner populations.Rather than positioning AI as a shortcut or efficiency tool, CA-ROTEL approaches it as a participatory and reflective technology, one that can support creativity, deepen learning, and help students articulate transferable skills when used transparently and responsibly. Faculty participating in the initiative remix openly licensed textbooks and create ancillary materials that are culturally responsive, adaptable, and locally relevant. Generative AI is used intentionally to support authentic learning activities, such as modeling workplace scenarios, discussing the ethics of AI, generating prompts for reflection and revision, and helping learners practice describing their knowledge and skills for future academic or professional contexts.This session will share how CA-ROTEL intentionally combines open licensing, faculty support, and collaborative professional development to build sustainable open educational ecosystems. Particular attention will be given to the processes that enabled both materials and teaching practices to circulate across institutions while remaining flexible enough to support local context and instructional autonomy.Speakers will highlight how integrating generative AI and career readiness prompted faculty to critically examine their own perspectives on AI and to more intentionally embed the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) Career Competencies within their curricula. Through CA-ROTEL’s structured professional development, faculty gained a practical, values-aligned framework for thoughtfully integrating AI with OER that  moves  beyond experimentation toward purposeful pedagogical design.As a result, instructors reported increased confidence and readiness to incorporate AI-enhanced learning activities into their courses. This preparation directly supports students in developing essential digital literacy and career-relevant skills, better positioning them to navigate and contribute to today’s AI-influenced workplace.This session positions CA-ROTEL as a transferable case study, not a fixed model. While the initiative emerged within a specific regional context, its methods—remixing OER, supporting faculty through open workflows, and treating AI as a tool for inquiry rather than compliance—are intentionally designed to share. The session invites participants to consider how similar approaches might be adapted to different educational systems, languages, policy environments, and cultural contexts.Dr. Robert Awkward will facilitate this session, offering perspective on the ways the CA‑ROTEL project is influencing OER development in Massachusetts and contributing to wider conversations about openness and educational innovation.
Speakers
avatar for Susan Tashjian

Susan Tashjian

Academic Innovations Programs Manager, Northern Essex Community College (NECC)
Susan Tashjian is Academic Innovations Programs Manager at Northern Essex Community College and a CA-ROTEL principal investigator. She supports faculty in instructional innovation, OER adoption/creation, and practical AI integration. Her work emphasizes equitable access, culturally... Read More →
avatar for Donna Mellen

Donna Mellen

Executive Director of Academic Technology, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Donna Mellen is the Executive Director of Academic Technology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she leads campus initiatives focused on learning platforms, open education, digital accessibility, and partnering with faculty to scale inclusive, learner‑centered teaching... Read More →
avatar for Robert Awkward

Robert Awkward

Assistant Commissioner for Academic Effectiveness, Massachusetts Department of Higher Education
Dr. Robert Awkward is an educator and scholar based in Massachusetts whose work explores the intersection of open education, inclusive pedagogy, and emerging technologies in higher education. His interests focus on how open practices—such as OER, collaborative knowledge creation... Read More →
avatar for Ben Atchison

Ben Atchison

Professor of Mathematics, Framingham State University (FSU)
Benjamin Atchison is a Professor of Mathematics at Framingham State University and is a CA-ROTEL principal investigator. He served as an Assessment Coordinator for the original ROTEL grant (2021-2025). He is a long-time OER adopter and an advocate for the development and adoption... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT
5 DR3 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

11:50am EDT

An Open Introduction to Film: Lessons from a NotebookLM Case Study
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT
ID: 33808

The transition to Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) for foundational survey courses poses a unique challenge: how do we replace beloved, publisher-provided textbooks that come bundled with extensive, high-quality supplementary resources? At the College of San Mateo, an AANAPISI and Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), the Film 100 (Introduction to Film) course is a core degree requirement and a highly popular general education transfer course. As part of a statewide Acceleration Grant initiative aimed at converting the entire Film AA degree to full ZTC status by Fall 2027, our team is addressing this challenge through the creation of Reframing Cinema, a new, OER ZTC textbook.Crucially, Reframing Cinema is built from a decolonial lens, integrating film history and analysis while centering BIPOC, AANAPISI, and HSI film traditions as constitutive of film history rather than supplementary to it. However, writing a culturally responsive textbook is only half the battle. To truly support both student success and widespread instructor adoption, the text needs a robust ecosystem of visual aids, study materials, and a structured delivery method that rivals commercial publisher packages.This session presents a case study on how we are leveraging Google’s NotebookLM and other generative AI tools to build this comprehensive, scalable, open-access ecosystem. We will showcase how we use generative AI to develop custom images and infographics to illustrate complex film craft concepts, and how NotebookLM transforms the foundational OER text into dynamic study materials—such as interactive podcasts, explainer videos, and study guides—that seamlessly align with the course's decolonial framework.Beyond generating individual assets, we will discuss how we are packaging the textbook and all AI-enhanced supplementary materials into a comprehensive, ready-to-use Canvas Course Shell. This turnkey model allows future instructors to simply copy and adapt the shell, effectively removing the logistical barriers and overwhelming workload often associated with transitioning to ZTC materials. We view this holistic approach as a scalable framework that can support ZTC degree pathways across film and other disciplines.By sharing our work-in-progress, we aim to spark an active dialogue about the intersection of artificial intelligence, open education, and culturally responsive pedagogy. How can we creatively leverage emergent AI tools to build media-rich, inclusive resources? And how do these tools empower faculty to center equity without succumbing to burnout? Participants will leave with actionable strategies for building their own scalable, AI-supported OER frameworks.
Speakers
avatar for Tamara Perkins

Tamara Perkins

Film Professor and Filmmaker, College of San Mateo
Tamara Perkins is an award-winning documentary director, producer, and educator with over 20 years of filmmaking experience and over six years teaching film at the College of San Mateo (an AANAPISI and Hispanic-Serving Institution). Deeply committed to equity-centered pedagogy, she... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT
6 DR4 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

11:50am EDT

Futures Thinking in Open Education, and What to Do When the AI Bubble Bursts
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT
ID: 34012

Education done with some sort of “open” ethos has existed for decades, changing shape and direction as new technologies like the World Wide Web and mobile connectivity made learning possible in new places and new ways. Over the last few years, what we previously referred to as machine learning has been repackaged with applications and software layers that communicate with humans in their native language – AI has arrived. But questions surrounding the onset and expansion of AI in the OER and broader Open Education spaces have increased, while conclusive answers about the direct and indirect impacts of its use elude us. What is AI able to do for us that we were previously unable to do, and at what social, financial, legal, and environmental costs? What changes between learners and across collaborators when various blackbox AI tools remain unreliable in their outputs? How do financial inequities shift as AI is taken up unequally by different groups, closing some gaps and further stratifying others? How do OER practitioners change their approaches to copyright and content sharing or reuse as AI models scrape and churn all content, not just that which has been openly licensed? And how might people at all levels of OER leadership and practice consider the implications on the environment, weighing them against the increased potential to democratize education? This session will explore key questions beyond just AI technology itself, but as Heidegger theorized nearly a century ago, the question concerning technology is not simply a technological question.This session will also discuss the process of futures modeling pioneered by Jim Dator, and how images of the future can be created based on trends and patterns of the past and present. Specific focus will be given to opening up the possibility that the current AI ecosystem may experience a bubble burst, similar to the Dot-com bubble in the late 1990ʻs. How do we assess the durability of our work in Open Education in the context of a potential AI bubble burst? And what do we do when it happens? While the future itself cannot be predicted, it is worth considering how Open Education changed as a result of previous seismic shifts in technology. At minimum, we can prepare to tackle undesirable future trajectories while charting paths towards those which uphold (and expand) efforts in Open Education to democratize access to public knowledge and level the learning playing field for anyone, anywhere.
Speakers
avatar for Billy Meinke-Lau

Billy Meinke-Lau

Director, Instructional Design and Development, Outreach College, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Billy Meinke is the Director of Instructional Design and Development (IDD) of the Outreach College at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, leading a team developing online programs and Open Educational Resources (OER). He has worked across many areas of Open Education, and enjoys... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 11:50am - 12:20pm EDT
8 DR6 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

12:25pm EDT

From AI Disclosure to Human Declaration: Centring Human Authorship in OER Creation
Thursday October 8, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
ID: 32892

As AI tools become increasingly common in the creation of Open Educational Resources, the open education community faces a pressing question: how do we talk honestly about AI use in a way that is transparent, nuanced, and fair to the humans doing the work?Rather than debating whether AI should be used in OER creation, this session starts from a different premise: that authors are already using these tools, and that the more productive question is how to support transparent, human-centred disclosure of that use. Most approaches to AI disclosure focus narrowly on what the AI produced — treating it as a binary of used or not used. The KPU AI Declaration Framework for OER Creation takes a different approach, asking not "what did AI do?" but "what was the relationship between the author and AI?" — recognising that human involvement, judgment, and creative direction are essential to the process.The framework is an adaptation of the Artificial Intelligence Disclosure (AID) Framework developed by Kari D. Weaver at the University of Waterloo, reworked for the specific context of OER creation. Where the original framework was oriented toward research processes, the KPU adaptation identifies ten categories of activity relevant to OER development — from conceptualisation and instructional design to media creation and accessibility features — giving authors a structured way to describe their AI use throughout a publishing project. To capture the nuance of the human-AI relationship at each stage, the framework incorporates the Me & My Machine (MMM) labels developed by Fontys University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands — with adaptations to better suit a Canadian and North American context. The five labels (Craftsperson, Handyperson, Cyborg, Curator, and Generator) describe a spectrum from fully independent human creation to AI-generated content, without judgment. Even where AI generates most of the content, human effort is present in the crafting of prompts, the shaping of outputs, and the decisions made throughout — and the incorporation of the label system into the AI declaration framework makes that contribution visible. To support authors in applying the framework, the presenters developed a self-assessment rubric that guides them in selecting the appropriate label for each category — moving beyond definitions to practical descriptions of what each level of human-AI collaboration looks like. An interactive version of the rubric is also available to guide authors through the process of building their own declaration statement. A Pressbooks front matter template brings everything together into a format authors can import directly into their OER projects. The framework has been well received at KPU, with authors appreciating the structure and guidance it provides. Interest has extended beyond OER creation to staff evaluating their AI use across a range of resource types. While developed in an OER context, the framework is applicable to any resource creation project — a deliberate design choice that reflects that the questions it addresses are not unique to open education. This session walks participants through the categories, labels, rubric, and template, and discusses how human-centred AI disclosure might be implemented in other contexts. 
Speakers
avatar for Amanda Grey

Amanda Grey

Open Education Strategist, Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Amanda Grey, MLIS, is the Open Education Strategist at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) in British Columbia, Canada. Over the past several years, she has worked across the full spectrum of open education practice, supporting educators in textbook affordability, OER adoption and... Read More →
KM

Karen Meijer

Scholarly Communications & Copyright Librarian, Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Karen Meijer, MLIS, MA, is the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Librarian at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) in British Columbia, Canada. She has worked in publishing since 2003 and has been active in the field of Open Education in its many forms since 2015. Throughout... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
5 DR3 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

1:40pm EDT

Reimagining Open Practices at Scale: How Massachusetts Is Using Strategic Planning and Privacy-Conscious AI to Advance and Deepen the Utilization of OER
Thursday October 8, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT
ID: 33812

The Massachusetts Department of Higher Education's Open & Low-Cost Educational Resources Advisory Council (OLERAC) Strategic Planning Committee embarked on a comprehensive, year-long initiative to determine national best practices in OER implementation, identify systemic barriers facing the open education community, and explore OLERAC's potential role in expanding educational access. This presentation shares our complete methodological approach, evidence-based findings, and actionable recommendations developed for the Commissioner and the Board of Higher Education. Our multi-phase research methodology combined rigorous desk analysis of published policy and operational content from OER programs nationwide, semi-structured interviews with OER program leads across North America representing diverse institutional types (community colleges, four-year institutions, and state systems), and systematic review of internal operational, policy, and budgeting documentation from existing OER programs. Critically, we pioneered the use of closed large language models for rapid qualitative analysis while developing novel methodological frameworks and engagement documents to maintain participant privacy and data security - a pressing consideration for public institutions navigating emergent AI technologies while upholding ethical research standards. Attendees will gain practical insights into how our work directly addresses the conference theme of reimagining open practices, policies, and pedagogy to solve real-world problems at scale. We will share concrete, transferable strategies for scaling OER adoption across institutional boundaries, overcoming common implementation barriers including faculty engagement, sustainable funding, and technical infrastructure – while noting sustained faculty engagement remains an ongoing challenge. We also explored Early College and Dual Enrollment students, an emergent population that stands to benefit disproportionately from reduced material costs and improved access to high-quality learning materials before matriculating to college, though this warrants further investigation.The implications of this work extend far beyond Massachusetts. With Massachusetts public higher education students saving $21.5 million in FY24 alone, a remarkable 33% increase over FY23, and experiencing 20% lower DFW (Drop/Fail/Withdraw) rates when using no-cost textbooks compared to traditional materials, our findings offer compelling, evidence-based pathways for other states and institutions pursuing similar large-scale OER initiatives. We will present specific data on student outcomes, institutional adoption rates, and the relationship between OER implementation and equity metrics. We will also address critical questions about the intersection of openness and emergent technology: How can institutions responsibly leverage AI tools while maintaining privacy and ethical standards? What role should advisory councils play in shaping state-level OER policy?How might open practices be extended to reach students earlier in their educational journeys, particularly those from underrepresented and low-income backgrounds? Our presentation offers replicable components for strategic planning that balances innovation with accountability, demonstrating how open education can serve learners through cost savings and improved success, faculty through increased teaching & learning choices and the opportunity to use open pedagogy, and communities through expanded access to higher education.By transparently sharing our methodology, findings, challenges, and recommendations, we invite the open education community to learn from our successes, adapt our approaches to their local contexts, and collaborate on solving shared challenges, embodying the very spirit of openness, equity, and practical problem-solving this conference track celebrates.
Speakers
avatar for Robert Awkward

Robert Awkward

Assistant Commissioner for Academic Effectiveness, Massachusetts Department of Higher Education
Dr. Robert Awkward is an educator and scholar based in Massachusetts whose work explores the intersection of open education, inclusive pedagogy, and emerging technologies in higher education. His interests focus on how open practices—such as OER, collaborative knowledge creation... Read More →
CZ

Carey Zigouras

Access Services Manager, Massachusetts Maritime Academy
Carey Zigouras has managed the Massachusetts Maritime Academy Library in Buzzards Bay, Ma. since 2022.  A former high school English teacher, she is interested in first year college students’ information literacy skills and their previous experiences with libraries.  She joined... Read More →
avatar for Sarah C. Hutton

Sarah C. Hutton

Education and Clinical Services Librarian, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
Dr. Sarah C. Hutton (she/her/ella) is an academic research librarian, educator, and data analyst whose work spans open education, governance frameworks, organizational theory, and strategic planning. At the Lamar Soutter Library at UMass Chan Medical School, she supports multi-institution... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT
6 DR4 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

2:15pm EDT

Learning in the Wild: A Large-Scale Analysis of GenAI as a Dialogic Open Educational Resource
Thursday October 8, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
ID: 33533

The rapid adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has transformed how self-directed learners interact with knowledge. While GenAI tools like ChatGPT are used globally as de facto Open Educational Resources (OER), empirical evidence regarding authentic learning through these human-AI dialogues - outside of formal institutional settings - remains limited. This presentation shares the results of a large-scale, mixed-methods study that analyzes learning as it happens "in the wild."Grounded in the Dialogic OER Framework (Author, 2026), this research extends traditional OER models (like Wiley’s 5Rs) by introducing three process-oriented dimensions: Responsiveness, Reciprocity, and Reflexivity. We operationalize this framework through a computational and statistical analysis of 50,000 naturalistic conversations from the WildChat dataset - a corpus of over one million real-world ChatGPT interactions.Our methodology utilized keyword-based filtering and rule-based classification to identify 6,693 learning-oriented conversations (13.4% of the sample). These were then analyzed using natural language processing (NLP), lexical complexity metrics, and metacognitive marker detection.Key findings include:Distinct Discourse Patterns: Learning conversations exhibit significantly higher reciprocity compared to non-learning tasks, characterized by longer interaction chains (M=3.19 vs 2.41 turns) and a higher density of follow-up questions (d = 0.36, p < .001).Knowledge Co-Construction: Over 28% of learning interactions showed explicit markers of knowledge co-construction, such as critical evaluation of AI responses and iterative refinement of queries. This suggests that GenAI is not merely a static content source but a partner in emerging Open Educational Practices (OEP).The Evolution of Scaffolding: Within multi-turn learning episodes, we observed a significant increase in lexical diversity (Type-Token Ratio) alongside a decrease in verbosity (d = -0.23, p < .001). This indicates that as learners engage with the AI, their prompts become more precise and sophisticated - a sign of self-directed scaffolding and internalization.Global Equity and Access: Cross-cultural analysis revealed that regions with limited access to formal higher education, such as the Middle East and North Africa, showed the highest proportions of learning-oriented AI use (29.4%). This highlights GenAI's potential to serve as a truly open and accessible resource in underserved contexts.By presenting these findings, we aim to bridge the gap between "Openness as Content" and "Openness as Interaction." We will discuss the practical and ethical implications of these emergent technologies for the future of the open education movement, specifically how we can support learners in developing the "Reflexivity" needed to navigate AI-driven learning landscapes.
Speakers
avatar for Eyal Rabin

Eyal Rabin

Lecturer, Holon Institute of Technology
Dr. Eyal Rabin is a leading researcher in artificial intelligence and education at the Institute for Applied AI Research in Education, Israel’s Ministry of Education, and a lecturer at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT). His work focuses on the integration of artificial... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
8 DR6 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

4:55pm EDT

Augmenting Open Educational Resources at Scale: AI-Driven Approaches to Adoption, Adaptation, and Distribution
Thursday October 8, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
ID: 34028

Artificial intelligence (AI) is ushering in a significant shift in education, introducing systems capable of adapting to learners with unprecedented precision and immediacy. Rather than functioning as static tools, AI-driven platforms now provide context-aware guidance, personalized learning pathways, and real-time feedback that reshape how knowledge is acquired and applied. While these advances can enhance instructional effectiveness and deepen student engagement, they also raise critical concerns about access, as unequal availability risks widening existing gaps in educational opportunity.This presentation examines a new initiative from LibreTexts, a widely adopted, not-for-profit platform, that advances the integration of AI into open educational resources to create a scalable, adaptive, and equitable learning ecosystem. The initiative develops and deploys a comprehensive suite of intelligent tools across the LibreVerse, including context-aware AI tutors embedded within digital textbooks, automated generation and evaluation of formative homework, AI-assisted writing and research support, AI-guided coding and data science tools within Jupyter environments, and AI-enabled social annotation to foster deeper collaboration and engagement.The initiative is organized around five core development areas: (I) AI tutor–enhanced textbooks providing contextualized, always-available guidance grounded in vetted OER; (II) AI-supported homework systems enabling scalable question generation and automated evaluation; (III) AI-assisted writing tools supporting both student learning and instructor content creation; (IV) AI-integrated coding and data science environments enabling collaborative problem-solving; and (V) AI-enhanced social annotation to strengthen interaction, comprehension, and critical thinking.Complementing these advances are robust faculty development programs that support effective adoption and adaptation, alongside a rigorous assessment framework to evaluate learning outcomes, user experience, and system performance for continuous improvement. The anticipated result is a nationally scalable, openly accessible AI-powered ecosystem that improves student comprehension, engagement, and achievement while reducing equity gaps through free, personalized learning support. Instructors benefit from integrated tools for content creation, assessment, analytics, and pedagogy. Grounded in transparency and openness, the initiative establishes a trustworthy AI infrastructure enabling seamless interoperability across textbooks, assessment systems, coding environments, writing tools, and collaborative platforms.This initiative it builds on the proven foundation of the LibreVerse, reaches a truly global audience, and operates under a mission-driven, nonprofit model that maximizes impact. LibreTexts has an established record of developing transformative educational technology and high-quality content for post-secondary learning, with current engagement levels reaching roughly 250 million student interactions per year. This scale enables new AI-driven capabilities to be deployed and adopted rapidly. As a nonprofit dedicated to broad dissemination of OER and open-source tools, LibreTexts removes profit-driven barriers, ensuring innovations can be distributed widely, quickly, and at minimal cost.The project is also innovative in both design and implementation. Its integration within the LibreVerse leverages one of the world’s largest OER repositories, creating a powerful feedback loop of rapid deployment, widespread adoption, and continuous refinement based on authentic learning behavior. Key technical innovations include context-aware AI systems trained on open educational content and aligned with pedagogical best practices, cross-platform interoperability across the entire ecosystem, and transparent development pipelines that allow educators and researchers to audit, extend, and adapt the tools. 
Speakers
avatar for Delmar Larsen

Delmar Larsen

Professor and CEO, University of California, Davis and LibreTexts
Delmar Larsen is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis, and a leading advocate for open education. He is the founder and CEO of the LibreTexts project, one of the world’s largest open educational resource (OER) platforms, providing freely accessible, customizable... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
6 DR4 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

Beyond Tech vs Content: Articulating the Public Interest in AI Policy:The Open Education Perspective
Thursday October 8, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
ID: 34027

Public debate continues to rage over AI policy - the economic, technical, and legal regulation of AI tool creation and use. These debates, however, reduce the interests down to a balancing of the interest and demands of the content industry with the interests and demands of the technology industry.  Neither of those interests align particularly closely with the interests of users, and of public interest institutions including libraries, educational institutions, and the populations they serve.The members of the panel will discuss what issues define the public interest as distinct from both of these corporate interests - working from the experience of the open education community as both committed to the public interest and engaged with new technologies.  We will cover interests including:Accessibility, universal design, and student agency - including the importance of users control and tool choiceTransparency and due process - focusing on the importance of disclosure when AI tools are used and a process for challenging AI determinations when they are made without meaningful reviewStudent surveillance, learning, and open pedagogy - preserving space for experimentation and learningInteroperability and portability - pushing back on platformization as a tool for extractive business models and content silosAgainst these concerns we will start with a discussion of choices at an instructor or an institutional level, but will also focus on building a public agenda for policy debates and lawmaking processes to enunciate the interests that are not currently well represented in the debate. We will engage with audience members to identify decision points in the selection, implementation, and use of AI in different teaching and learning contexts and to map the interests of users in specific cases.  This session will build on previous work, including the “Policy Priorities for Generative AI and Open Education: A Report for the DOERS Community” as well as previous workshops within the open education community over the past four years.   We hope this session will serve two parallel purposes: First we hope it prepares participants for discussions of AI implementation and policy that they are involved in at a classroom, department, institutional or system level.  Second, we hope that active discussion, participation, and feedback from participants will shape our forward looking work on furthering the public interests in law and policy debates on AI regulation, licensing, and lawmaking. These goals are urgent - as policy decisions are being made we need a clear case for the interests of users, not just a bargain struck between two competing corporate interests.  Members of the open community provide a valuable public interest perspective into this debate.
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 Meredith Jacob

Meredith Jacob

Director, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, American University Washington College of Law
Meredith Jacob is the director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law. Currently her work includes research and advocacy focused on: open educational resources, open access to federally funded research, and... Read More →
avatar for Robin DeRosa

Robin DeRosa

Executive Director, Open Education Network
Dr. Robin DeRosa is an educator and community leader who has served in many roles over the span of her career. She has been a middle school theater teacher, a high school literature and writing teacher, and a college professor of both English and Interdisciplinary Studies. She has... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 4:55pm - 5:25pm EDT
4 Room T MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

5:30pm EDT

Who Gets Credit When AI Shares the Work? A Provenance Conversation
Thursday October 8, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT
ID: 34030

When a student submits work that includes AI-generated text, adapted OER, and original writing, who made it? When a librarian publishes a course guide remixed from three openly licensed sources and refined with an AI tool, whose work is it? When an educator adapts a textbook chapter, runs it through a translation model, and posts it under CC BY, who does that license require you to credit?
These aren't hypothetical questions. They're happening in classrooms, libraries, and publishing workflows right now, and many of us are making up the answers as we go.
Attribution in open education has always been more aspiration than infrastructure. Creative Commons gives us TASL (Title, Author, Source, License) as a starting point, not a system, and the ground is shifting under even that starting point. The U.S. Copyright Office concluded in its January 2025 copyrightability report that AI-generated content without sufficient human authorship is not copyrightable, which means the "Author" field in TASL now carries questions it was never designed for. CC Signals, Creative Commons' emerging preference signals project, introduces credit obligations for machine reuse of openly licensed collections but operates at the dataset level, not per-work provenance tracking inside a content workflow. The gap between what we say we value and what we can trace keeps growing.
This round table is a conversation about what honest attribution looks like when humans and AI share the work.
We're bringing one proposed answer to the table: DARP (Devise, Author, Review, Prepare). DARP is a structured attribution model that assigns contributor roles, human or AI, across four stages of a content workflow, each with a defined scope of involvement. It tracks provenance as work is made, not reconstructed after the fact, and that record persists through remixing and redistribution without altering source text.
DARP is not theoretical. It is implemented in commonFrame, an open-source platform licensed under AGPL, with tooling available at no cost. But this conversation is not about the platform. It's about whether a model like DARP reflects how open educators actually work (and what's missing).
One question will anchor our time together: does a four-stage attribution model fit your practice, and where does it break? We especially want to hear from the open educators, open technologists, and open innovators at OEGlobal 2026 who remix, adapt, translate, and publish in open contexts every day. If the model doesn't fit your workflow, tell us why. If there's a stage we haven't accounted for, we want to know. If your context raises questions we haven't considered, we want to hear them.
Attribution is what keeps open education trustworthy and sustainable. This community has been working in open contexts longer than most, and that experience should shape what gets built next.
Speakers
avatar for Victoria Brame

Victoria Brame

Co-Founder, Clear Box
Victoria Brame is the co-founder of Clear Box, a mission-driven organization creating local-first, clear-box AI infrastructure so that access to knowledge never comes at the cost of privacy. She also leads strategic communications at The Rebus Foundation, expanding the reach of impactful... Read More →
avatar for Chris Macek

Chris Macek

Co-Founder, Clear Box
Chris Macek is the co-founder of Clear Box, a mission-driven organization working to make public good software approachable and trustworthy. He leads development and designs systems that make it possible, a role that comes naturally after 20 years of doing the same thing in recording... Read More →
Thursday October 8, 2026 5:30pm - 6:00pm EDT
4 Room T 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

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

11:50am EDT

Future of Openness: A Human-in-the-Loop Framework for Agentic OER
Friday October 9, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT
ID: 34020

As generative AI reshapes the educational landscape, the open education community faces a critical crossroads: Will technology automate the student experience, or can we "invent" new practices that safeguard the human element of learning? This panel discussion invites participants to explore a transformative "Human-in-the-Loop" (HITL) framework for assessment. Rooted in AI engineering but reimagined for the classroom, the HITL model ensures that technology acts as a supportive tool for student growth rather than a "black box" replacement for intellectual effort.By innovating open practices that prioritize the learning process over the final output, we uphold knowledge as a public good and ensure that student agency remains the heartbeat of open education. This discussion introduces a dual-tool pedagogical framework designed to foster a resilient learning process. We will discuss our experiences on how two specific tools—The Forge and Discuss-It—work in tandem to transition OER from passive content delivery to an Agentic OER model. In this model, the "loop" of learning is anchored by the student rather than the algorithm. Rather than deploying writing analytics as a tool for surveillance, The Forge reinvents them as a transparency engine, shifting the power back to the student to document and own their creative writing process. It allows students to visualize the evolution of their work, documenting the iterative steps of their thought process. We will discuss how this shift to Agentic AI principles empowers students to treat their intellectual labor as a valuable public contribution. By making the "messy" stages of drafting visible, we make the use of "black box" automation less appealing and highlight the intrinsic value of human effort. Complementing The Forge, Discuss-It is a multimodal interaction platform that fosters authentic communication by integrating audio and video threaded dialogues directly into the learning path. This tool breaks down the text-heavy barriers that often isolate online learners, transforming assessment into an active, humanized exchange of ideas. Together, these tools form a HITL framework where the student remains the primary author and navigator of their progress, supported—but not supplanted—by emergent technology.Participants will engage with the "Come Invent With Us!" call to action by examining how these tools prevent the commodification of student data and protect the privacy of the learning journey. By centering assessment on the authentic human process, we offer a provocation to the field: to invent a future where Agentic OER does not hide the student behind a prompt, but instead illuminates the brilliance of their individual progress.
Speakers
avatar for Sarah Harmon

Sarah Harmon

OER/ZTC Program Manager and Adjunct Professor of Linguistics, Cañada College
Dr. Sarah Harmon is the OER/ZTC Program Manager and Adjunct Professor of Linguistics at Cañada College in Redwood City, California. She brings experience in AI, OER, and faculty development across multiple college contexts. Her work focuses on practical, scalable approaches that... Read More →
avatar for Delmar Larsen

Delmar Larsen

Professor and CEO, University of California, Davis and LibreTexts
Delmar Larsen is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis, and a leading advocate for open education. He is the founder and CEO of the LibreTexts project, one of the world’s largest open educational resource (OER) platforms, providing freely accessible, customizable... Read More →
avatar for Michelle Pilati

Michelle Pilati

Professor and Open Education Resource Initiative Director, Rio Hondo College
Michelle Pilati is a Professor of Psychology at Rio Hondo College and a recognized leader in open education and online learning within the California Community Colleges system. She has served as faculty at Rio Hondo since 1999 and has extensive experience teaching in online and hybrid... Read More →
avatar for Shagun Kaur

Shagun Kaur

Faculty and ZTC Grants Coordinator, De Anza College
Shagun Kaur is a Communication Studies faculty member at De Anza College and a statewide leader in open educational resources (OER) and zero-textbook-cost (ZTC) initiatives through the ASCCC OERI. Her work focuses on building sustainable, faculty-driven pathways that expand access... Read More →
avatar for Cristina Moon

Cristina Moon

Professor, Chabot College
Cristina Moon, Ph.D. is a Professor of Spanish at Chabot College, where she has been a full-time faculty member since 2006. She earned her B.A. in Spanish Literature from University of California, Berkeley and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from University... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 11:50am - 12:55pm EDT
3 Room I 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

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

3:00pm EDT

Breaking the Golden Handcuffs: Harnessing ADAPT’s Public Question Bank for Open, Flexible Assessment
Friday October 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
ID: 34032

ADAPT is an open-source, LMS-integrated homework and assessment platform within the LibreTexts suite of open courseware (LibreVerse) that is designed to address one of the most pressing challenges in higher education: the restrictive, proprietary ecosystems created by commercial publishers, often referred to as the “golden handcuffs.” These systems limit faculty autonomy, increase costs for students, and inhibit the broader dissemination and adaptation of high-quality educational resources. LibreTexts, as a not-for-profit organization, and specifically ADAPT directly confronts these constraints by providing a fully open, centralized platform for assessments that is tightly integrated with LibreTexts OER textbooks and modern learning management systems (LMSs).The presentation will explore the development, design, and comprehensive capabilities of ADAPT, highlighting its role as a robust, open-source, LMS-integrated homework and assessment platform. Beyond its technical features, the talk will examine the widespread adoption of ADAPT across the State of California, with particular emphasis on the California Community College system, which serves over 2.2 million students who now have unrestricted access to the platform. Attendees will gain insight into how ADAPT is being leveraged at scale to support diverse instructional contexts and improve access to high-quality, openly licensed assessment materials.To illustrate its versatility and impact, the presentation will feature multiple case studies demonstrating the use of ADAPT across a variety of disciplines, including STEM courses, language instruction, and composition courses. These examples will highlight not only the platform’s flexibility in accommodating different subject areas but also its effectiveness in enhancing student engagement, supporting equitable assessment practices, and enabling faculty to adapt, remix, and share exercises. The discussion will also touch on strategies for integrating ADAPT into both traditional and online learning environments, providing practical guidance for instructors and institutions seeking to implement open, scalable assessment solutions.At the heart of ADAPT is its public OER question bank for instructors that currently containing over 300,000 openly licensed exercises spanning a wide range of disciplines and course levels. This repository enables instructors to freely access, adapt, and deploy high-quality questions across courses, institutions, and platforms. Questions can be directly embedded in LibreTexts textbooks, delivered through LMSs, used as standalone web applications, or even integrated into classroom clicker and active learning systems. By decoupling assessments from proprietary systems, ADAPT provides educators with unprecedented flexibility to tailor exercises to the specific needs of their courses and students, supporting a more student-centered and inclusive learning experience.ADAPT’s open question bank also fosters collaboration and pedagogical innovation. Faculty can remix and modify exercises, contribute new questions to the shared repository, and benefit from the collective expertise of educators worldwide. This model not only enhances instructional quality but also encourages the development of equitable assessment practices, as instructors have the freedom to select or create questions that reflect diverse perspectives and learning styles.Ultimately, the presentation will offer a comprehensive view of ADAPT as a tool that not only facilitates high-quality instruction but also exemplifies how open educational technologies can expand access, promote collaboration among educators, and support student-centered learning at scale.
Speakers
avatar for Delmar Larsen

Delmar Larsen

Professor and CEO, University of California, Davis and LibreTexts
Delmar Larsen is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis, and a leading advocate for open education. He is the founder and CEO of the LibreTexts project, one of the world’s largest open educational resource (OER) platforms, providing freely accessible, customizable... Read More →
avatar for Michelle Pilati

Michelle Pilati

Professor and Open Education Resource Initiative Director, Rio Hondo College
Michelle Pilati is a Professor of Psychology at Rio Hondo College and a recognized leader in open education and online learning within the California Community Colleges system. She has served as faculty at Rio Hondo since 1999 and has extensive experience teaching in online and hybrid... Read More →
avatar for Cristina Moon

Cristina Moon

Professor, Chabot College
Cristina Moon, Ph.D. is a Professor of Spanish at Chabot College, where she has been a full-time faculty member since 2006. She earned her B.A. in Spanish Literature from University of California, Berkeley and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from University... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 3:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
6 DR4 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

4:15pm EDT

AI, Openness, and Democracy: Ethical AI Education in Diverse Learning Contexts
Friday October 9, 2026 4:15pm - 4:30pm EDT
ID: 33964

This session explores the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), open education, and democratic participation, with a focus on how ethical AI education can be meaningfully integrated into diverse learning contexts across Europe. As AI technologies increasingly shape access to information, decision-making, and public discourse, education systems face a growing responsibility not only to develop digital skills, but also to strengthen critical thinking, ethical awareness, and active citizenship.The session draws on practice-based and research-informed insights from several European educational and social innovation initiatives, including programmes focused on digital inclusion, technology integration in education, and AI literacy development. These include work with teachers and learners in both formal and non-formal settings, particularly in rural and underserved contexts, where access to quality digital education remains uneven.Building on findings from teacher training programmes and curriculum innovation processes, the session presents how AI-related topics, such as algorithmic bias, information integrity, and the societal implications of automated systems - can be translated into pedagogically meaningful learning experiences. Evidence from projects involving over 200 educators highlights how teachers integrate emerging technologies into teaching practices, not as standalone topics, but as part of broader learning goals related to critical thinking, problem-solving, and civic engagement.A key focus is placed on the role of educators as mediators of complex technological knowledge. The session explores how teachers without technical backgrounds can be supported through structured methodologies, co-created learning materials, and iterative professional development cycles. Insights from multi-phase training models demonstrate how sustained engagement, peer learning, and reflection contribute to more confident and context-responsive teaching practices.The session also addresses systemic challenges identified across projects, including disparities in access to digital infrastructure, differences in institutional readiness, and the risk of reproducing inequalities through emerging technologies. These challenges are examined as critical entry points for rethinking the role of open education in ensuring equitable participation in increasingly digital societies.By linking AI education with democratic participation, the session highlights pathways through which learners can move from awareness to engagement, including connections to participatory mechanisms such as the European Citizens’ Initiative. This perspective positions education not only as a means of knowledge transfer, but as a foundation for informed and active participation in democratic processes.
Speakers
avatar for Eglė Celiešienė

Eglė Celiešienė

AI, Openness, and Democracy: Ethical AI Education in Diverse Learning Contexts, Vilnius Business College
Eglė Celiešienė is an expert in digital education, social innovation, and democratic participation, working at the intersection of education, technology, and European policy. She serves as Chairwoman of the Board of the NGO Confederation for Children in Lithuania and the Lithuanian... Read More →
avatar for Gabija Skučaitė

Gabija Skučaitė

Director, Vilnius Business College
Gabija Skučaitė is an entrepreneur, education leader, and founder with over three decades of experience in building and transforming educational institutions. She is the co-founder and Chancellor of SMK College of Applied Sciences and the owner and Chancellor of Kazimiero Simonavičius... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 4:15pm - 4:30pm EDT
Video

4:15pm EDT

Can Open Technology and AI Power a Global STEAM Educator Network for Under-Resourced Communities?
Friday October 9, 2026 4:15pm - 4:30pm EDT
ID: 33850

A teacher in rural India working on a low-bandwidth mobile phone, with limited infrastructure, multilingual needs, large class sizes, and complex pedagogical demands to navigate, integrating STEAM smoothly and effectively is a real challenge. And she is not alone. What does it take to build an open STEAM educator network that can not only survive, but truly thrive in under-resourced communities around the world?We have powerful examples to learn from. Fab Labs have built a globally distributed community of practice around making and STEAM, establishing thousands of centers across hundreds of countries and democratizing access to digital fabrication tools such as 3D printers and laser cutters. On the other hand, India’s Atal Tinkering Mission has set up thousands of open learning makerspaces in schools, where children learn to tinker, experiment, and solve real-world problems through structured programs. Both initiatives have demonstrated impact on students’ STEAM learning, innovation, and entrepreneurial skills.Yet common challenges persist: sustaining these spaces, building strong support networks, developing skills to operate and maintain equipment, ensuring access to resources at both individual and institutional levels, managing operational logistics, and integrating pedagogy into the curriculum. As a result, these models remain difficult to replicate or scale in under-resourced contexts where resources are scarce, teacher capacity is limited, and infrastructure is unreliable.Can open technology and AI change that equation?This session presents both the wins and challenges from existing networks and how these learnings are being used to build a proof of concept: ZubHub for Educators. ZubHub is an open-source, facilitation-first platform designed for under-resourced contexts: a community-driven tool for teaching creative, STEAM, and activity-based learning. It aspires to support an open STEAM educator network that can be scaled and sustained.ZubHub features low-cost activity alternatives, making hands-on learning possible even with limited resources. Its multilingual design includes AI-assisted translation for diverse language contexts. An AI-assisted content creation feature helps educators document and structure activities for reuse and sharing. A dedicated facilitation mode allows educators to enter a “teaching mode,” with built-in time tracking and community note-taking. Engagement tracking across sessions and resources helps surface widely used activities, encouraging adoption and inspiring more educators to facilitate them.Through this session, we’ll invite participants to reflect on how they would actively use ZubHub as educators for facilitating sessions, creating and adapting content, and engaging with communities. How might it fit into day-to-day teaching practice? How could its design support building open STEAM networks in local, regional, or global contexts? What would they change or adapt?Participants will leave with concrete ideas and practical starting points for using and shaping tools like ZubHub to build open, scalable, and sustainable STEAM educator networks.
Speakers
avatar for Srishti Sethi

Srishti Sethi

Co-founder, Unstructured Studio
Srishti Sethi has worked in open education for over a decade through the design, development, and advocacy of open-source educational tools. She is co-founder of Unstructured Studio, a not-for-profit working with children and educators in rural India and other under-resourced contexts... Read More →
Friday October 9, 2026 4:15pm - 4:30pm EDT
Video
 
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OEGlobal 2026
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