2026 Open Education Conference

Global contexts often present a rigid gap between the right to education and restrictive enrollment regulations. Drawing on two decades of higher education administration expertise, this session explores how systemic quotas stifle learning, offering a global perspective on a shared institutional challenge.

Designed for higher education administrators, policy developers, and open education coordinators, this session proposes a transferable 4-stage roadmap. We examine scalable solutions, including community-based learning for capacity constraints, reimagining secondary benchmarks, and institutional qualifying tracks. Attendees will gain systemic insights into shifting from capacity-based admission to an open, digital-first ecosystem. We conclude with lessons on how professional licensing maintains quality while enabling radical accessibility, helping participants navigate structural bottlenecks within their own institutions.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Identify the legislative and administrative bottlenecks that hinder educational equity and enrollment in traditional systems.
• Explain how "Community Schools" and decentralized models can effectively address resource scarcity and school overcrowding.
• Analyze a multi-stage roadmap for transitioning from "capacity-based" admission to a "competency-based" educational ecosystem.
• Evaluate the role of Open Education and digital production in bypassing physical infrastructure constraints for higher education.
• Propose a framework for decoupling academic degrees from professional licensing to ensure both quality and radical inclusivity.

Many institutions have made progress in adopting Open Educational Resources (OER), yet a gap remains between individual adoption and consistent, course-level redesign. This session shares how one technical college with a strong transfer focus shifted from a largely self-directed OER adoption model to a more structured approach to course redesign.

The presentation focuses on three key changes: builder-faculty partnerships, a structured OER course space that guides faculty through selection, alignment, and course design, and milestone-based checkpoints that support accountability and progress. Together, these changes improved course consistency, alignment, and clarity.

The session will also introduce early indicators of student experience, such as navigation, engagement, and course success patterns, as part of an ongoing effort to understand impact. Attendees will leave with a clear, adaptable framework for moving from isolated OER adoption to scalable, sustainable course redesign.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Assess how structured faculty support models influence alignment, accessibility, and course coherence.
• Describe a milestone-based approach to increase accountability without diminishing faculty autonomy.
• Identify practical indicators of course design effectiveness and student experience.
• Adapt a scalable framework for transitioning from individual OER use to coordinated course redesign.

Maps and spatial data are a powerful way to communicate, connect, and visualize data across languages and disciplines. With the advent of the internet, digital maps and apps, the use of maps has become part of our daily lives and presents exciting opportunities to integrate open pedagogical practices in the classroom and beyond.

This presentation showcases activities centered on students’ collaborative mapping that foster connectedness within and beyond the classroom, how Open Street Map can be used as a critical lens to visualize openness and mapping for the public good, and the use of mapping on a community-based curriculum on environmental justice and community organizing. The case studies are drawn from the literature and the collaborative work of the presenter on her courses and with community organizations in the Bronx, NY.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Explain how mapping can be used in open pedagogical practices.
• Describe examples of collaborative mapping platforms.
• Explain how Open Street Map can be used in the classroom and for humanitarian purposes as a non-disposable assignment.
• Incorporate collaborative mapping activities on their own teaching or community work.

Since 2013, the Global Open Graduate Network (GO-GN) has supported doctoral and postdoctoral research in open education and practices worldwide. In 2023, we conducted a 10 year anniversary strategic review (Farrow et al., 2024) with our membership and the wider GO-GN and open education communities. This review captured the network’s achievements to date and future aspirations, including exploration of a more federated approach for the network.

This presentation reports on the outcome of this work, which focused on a pilot programme to establish and evaluate four regional hubs (Asia-Pacific, Canada, Ibero-America and Kenya). We will report on the development of these regional hubs across six continents, relating insights from the evaluation and reflecting on how other open education networks might approach questions of scale, diversity and sustainability.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Critically evaluate the design and implementation of a federated network model (as exemplified by GO-GN pilot regional hubs) in relation to challenges of scale, diversity, and sustainability in open education.
• Analyse the role of regionalisation and distributed leadership in building research capacity, particularly in relation to equity, autonomy, and responsiveness to Global South contexts.
• Apply insights from the GO-GN hub pilots and evaluation to inform the development or adaptation of networked initiatives in open education or related fields.

Open education asks a lot of its people – to advocate, build, facilitate, and sustain – often without recognition, compensation, or a space to ask how they are actually doing. The result for many of these leaders is quiet exhaustion and a growing sense that they are carrying this work alone.

The Rebus Luminary Fellowship for Education Leaders brought together fifteen postsecondary leaders across Canada and the United States for a three-month program designed around one core belief: that the people doing this work deserve to be taken care of, too. In this panel, Luminary Fellows speak honestly about what it means to lead in these times – the burnout, the isolation, the moments of doubt – and what has helped them keep going.

This session offers both solidarity and strategy. Attendees will leave with concrete practices for sustaining themselves and their communities, as well as the reassurance that they are not alone in this work.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Identify shared experiences of burnout, isolation, and doubt that open education leaders commonly face.
• Describe concrete strategies for sustaining themselves and their communities in times of uncertainty and change.
• Reflect on their own leadership practice in light of insights shared by Luminary Fellows.
• Apply at least one strategy or insight from Luminary Fellows to their own professional context.

This session explores student–staff partnership in co-creating interactive Open Educational Resources (OER) in medical education.

Using the OpenStax Microbiology Ancillaries (OSMA) project and a current collaboration with a medical student developing immunology resources for a Foundations of Allergic Diseases (FAD) module, we demonstrate how students and educators can co-create inclusive, scalable learning materials using H5P, generative AI, case-based learning, and the IDEA framework.

We reflect on how AI can accelerate resource creation while still requiring human pedagogical oversight, critical review, and inclusive design. Through comparison of modular LMS-embedded activities and textbook-style interactive resources, we explore tensions around usability, scalability, openness, and quality.

Co-presented by an educator and student partner, this session offers dual perspectives and practical strategies for engaging students as partners in AI-enhanced OER development.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• By the end of this session, participants will be able to:.
• Evaluate different approaches for developing and delivering interactive OER (modular LMS-based vs textbook-style).
• Identify strategies for engaging students as partners in AI-enhanced OER co-creation.
• Apply inclusive and pedagogically informed design principles (e.g., UDL) when using AI to develop educational resources.
• Consider trade-offs between scalability, openness, quality assurance, and human oversight in digital resource development.

How can educators in the social sciences root their open resources in anti-oppressive or other specific practices? This 40-minute presentation introduces a novel process our team developed for our Master of Social Work program: creating two open resources rooted in anti-oppressive practices.

We will detail our collaborative process as a model for others creating open resources in the social sciences. The session showcases how equity lenses transformed standard content into actionable, culturally responsive learning tools. Attendees will leave with a usable model for auditing and creating OER that challenges systemic biases, plus technologies that aided our work. Attendees will also participate in a value-mapping activity to help them overlay their own course plans with a framework based in specific values.

We will provide a roadmap for integrating equity as a structural component of OER development, ensuring that our students receive resources for supporting the communities they serve.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Explore a collaborative process for creating open resources.
• Identify values they wish to map onto their courses.
• Learn about technologies that streamline open resource creation.
• Consider how anti-oppressive frameworks can guide open resource-based teaching.
• Build strategies for supporting inclusivity with OER.

For decades, OER have been highlighted as adaptable learning materials that can fit different contexts and needs. But this is not always reflected in the OER we present to faculty. The glossy, textbook-shaped OER that we like to showcase do not align with the variety of excellent teaching practices and materials that educators actually use. When we call out quality through similarities to textbooks, we conflict with the purpose of open education: to empower educators and improve access for students.

In this session, we explore collective conceptions of OER–what they are, what they can be, and how quality is defined. The “ideal” OER does not need to be a textbook with homework software. To support better teaching, what we need are infrastructures that support diverse needs. Participants who join this discussion will have the chance to voice their perspectives on how we can empower educators to implement a variety of teaching and learning materials and approaches, not just textbooks.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Articulate issues regarding how we as open practitioners and advocates miss opportunities to uplift small-scale OER;.
• Recognize opportunities to engage with and support community-driven and alternative open education projects;.
• Reflect on their current practices for developing and talking about “high quality OER; and.
• List three or more potential paths forward for individuals and the open education community around the topic of quality and opportunity for OER.

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.