Image by OEGlobal CC-BY

Education For All

Ten years of open education luminaries from around the world

Compiled and written by David T. Kindler, Marcela Morales, Paul Stacey. Cover by Mario Badilla.

At the end of 2021, Education for All was written and published in celebration of Open Education Global’s 10th Anniversary of OpenEducation Awards for Excellence.

The book was written as a milestone that marks the major achievements of the incredible, intrepid, and determined leaders over a decade, and their collective efforts to advance Open Education.

You can also hear from some of the people and projects detailed in the book. For the 10-year celebration, previous award winners shared the impact of the awards on their careers and where they are now.


Read the preface

Education for all is a bold, audacious statement. But that is the very goal of open education.

Can you imagine a world where access to education materials is free? Where teachers and learners have the right to reuse, revise, remix, localize and translate those materials? Where copies of textbooks and course materials can be retained without cost? Can you imagine a world where teachers and learners co-create education together? A world where learners engage in assignments that generate global public goods benefiting everyone?

You may say this isn’t possible, but open educators around the world have been doing this for years. Building on the work of luminaries such as those featured in this book, open education has grown into a global movement transforming education.

Open Education Global has acted as a steward and enabler of this global open education movement since 2008. In partnership with its hundreds of members worldwide and the global open education community, Open Education Global strives to ensure everyone, everywhere, has access to high-quality education.

Starting in 2011, as part of its stewarding role, Open Education Global has provided annual recognition to outstanding contributions in the global open education community, recognizing exemplary leaders, distinctive Open Educational Resources, and open projects and initiatives. As part of the 10th anniversary of these awards, OEGlobal is publishing this Education For All book collecting all ten years of award winners into a single volume. This book is a celebration of their achievements. We plan to update this book each year as a living document.

Each year Open Education Global opens up nominations for awards to the entire global open education community. Open Education Global’s Board of Directors selects individual award recipients. The other award categories are evaluated and set by a peer review committee comprised of past award winners and other open education leaders worldwide. Historically the awards are presented each year at Open Education Global’s annual conference. For this tenth anniversary year, we are organizing a special celebration of the awards separate from the conference. Open Education Global operates and maintains an Open Education Awards for Excellence website where information on awardees can be found, including links to their profiles, projects, and resources.

We hope Education For All inspires you. We hope you’ll reach out to award winners and thank them for their outstanding work. We hope you’ll explore and learn more about the many great resources, projects, and initiatives that have received awards over the years. And most of all we hope you will get involved with open education and help make education for all a reality.

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 077: Patrina Law on OE Award for Leadership

In our long overdue newest episode, we spoke to Patrina Law about her recognition with a 2023 Individual Open Education Award for Excellence in Leadership. We recorded this back in late September 2024 just prior to the announcement of the 2024 OEAwards. We are confident when you listen to Patrina you will find the wait was worth it!

Patrina shares her path from starting in the field of working in a charity organization, then joining the Open University where she ultimately came to lead OpenLearn, and recently circling back to charity in your current role with the Royal Society for the Arts. You will hear her passion for making educational opportunities available as widely as possible to society and her interests in digital badges, research, and aligning programs to documented impact.

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.

Join Alan Levine as he interviews Patrina Law, a renowned leader in Open Education Resources (OER), in this latest episode of OE Global Voices. Patrina, a 2023 award winner for leadership in OER, shares insights from her extensive career at the Open University, including her impactful work with OpenLearn.

Explore how Patrina’s passion for open education and inclusion has driven innovative projects and research, such as the introduction of digital badges and alternative learning formats. Learn how these initiatives have empowered diverse learners around the world and the significance of data-driven strategies in shaping educational content.

In this captivating conversation, Patrina also delves into her transition to the Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) and her current role in advancing the Digital Badging Commission. Discover the RSA’s mission and the potential of digital badges in recognizing and validating non-formal learning in the workforce.

Don’t miss this episode filled with inspiration, innovation, and a deep commitment to making education accessible to all. Tune in for a journey through Patrina’s remarkable contributions and her vision for the future of open education.

  • Intro music and highlight quote
  • Welcome to OE Global Voices
  • Conversation with Patrina Law
  • Patrina’s Background and Education
  • Journey to Open Education
  • OpenLearn and Its Impact
  • Challenges and Achievements
  • Digital Badges and Inclusivity

(end of AI generated show notes)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 77

I think the first side of it was having the freedom to develop the team that develop all the content. And I was very lucky that I had a really fabulous team when I was there of really dedicated and enthusiastic folk who were very good at making open educational resources.

And I think probably I would put that as down as one of the great successes because they had the skill set to work with academics who in some senses were often dealing with very challenging subject material or very deep subject material that was aimed at undergraduates Level Two, Level Three undergraduates, and they had to rework that material and make it accessible to all, and so I and they made wonderful animations, they made great videos, they made great audio they turned that material into real living, breathing, fantastic, engaging learning content, so I think one of the successes for me, although I can’t say that it was all my doing, but as a team, was the team.

Patrina Law on her team at OpenLearn

Because so much of OER is really aimed at just everybody. And it’s, a whole point of it is to be totally open, but to have sat forward and undertaken some learning yourself, I think you should be rewarded for that at some level. And digital badges seem to be that happy marriage. So it’s great to be working in open badging again for the RSA, for all the right social good reasons as well.

Patrina Law on recognition of Open Badges


Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Let the Flames Lead the Way  by Jon Shuemaker  licensed under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International 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.