2026 Open Education Conference

After participating in this session, learners will be able to explain how digital transformation can be understood as a pathway for expanding open education in Chinese universities.

After participating in this session, learners will be able to identify how MOOCs, online open courses, shared platforms, and AI-supported tools widen access, flexibility, and resource sharing.

After participating in this session, learners will be able to assess the main constraints on digitally mediated openness, including inequality, governance, recognition, and platform dependence.

After participating in this session, learners will be able to apply insights from the Chinese case to wider discussions of emerging technologies and open education.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Understand how digital transformation is reshaping open education in Chinese universities.
• Recognize how MOOCs, online open courses, shared platforms, and AI-supported tools expand access, flexibility, and resource sharing.
• Identify the main opportunities and challenges that emerging technologies bring to open education in the Chinese higher education context.
• Reflect on how the Chinese case can inform broader discussions about inclusive and sustainable open education.

While Open Education (OE) focuses on digital access, it often ignores the physical and cognitive realities of learners in the Global South. This session presents a case study from the PragatiSankalp India Foundation in Nashik, Maharashtra, addressing two barriers: "Spatial Scarcity" and "Algorithmic Sycophancy."

Grounded in Ambedkarite philosophy, we share findings from socio-economic surveys of 600+ residents in Bhim Nagar. We identify how high-density housing creates a physical barrier to learning, solved by our "Bodh Saksham Study Hall"—a physical open-infrastructure hub.

We also tackle the cognitive risk of AI in OE. We demonstrate how AI "sycophancy", the tendency for models to prioritize agreement over truth, harms first-generation learners. We propose "Intentional Role Prompting" as a pedagogical tool to turn AI from a "yes-man" into a constructive mentor. Attendees will learn a scalable model for bridging the gap between digital openness and physical/ethical access.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Define "Spatial Scarcity" and identify it as a critical barrier to the use of Open Educational Resources in high-density urban environments.
• Apply "Intentional Role Prompting" techniques to mitigate AI sycophancy and encourage critical thinking in student-AI interactions.
• Describe the "Open Infrastructure" model for community learning centers that combine physical safety with ethical digital guardrails.
• Utilize localized socio-economic data to advocate for interdisciplinary safety standards in open education.

This session shares a grassroots initiative in Indonesia that empowers women to move from learning to contributing in open knowledge platforms. Through the SheSaid 2025 campaign, participants were introduced to Wikimedia projects such as Wikiquote and Wikimedia Commons, as well as basic Creative Commons licensing. Through hands-on activities, they created quote posters using openly licensed images and learned to share knowledge responsibly. This session highlights the “space between” learning and active contribution, demonstrating how open education can bridge gaps in participation and representation, particularly for women in digital knowledge spaces. The strategies used in this initiative—combining training, mentorship, and hands-on contribution opportunities—can also be adapted to other open education and community-based learning contexts beyond Wikimedia.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Understand how open education initiatives can empower women in underrepresented communities.
• Identify strategies to bridge the gap between learning and active contribution in Wikimedia projects.
• Apply basic Creative Commons licensing in creating and sharing open content.
• Recognize the impact of community-based programs such as SheSaid in increasing women’s participation in open knowledge.

Openness and flexibility remain insufficiently integrated in mainstream K–12 education, even though several of their elements are already visible in fragmented forms. This session examines how principles and practices of open education may be meaningfully integrated into school education, while also recognizing the pedagogical, structural, and administrative constraints that shape such possibilities. Situated in the Indian context, the session draws on a systematic literature review and findings from a learner perception survey to explore how openness and flexibility may support more inclusive, adaptive, and continuity-oriented schooling. It further considers which dimensions of openness are already present in school education, which may be meaningfully integrated, and which continue to remain constrained within existing systems. In doing so, the session moves beyond advocacy for flexibility to examine its practical usefulness, perceived value, and systemic limits in school education.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Participants will develop a clearer understanding of openness and flexibility in K–12 education and how these relate to open schooling, conventional schooling, and other educational modalities.
• Participants will identify existing school practices and structures that reflect elements of openness in partial or fragmented forms, such as flexible pathways, inclusive design, and learner-centred approaches.
• Participants will gain insight into how findings from the systematic literature review and learner perception survey inform the possibilities of greater openness and flexibility in K–12 schooling.
• Participants will critically reflect on the pedagogical, structural, administrative, and policy-related challenges involved in integrating openness and flexibility into mainstream school education.
• Participants will identify possible pathways through which openness, flexibility, and technology-enabled practices may support more adaptive and continuity-oriented K–12 education.

Imagine a world where you grow up never having enough to read. This is the reality for many children who speak minority or indigenous languages (hereafter “underserved languages”). The scarcity of juvenile titles (fiction, non-fiction, videos, games, audio books, etc.) in their own languages is a persistent barrier to learning. We invite collaborators to a research group with the goal of building and expanding processes for creators—writers, editors, illustrators, and translators—who can benefit from networking and professional development and learning to use Creative Commons licensing and other OA policies and practices. We wish to amplify collaborative efforts by creators to increase available titles in underserved languages. Our central goals are to establish a design for a replicable, democratic, and participatory multilingual collaborative and to analyze the design process. We will share a pilot that we have conducted in 2026 with speakers of Yoruba and Burmese in Indiana, USA.

Attendees of this session will be able to:

• Participants will gain specific knowledge about the gaps in access to literacy and learning materials for learners who speak underserved languages around the world.
• Participants will learn about storytelling and story creation efforts in Indiana that we have begun with Yoruba and Burmese speakers.
• Participants will be invited to join scholarly and practical efforts to share practices and ideas for developing and providing juvenile titles in underserved languages in areas that are of concern to them.