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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 082: Amanda Coolidge, Marcela Morales, and Maren Deepwell on “The Small Things”

Our newest episode features the voices of three experienced leaders of open education organizations who also do most of this work online. In a session recorded live during Open Education Week 2025, Amanda Coolidge, Marcela Morales, and Maren Deepwell reflect on now, more than even before, the importance of finding small things of joy in our practice. 

How this came about is an example of small things in action. After listening to one of Maren Deepwell’s podcasts with OE Global’s Alan Levine, Amanda did a small act of gratitude by sending them both an email of appreciation.

Hi Maren and Alan

I just finished listening to your podcast episode together and I absolutely loved it. It brought a smile to my face listening to your stories Alan. It was so refreshing to hear you say that it’s gotta be fun. I needed this reminder. There are days when being the ED of an org is far from fun and it’s important for me to not let that drag me down.

Loved the conversation and just wanted to let you both know.

email from Amanda Coolidge

Maren replied noting “how important it is for us to rediscover the joy in small things in our practice” leading Amanda to share “It truly feels like this ‘rediscover the joy in small things in our practice is more important than ever in our contexts (globally and nationally).” This was how we came to plan an open podcast recording for OEWeek and bringing Marcela in to expand the conversation. And as we learned since recording, the connection continues as Maren will be publishing a new podcast soon from a followup conversation she had with Amanda and Marcela.

In the OEGlobal Voices Podcast Studio with clockwise from top left, Amanda Coolidge (BCcampus), Marcela Morales (OE Global), Maren Deepwell (Maren Deepwell Coaching), and Alan Levine (OE Global). Not pictured, but listening in live were Shira Segal (MIT), Manisha Khetarpal (Maskwacis Cultural College), and Beck Pitt (The Open University).

In This Episode

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

In this episode of OE Global Voices, Alan Levine hosts a dynamic conversation during Open Education Week 2025 with Amanda Coolidge, Maren Deepwell, and Marcela Morales. They discuss leading open organizations, the importance of self-care, and finding joy in the small things amid the challenges of managing teams and building relationships. The conversation is filled with heartfelt insights, practical examples, and touching personal stories.

  • Introduction to OEWeek Podcast
  • Amanda’s Perspective on Leadership
  • Marcela’s Views on Team Dynamics
  • Maren’s Insights on Virtual Team Leading
  • Story Behind the Conversation
  • Connection Amid Critiques
  • Exploration of Relationship Building
  • AI and Thoughtful Leadership
  • Concluding Thoughts and Personal Joys

(end of AI generated show notes)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 82

 It’s been something that I have intentionally been really working towards, which is, sending snail mail notes to staff after they’ve done something, if it’s bringing people together or potentially asking a really awesome question that sort of got people thinking.

And then when I listened to that podcast, I just thought, oh, that really, inspired me. And it just reminded me of the importance of play in our work and how sometimes when you lead an organization, there’s so much operational day-to-day that you forget the reason why you started in this work to begin with. Yeah, that’s why I really wanted to give you both a shout out and a note of appreciation because it truly impacted, not just how I went about that day, but how I’ve proceeded to think about my own work.

Amanda Coolidge

 I’ve been creating walking OERs you can go for a walk and listen to. It’s really open available recording, like as a reflective practice or as a leadership practice. And it’s been making me think a lot about, how long do you really need to do certain things?

To me, having a half an hour walk, even if it’s just for me, for myself, can be much more productive than reading summarized reports. So I’ve been thinking a lot about that sort of reclaiming of pace and cadence.

Maren Deepwell

 In our case, it’s very interesting that many of our staff members together, with Igor and I, we have not met in person many times. So I can count the times that we have been in the same room in person on the fingers of my hands. So it’s amazing that we have been able to create these relationships only online.

And whenever we have the opportunity to be in the same room, it’s the opposite, like a different way of connecting. Like I’m so used to seeing you in your little box. And having the very few opportunities to share a space in person, it just magnifies the relationship.

So we have had this opportunity of creating the relationship that we have with staff, mainly online and have them be amplified in person.

Marcela Morales

New Feature: The “Aftercast”

In all episodes of OEGlobal Voices, we close with an invitation to join us for followup conversation in our OEG Connect community space A new topic there is created every time we publish an episode, and you can find the conversations also included at the bottom of this post.

As a new idea invented since our recording, we are also going to ask our guests to close with a question or call for response related to the episode. This was added to this episode after the recording, but consider the following questions:

 What are some of the small things that you find effective to get outta the focus on productivity and time crunches? What are the ways your colleagues achieve more relationship building through actions like the BC Campus Health and Safety Committee videos that Amanda shared, the reflective walks that Maren describes or the life outside work sharing that Marcela talked about carving time out for in our OE Global staff meetings?

The OEGlobal Voices Episode 82 “Aftercast”

But wait, there is more! From Episode 80’s conversation with Bryan Mathers, he created a new Remixer Machine template– the Hat Tip, which completely fits with what Amanda, Maren, and Marcela talked about in terms of small acts of appreciation.

Remix this hat tip, publish as a new one, and send as a link to someone else as a small act of joyful appreciation.

Alan remixed a digital hat tip to all three guests that are being sent privately aling with a request to “hat tip it forward” by starting with the basic template, changing the colors, the hat style, the message, to send forward (not to me!) to another person they wish to share appreciation.

Just imagine what would happen if this spread…


Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Small Wonder by Steve Combs shared under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

Finally, this was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast, 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 except where indicated otherwise.