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OE Awards 2021 celebrates the Open Education excellence of individuals

The very best of the best

For 10 years, Open Education Global’s Open Education Awards for Excellence has charted and acknowledged the growth of Open Education, its impact on the global education sector, driven by an increasing number of passionate educators and advocates. It has been an exciting time for education and the open movement!

Open Education is a human movement that thrives on the shoulders of extraordinary people that make it possible.  Every year, Open Education Global is honored to recognize these incredible individuals in the Open Education Awards for Excellence. 

Since the end of September 2021, the Award winners have been announced according to award categories in 2-week intervals. The categories that have been announced so far include the UNESCO OER Implementation award, and those in Open Assets, Open Practices, and Open Resilience

You can celebrate with the winners on the OEAward section of OEG Connect.

Celebrating People in Open 

The final category – the Open Individual – of OEGlobal Awards 2021 celebrates those individuals who lead through their personal commitment, their open education-oriented actions, and their extraordinary contributions that advance openness in education. 

Individual Awards are special merit awards presented to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to advance openness in education.  These awards recognize achievements in five main categories: Leadership, Educator, Emerging Leader, Support Specialist, and Student Award.

And the 2021 Open Individual award winners are …

Leadership Award

Melissa Highton

University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom)

A leader in the area of strategic support for OER at both institutional and national levels, demonstrating her long-standing commitment to open education within her current role as Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services and Assistant Principal Online Learning at the University of Edinburgh, as well as in previous roles at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford.
>Read more

Educator Award

Orna Farrell

Dublin City University (Ireland)

An inspiring exemplar for her open teaching practices on local, national, and international stages. Dr. Farrell’s willingness to share and inspire other teachers is exemplified by the #OpenTeach project which started in 2019 and was built from the ground up with an open first philosophy. Each building block of the project was an OER or an OEP. Via an open online course, Dr Farrell led a team that went on to teach hundreds of participants about open online teaching and learning.
>Read more

Emerging Leader Award

Gino Fransman

Nelson Mandela University (South Africa)

Gino’s role in the OpenEdInfluencers project stems from well before being employed at MandelaUni, from UNISA, and the University of the Western Cape since 2005.  Being an advocate for Open, and indeed for opening up access to free, high quality, fully accessible education resources motivated a research endeavor as a GO-GN member, as well as a student and staff development and empowerment initiative.
>Read more

Support Specialist Award

Werner Westermann

Library of Congress of Chile (Chile)

Often OER advocates are focused on the potential for the materials, and the right to and requirement of openness, but sometimes the disconnect between practical uses of the materials can be limiting. Werner worked with Learning Equality to align OERs to the national curriculum in Chile and Honduras, with El Salvador underway, and he has presented on this work alongside their open learning platform, Kolibri, as a tool that could be piloted and scaled. He has shared this passion with our community while discussing the reusability paradox in a recent blog. Werner is leveraging his expertise in education technology and open content to ultimately improve the lives of learners globally.
>Read more

Student Award

Hannah Rothmann

University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom)

In a time of homeschooling, remote working, and hybrid teaching – and when many have felt disconnected and powerless – University of Edinburgh student Hannah Rothmann went to work in lockdown to empower staff, students, and members of the public that they had the agency to improve the information freely available online. She did this by creating materials that break down the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of Wikipedia so course leaders can embed learning about Wikipedia into course programmes.  The resources Hannah created have been shared in playlists on open licenses to YouTube, the University’s Media Hopper Channel, and curated on a new 41 webpage website.
>Read more

Congratulate the winners and share your experience of their projects and leadership on OEG Connect!

What’s next

We are celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Open Education Awards for Excellence on December 7th. Join us on this journey! 

Explore OEAwards21 further:

OEG Voices – Latest Podcasts

OE Global Voices

Welcome to the home of podcasts produced by Open Education Global. These shows bring you insight and connection to the application of open education practices from around the world. Listen at podcast.oeglobal.org

OEG Voices 073: Board Viewpoints with Katsusuke Shigeta and Rajiv Jhangiani

Get to know the influences, insights, and perspectives of two of the current members of the OEGlobal Board of Directors. In this episode we listen to separately recorded conversations with Katsusuke Shigeta, a long time board member from University of Hokkaido in Sapporo, Japan plus hearing from one of our newer board members, Rajiv Jhangiani of Brock University, in Ontario, Canada. This is another episode of our Board Viewpoints series.

Katsu was a guest on our second episode of OEGlobal Voices, published in 2020. And we last had a podcast conversation with Rajiv in 2021 following his recognition of an OE Award for Excellence as an Emerging Leader. Much has changed and evolved for both these open educators who play a key role for Open Education Global.

Each guest shares a bit about the places in the world they grew up, perspectives on school, paths to open education, current interests and projects, plus a little bit about what they enjoy doing outside of work. Listen to the full episode to hear interesting surprises from both Katsu and Rajiv, plus they share a three word description of each other!

In This Episode

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by AI Actions in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

In Episode 73 of OEGlobal Voices, host Alan Levine welcomes two members of the OEGlobal Board of Directors: Katsusuke Shigeta and Rajiv Jhangiani. Katsu discusses the importance of understanding and incorporating open educational practices internationally, and shares updates on his OER initiatives, challenges, and his creative project with Adobe Express. Rajiv reflects on his journey into open education, current initiatives at Brock University, and broader discussions on open science and generative AI. The episode concludes with personal stories and insights from both guests, painting a comprehensive picture of their contributions to open education.

  • Intro Music and Selected Episode Quotes
  • Meet Katsu Shigeta
  • Changes in Education Post-COVID
  • Challenges and Successes in OER Projects
  • Creative Learning with Adobe Express
  • Perceptions of Open Education in Japan
  • Rajiv Jhangiani Joins the Conversation
  • Navigating Life as an International Student
  • A Twist of Fate: From Theater to Psychology
  • Discovering Open Education
  • Provincial Research and Institutional Self-Assessment
  • Current Projects and Initiatives at Brock
  • The Future of Open Education
  • Balancing Work and Personal Life
  • Closing Thoughts and Reflections

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 73

This is a point, I focus on to have better skills and knowledge [on] how to create digital materials would be nice for students to show their outcomes and what they learn in the class. This kind of skill could be effective after they graduate the higher education institution. So I try to connect the creative learning creative learning aspects, to show the authentic assessment and show the learning outcomes in the university together.

Katsu Shigeta on teaching digital skills

Katsu shared this photo of the `1991 Honda Beat he has restored and enjoys driving around the roads of Hokkaido.

I think that’s part of the joy to interact with folks like that, who again, like Robin [DeRosa], give you the confidence and support that you can experiment, that you can, improvise, and you can do so knowing that it’s all right. If you fall flat, it’s okay. It’s not a big deal.

And that’s part of that vulnerability of openness. And I think modeling that is important, but it’s a special treat to be able to do it, especially in front of people who you adore so much.

Rajiv Jhangiani on OER24 keynote

And I think one concern in general, which has already been an issue is just the, it’s like paving over the etymology of knowledge. a core value of open licensing is attribution.

Losing that is damaging, is dangerous. It’s theft. So that’s damaging. The normalization of that, because this is going to happen anyway. You’re denying progress if you’re not serving students, if you don’t equip them to use. What I think is really missing over here is that critical, generative AI literacy.

….

And every time you’re going to get the same kind of little jingle around it’s here and it’s going to hit you. And you can’t bury your head in the sand. But at the same time, I think what you don’t want to do either is to not just not bury your head in the sand, but not just stand there on the shore with your mouth open wide and just swallow the salt water without thinking.

Rajiv Jhangiani on Artificial Intelligence and values of openness

Rajiv Jhangiani shows that his CC license is real- a carving made by the partner of Rajiv’s colleague Robin DeRosa

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called The View From The Window by Ian Sutherland licensed under a Creative CommonsAttribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our showsWe have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descriptbut our posts remain human authored unless indicated otherwise.