Open education often advances through disconnected efforts in policy, coordination, and practice. This session explores how connecting those “open dots” can strengthen impact across Europe. Drawing on SPARC Europe’s work on Connecting the Opens, the feasibility report for a European Open Education Alliance, and the community-building work of the European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL), the presentation examines how open education can be better linked with related open movements, supported through stronger coordination, and sustained through practitioner networks. Rather than treating these as separate strands, it presents them as complementary parts of a broader strategy to advance open education as a public good. Attendees will gain a European perspective on how policy alignment, alliance-building, and community practice can work together to create more coherent, connected, and sustainable open education ecosystems.
Attendees of this session will be able to:- Describe how policy, alliance-building, and community practice interact in shaping open education ecosystems.
- Explain the value of connecting open education with adjacent open movements.
- Identify key opportunities and challenges in building more coordinated open education structures at a regional level.
- Analyse the contribution of practitioner networks such as ENOEL to sustaining the open in practice.
- Apply the idea of “connecting the open dots” to their own institutional, national, or regional context.
