2026 Open Education Conference

Generative AI promises to transform OER by easing creation, adaptation, and discovery, potentially overcoming traditional barriers like time. Yet faculty navigate a complex "space between" institutional enthusiasm and classroom realities. This mixed-methods study, part of the OER Research Fellow Program with Hewlett Foundation support, surveys faculty on using tools like ChatGPT for course materials and OER. Grounded in UTAUT2 (explaining technology adoption via usefulness, ease, social influence), it examines what drives or hinders adoption. Quantitative analysis reveals patterns in performance expectancy, trust, effort, and ethical concerns. Focus groups unpack nuances: How do faculty verify AI outputs? When is AI-assisted OER "good enough" for the classroom? Join as we explore these intersections. Attendees will see survey results, hear anonymized faculty voices, and discuss implications for OER programs and policy. Perfect for OER practitioners seeking evidence-based insights.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Identify key factors (from UTAUT2) shaping faculty perceptions of using generative AI to create and adapt course materials.
• Discuss ethical concerns faculty express about AI-generated or AI-assisted course materials, such as authorship, accuracy, and transparency.
• Describe implications of faculty perceptions for teaching centers, instructional design, and institutional AI policy.

This session will describe the development of an OER by collaborators in India and Canada. The original idea for this project arose out of a thought that, like common journalists, teachers and students are not capable of reporting, writing and analyzing the news information they want to share with the academic community.

The team engaged in a joint collaboration on an Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) project in 2021-22. The OE4BW project involved the creation and delivery of a MOOC in Educational Journalism. This then led to a collaboration by the three participants in the development of an open resource through the Pressbooks platform.

One of the goals of the project was to create a more accessible and interactive resource for educationists/academicians in educational journalism.

An additional goal of this presentation is to describe the best practices for selection of cross-cultural teams, digital tools, interactive multimedia and strategies for maintaining openness.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Describe the challenges involved in cross-cultural open education collaborations.
• Identify strategies for addressing challenges to maintaining downstream openness.
• Explore processes for identifying appropriate digital tools for open content development.
• Identify the skills needed to pursue cross-cultural open content creation projects.
• Gain insights into how to create effective cross-cultural teams for open educational projects.

This session presents a scalable, classroom-based Wikipedia Editathon model implemented at JSS Medical College to advance open educational resources (OER), multilingual knowledge production, and digital equity. Students contributed to underrepresented topics in communication sciences and disorders by creating and translating content into regional languages (e.g., Kannada), aligning with principles of participatory knowledge and inclusive access. The session highlights instructional design, training workflows, and assessment strategies (pre–post–delayed measures) used to evaluate student learning, engagement, and sustainability. Attendees will gain practical guidance on integrating Wikipedia-based assignments into curricula to promote open pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, and global knowledge sharing.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Design a classroom-based Wikipedia Editathon aligned with OER and open pedagogy principles.
• Implement multilingual content creation strategies to support knowledge equity.

Open education expands access, but access alone does not sustain learning. When learners or instructors feel uncertain, disconnected, or unsupported, expertise is not enough to keep them engaged. Drawing on research in volunteer retention and learner-centered pedagogy, this session explores how connection, belonging, and psychological safety shape participation in open learning environments. Using The Carpentries as a case study, we highlight how community-driven teaching practices shift the focus from performance to participation by normalizing mistakes, encouraging collaboration, and centering the learner experience. Participants will reflect on moments when connection influenced their own learning and identify practical strategies to foster belonging in their contexts. This session reframes open education as not just what we share, but how we support one another in the space between us.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Analyze a learning environment to identify where connection and belonging are lacking.
• Distinguish between teaching approaches that emphasize performance versus participation.
• Design a small, actionable intervention to improve learner engagement or instructor support.

Part call to action, part practical guide, this session offers a new frame for considering open education work. Beginning with a brief overview of why values-based work matters, this session will aim to problematize some of the common working assumptions of open education and then argue for a new approach. It will highlight several key parallels between the stated goals of open education work and several of the core principles of mutual aid, including: solidarity, non-hierarchy, intersectionality, and collective action. Finally, it will invite the audience to imagine what other lessons can be gleaned from organizing and mutual aid practices that might better position open education work to continue its impact for the long haul.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Describe the importance of values-based work.
• Identify the ways in which open education work can prop up existing systems of exploitation and oppression.
• Recognize the overlap between the basic tenets of mutual aid and open education work.
• Devise strategies for integrating mutual aid principles and organizing tactics into open education work.

The presenters will apply the stages of a situationship to analyze the evolving relationship between Gen AI and OER, offering a critical lens on how the two intersect. The session will begin by considering the initial spark, which is a period of experimentation in the Gen AI/OER situationship when educators use Gen AI to adapt and create OER and ancillary materials. The session will then explore the stage of growing comfort with integrating Gen AI and OER, including using Gen AI to evaluate OER and support open licensing. The presenters will then examine how Gen AI can advance accessibility by considering a commitment to an inclusive future through AI’s potential to expand access for all learners. Next, the session will consider the ethical gray areas in the Gen AI/OER situationship, including bias and inaccuracies. Alternatives to applying Gen AI to open practice will be discussed, encouraging attendees to use AI critically and to define their own relationships between Gen AI and OER.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Explore how to apply generative AI tools to evaluate OER and open textbooks, make licensing decisions, and develop supplemental materials to enhance teaching and learning.
• Improve accessibility in OER by applying generative AI tools to generate alt text and simplify content.
• Critically assess the challenges of integrating generative AI with open educational practices.

Health sciences libraries are largely absent in OER development. Yet, academic health science centers teach the next generation of medical providers and have education materials that could serve a worldwide need for quality OER in specialized medicine. This session presents findings from a study at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where the Research Medical Library used National Cancer Institute (NCI) training grants as a structural mechanism to engage faculty in OER creation through an improvement science framework. Using PDSA cycles, the library established workflows, built infrastructure, and proactively recruited faculty, resulting in 32 open access lectures. The study reveals how faculty/library partnerships can advance open education goals and amplify an institution's open science activity.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Identify strategies for using federal training grants as structural mechanisms for OER development.
• Describe the institutional support that enabled faculty participation in OER development at an academic health science center.
• Explain how library-faculty collaboration can bridge the gap between open education values and faculty pragmatic motivations to achieve shared OER goals.

This study bridges academia, industry, and public sectors through OER development for municipal drinking water workforces. We created learning modules for continuing education, co-developed with industry professionals. These modules are built by and with users, closely considering their end use throughout the creation process. We show that while OERs advance accessibility for learners, digital commoning through boundary organizations also ensures that users can contribute to or create content that reflects their community’s concerns, historical knowledge, and specific skills.

The presentation reports on use of Gala, an open educational tool, to collaboratively design learning modules on water flushing and disinfectant by-products for water utility professionals. These modules were conceived in university partnerships with civic utilities, developed and beta-tested in partnership with boundary organization The Water Tower via a networkshop and in-person piloting in Spring 2026.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Understand the importance of bridging academic and technical pedagogical pathways, particularly for the public sector.
• Ideate a method of collaborating with intersectoral partners to develop learning tools intended for workforce development and on-the-job training.
• Understand the co-creation process for building OERs, from research and early development, to alpha and beta testing, to piloting and launching.
• Participate in educational digital commons through Gala as a platform for hosting collaborative and living case studies.

In the fall of 2025, Rebus and the Driving OER Sustainability for Student Success (DOERS) collaborative united to turn a shared conviction into action: open educational resources (OER) have the power to fundamentally transform workforce preparation. This session introduces the Workforce OER Playbook—a practical guide born from cross-sector dialogue. We’ll unpack the collaborative process behind its creation, highlighting both successes and challenges. Attendees will learn concrete examples of how the playbook supports educators and industry partners in building mutually beneficial partnerships. Learn how to map shared goals, co-create relevant OER, and sustain collaborations beyond short-term grant cycles. Whether you’re new to OER or leading workforce initiatives, this session offers actionable strategies to bridge classroom learning and labor market needs.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Describe key workforce skills gaps, including soft skills, digital literacy, and AI literacy, drawn from focus groups with educators and industry leaders.
• Apply strategies from the Workforce OER Playbook to build cross-sector partnerships between higher education and industry.
• Use open licensing and open pedagogy to develop sustainable, accessible curriculum that stays relevant beyond the classroom.
• Leverage industry advisory boards, micro-credentials, and service learning to align academic programs with workforce needs.

The open education field has no shortage of dedicated researchers but it lacks a shared map. Studies are siloed, datasets go untapped, many groups pursue parallel efforts that rarely connect. The result: duplicated work and missed opportunities for the kind of cumulative, policy-relevant evidence the field urgently needs.

This session presents the NCOER National Research Agenda, a practitioner-informed, field-wide framework developed through 126 survey responses and 15 in-depth interviews with researchers, faculty, librarians, and system leaders. Grounded in what the field itself is saying, the agenda offers a bird's-eye view of where open education research stands today, where the critical gaps are, and what to prioritize next.

We will highlight six national research priorities and invite attendees to reflect on where their own work fits, and what meaningful collaboration might look like from here.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Describe the six national research priorities identified through the NCOER research agenda and explain the evidence gaps each one addresses;.
• Situate their own open education research or practice within the broader landscape of what the field is calling for;.
• Identify at least one area of potential collaboration or research alignment with existing groups such as DOERS, the Open Education Association, or regional consortia;.
• Articulate why a coordinated, field-wide research infrastructure matters for advancing policy-relevant evidence in open education; and.
• Explain how the agenda was developed to be representative of diverse roles, institutional types, and regions across the U.S.

If you’re an OER author or program manager, you’ve probably encountered a number of obstacles on your open education journey. You are not alone! A lack of time, funding, collaborators, administrative support, OER awareness, subject coverage, and ancillary materials are very common issues. So are challenges with silos, OER discoverability, maintenance, and accessibility. There can be technology hurdles, confusion around copyright and fair use, and concerns about OER quality. Competition from commercial publishers and automatic billing programs can be fierce. Promotion and tenure guidelines may fail to recognize OER work and usage. The good news is that there are tried and tested ways to address many of these obstacles. While there are no magic one-size-fits-all solutions, this session will share a variety of approaches you can try. It also will introduce a wealth of community resources to help you. Bring your thorny OER problems to this session and we’ll seek solutions together.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Skillfully respond to objections to OER from faculty, administrators, and students.
• Proactively overcome barriers to open education at your institution.
• Find community resources to build or strengthen your open education program.