Image by OEGlobal CC-BY

Open Education and Beyond

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid hosts e-Madrid 2023

The eMadrid seminar on «Digital Competencies of University Teachers for Open Education» took place on Friday, February 24th, in Madrid, Spain.

The Rectorado de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid – the venue for the eMadrid seminar on «Digital Competencies of University Teachers for Open Education» in February. (Pic: Rectorado de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid 01 by Luis García (Zaqarbal) on Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Spain)

One of three presenters, the executive director of OEGlobal, Andreia Inamorato, presented her paper «Digital Competences for Open Education» at the seminar. Hosted at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), the seminar is part of the regular events of the eMadrid Network, a project promoted by the six universities of Madrid (UC3M, UAM, UCM, URJC, UPM, and UNED) that is focused on the development and promotion of e-learning and digital education in the region.

Meeting up with OEG Members at e-Madrid, from left: Dr. Edmundo Tovar (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), Dr. Cristina Villalonga (Universidad de Nebrija, Madrid), Andreia Inamorato (OEGlobal), Dr. Diana Andone (Universidad of Timisoara, Romania) and Dr. Carlos Delgado (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid).

Having the new OEGlobal ED present at this seminar was an excellent opportunity to re-energize the relationship between OEGlobal and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM).

In fact, the e-Madrid seminar lead to a live session during OE Week 2023 where the same group discussed  Competencias Digitales en Educación Abierta

As one of the initial founding members of OEGlobal, UPM has been a critical open education collaborator and advocate partner over the last 11 years.

Open Education at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

UPM has been at the forefront of open education initiatives in Spain, promoting open educational resources (OER) and open-access publishing. 

The university’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) program provides free and open access to course materials from various disciplines. The program offers over 600 courses, including materials in English and Spanish. UPM also supports the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), providing a platform for faculty to offer courses to a global audience.

In addition to its open education initiatives, UPM is also committed to promoting digital literacy among its students and faculty. 

The university’s Digital Competence Center provides training and support for the use of digital tools and technologies in teaching and research.


If you were at e-Madrid, we’d love to hear!

OEG Connect is the global forum for open educators and activists. On it, you can chat with colleagues and discuss what is important to you. If you were at the e-Madrid event mentioned above or have something more to share about Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s Open Education activities, please let us know by clicking the reply button below to share!

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 081: Bea de los Arcos on We Like Sharing

Who would not want to be part of something called “We Like Sharing” especially when encouraged by the enthusiastic voice of Bea de los Arcos? This clever idea for a photo competition from TUDelft held annually since 2021 is less about prizes and more about generating an understanding of openness through the sharing of photographs, and at the same time, creating a rich visual collection of images representing openness… shared openly.

We Like Sharing has planned each year to coincide with Open Education Week and was also recognized in 2023 with an OE Award For Excellence in the Wildcard category. This conversation was recorded in late January 2025 in hopes of generating more interest, but was hardly necessary given the quality of this year’s 150+ submissions and the winners selected by public vote.

As usual there are more interesting, and anticipated, ideas and understandings that come from our OEGlobal Voices conversations. Listen to learn not only about We Like Sharing, but also Bea’s path from the seaside of Galicia, Spain to the innovative university in the city in the Netherlands painted by Vermeer, and maybe even a hint of bagpipes.

Listen to our conversation, get inspired to go outside with your camera and find interesting details to photograph… and hopefully share.

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, Alan Levine talks with Bea de los Arcos about her inspiring project, “We Like Sharing.” They discuss how the initiative encourages Creative Commons licensing, open sharing of photographs, and the value of appreciating and documenting beauty in everyday moments. They also explore Bea’s personal journey, her love for walking, and the importance of community in open education.

  • Introduction and Background
  • Bea’s Personal Journey and Influences
  • Living and Working in Delft
  • Overview of the Extension School
  • Inspiration Behind ‘We Like Sharing’
  • The Evolution of ‘We Like Sharing’
  • Impact and Stories of Reuse
  • Ideas for Encouraging Participation
  • Bea’s Personal Interests and Hobbies
  • Conclusion and Final Thoughts

(end of AI generated show notes)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 81

I love this photograph, it was one of the winners from last year. And it is a white wall and there are lots of hearts painted in different colors on the door.

It’s a wall and a door and lots of hearts.

So for some reason I love that photograph because there’s so much love in just the one wall. It’s actually called “Love on a Wall.” And that was picked up in Flickr by the algorithm In Explore. It attracted lots of views. so that allows me to go back to the [photographer] in this case, that person wants to remain anonymous. But it allows me to go to this person and say, “Hey, this is what’s happening for your photograph.” And of course they get super excited, “Wow!”

I know [many photos] have been reused because I see them on presentations by colleagues. So [they] pick the photograph, put it on a slide, and that’s a beautiful example of reuse.

But in this case, it was more interesting because one of those little hearts on the wall, so not the whole photograph, was used on the cover of a little booklet from the University of Leeds, a little booklet, called, “With Love from Your Supervisor.” It’s about giving advice to o PhD students about how to go about research. The cover is a little person holding the book and all these hearts. That’s love from your supervisor and that heart is one of the hearts in “Love on a Wall”. So I thought it was just amazing.

Bea de los Arcos on reuse of a We Like Sharing photo

A white wall and a door painted with scores of colourful hearts. ”Open is sharing love anywhere, any time, for everyone.”
Love on a wall flickr photo by Pelerecho shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license. This photo was a winner in the 2024 We Like Sharing photo competition.
Credits for cover art of With Love from a Dissertation Supervisor.
Cover art of With Love from a Dissertation Supervisor. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), 3D Art and design, Odysseas Frank, OD-3D artstation portfolio
Hearts on cover: Detail from “Love on a wall” photo by Pelerecho, released under
CC BY, part of the “We like sharing” collection, TU Delft, University of Technology,
The Netherlands, OEWeek24 Photo Competition entry number 81,
https://flic.kr/p/2pBDByZ

We encourage you to visit the full collection of over 1500 openly licensed images curated over the five years of We Like Sharing Open Photo Competition. Each image’s caption includes description text suitable for an alt image description and cut and paste text for full attribution to the photographer who shared it. If you reuse any images, please consider leaving a comment in flickr or contacting Bea, so she can communicate this back to the photographer.

We full expect to see We Like Sharing back in 2026 for Open Education Week. This is a very replicable activity and we have previously discussed with Bea in OEG Connect about what it takes to organize a spin off version.

It comes to you. One of the photographs that I took was when I was waiting for the tram and I just looked down. There was a campaign in Delft at the time around violence against women. [Someone] had this stamped on the pavement this hand and a message “stop violence against women.”

So, I was thinking, wow, become a bit more curious about what it is that is happening around you. Don’t look at your phone with your apps or your messages. No, just look. Look away from your phone– maybe that’s what it is. — look away from your phone. What can you see?

Bea de los Arcos on looking at the world around you

An open hand painted on the pavement beside the words 'Stop geweld tegen vrouwen', 'stop violence against women' in Dutch.
Stop flickr photo by B. de los Arcos is shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track calledPhoto Album by Crowander shared 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.