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 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.

This session shares the story of how an introductory decision analytics course moved from a misaligned commercial textbook to the adoption of open educational resources. The effort began with the recognition that available materials were poorly suited to the needs of business students. In response, a customized course was developed using curated OER content, primarily from OpenStax, and refined through multiple pilot iterations. Over three years, the initiative evolved through ongoing conversations between lead instructors and departmental leadership, with a focus on aligning content and delivery with faculty priorities such as student success and efficient grading. In addition, leadership concerns about quality and sustainability were addressed and resolved. The course now serves over 2,000 students annually. This presentation highlights practical strategies for navigating resistance and identifying stakeholder motivations to support successful OER adoption.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Identify strategies for aligning OER initiatives with both faculty needs and institutional priorities.
• Recognize common sources of resistance to OER adoption and how they can be addressed effectively.
• Evaluate the role of stakeholder motivations in gaining departmental and administrative support.
• Assess how pilot implementations can be used to demonstrate instructional quality and financial impact.

Dual enrollment is expanding rapidly, but textbook costs remain a hidden barrier that limits who can participate and which courses are offered. In many states, responsibility for these costs is unclear, creating uneven access for students and programs.

Open Educational Resources (OER) offer a powerful opportunity to close this gap by eliminating textbook costs and enabling more flexible, relevant learning experiences. Yet adoption in dual enrollment remains uneven, shaped by policy, partnerships, and faculty support.

This session shares findings from multi-state research led by MHEC and SREB, bringing together policy analysis and practitioner perspectives. Featuring both researchers and educators, we will explore how OER can bridge the gap between access and opportunity in dual enrollment.

Participants will leave with practical strategies to support adoption, strengthen cross-sector collaboration, and expand access to college coursework for all learners.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Understand how textbook costs impact access to dual enrollment and how OER can reduce these barriers.
• Analyze how policy and funding structures influence OER adoption in dual enrollment programs.
• Identify practical strategies to support faculty adoption of OER across K–12 and higher education partnerships.
• Explore approaches for aligning OER with dual enrollment curriculum, quality expectations, and student needs.
• Apply actionable ideas to expand equitable access to dual enrollment through OER in their own institutional or program context.

At the culmination of a two-year, multi-institutional study that included almost 700,000 student records for analysis, AAC&U has added OER to its list of High Impact Practices (HIPs). HIPs are well-established practices that lead to positive student outcomes, namely for students historically underserved in higher education. It is our hope that in naming OER as a HIP, institutional leaders will pay attention to the positive impacts OER can bring to their campuses and organize to institutionalize OER in new and exciting ways. In this presentation, we will summarize the key findings of our study, focusing on course withdrawal rates, course grades, and time to completion. Additionally we will highlight findings from our instructor survey, representing the voices of almost 200 individual instructors that transitioned to OER over the course of the study period. We will also provide recommendations for leveraging OER as a HIP on your campuses to advance OER initiatives and programs.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Speak to the positive impacts OER has on student success, citing research that includes almost 700,000 records from 15 institutions across the country.
• Understand better the instructor experience of implementing OER.
• Reference OER as a High Impact Practice (HIP) with a list of findings and recommendations to support OER advocacy efforts on their campuses.

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.

How can we bridge the space between teaching complex theory and making an assessment accessible? This session reframes Generative AI as a living OER for high-quality STEM assessment. Moving beyond basic automation, we explore how AI acts as a technical partner in designing project-based learning.

Using a group project on relativistic effects for a trip to Alpha Centauri as a case study, the presenter will demonstrate how AI audits student logic for time dilation and length contraction. Participants will then engage in AI-assisted assessment building to create their own rubrics aligned with Quality Matters and WCAG 2.1 AA standards, including generating ARIA labels for digital interactives. Attendees will leave with a scalable framework for coordinating consistent, accessible, and inclusive digital materials across STEM departments.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Define and apply the AI-as-OER framework to transition from static teaching materials to dynamic, adaptable STEM assessments that align with specific Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs).
• Construct a multi-stage project rubric for complex scenarios, such as relativistic time dilation in deep-space travel, that ensures transparent grading and high student engagement.
• Perform an accessibility and quality audit on AI-generated content to ensure all digital assessment materials meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards and Quality Matters benchmarks.

As generative AI enters classrooms, many educators are searching for ways to respond that go beyond policy, detection, or tool demonstrations. This session introduces the Open Speculative Pedagogy Framework, or OSPF, as a practical model for designing open assignments that support human centered AI literacy. Using a visual framework built around reflection, openness, speculation, and materiality, the presentation shows how instructors can translate broad values into concrete classroom practice. Attendees will see three adaptable assignment models that invite students to analyze AI outputs against sources, create openly shareable speculative artifacts, and remix existing open materials for new audiences. The session positions open pedagogy as a space for critique, imagination, authorship, and evidence based inquiry, while offering participants clear strategies for revising assignments in their own courses and contexts.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Describe the Open Speculative Pedagogy Framework as a model for human centered AI literacy in open education.
• Identify how reflection, openness, speculation, and materiality can function as assignment design dimensions.
• Compare three assignment models that translate critical AI pedagogy into open classroom practice.
• Adapt at least one OSPF informed design move for use in their own teaching context.

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.