Home − OEGlobal News Archive − News − OE Awards 2024: Focus on the Awards for Significant Impact OER & the Wildcard

Image by OEGlobal CC-BY

News, OE Awards

OE Awards 2024: Focus on the Awards for Significant Impact OER & the Wildcard

The 2024 Open Education Global Awards for Excellence (OEAwards) nominations opened two weeks ago. There are just under five weeks left to submit your nominations!

Every year, the OEAwards surfaces the work of truly inspiring individuals and teams. It is all because the community members share the often obscure open education resource, textbook, platform, technology, or person that keeps them doing the work they do or inspires them to be more involved in open education practices.

Today, we are looking at two of our newest award categories: the Award for Significant Impact OER and the Wildcard Award. These new categories have grown out of previous award categories, such as the Resilience Awards and the acknowledgement that the Open Education world is an ever-changing and innovative space and that unexpected synergies and approaches are there to inspire us to greater excellence.

Focus on the Award for Significant Impact OER

A display of 6 tiles representing the previous OER Award winners
Explore the previous winners of the OER Award.

Under the larger grouping of What We Share or Open Assets, the Significant Impact OER Award is a timely evolution of previous Open Education Resource Awards. This awards category, which was reinvigorated in 2023, continues recognising high-quality, innovative teaching and learning materials created under open licences. As more OERs are developed and distributed, the award recognises the impact and reach as measures of each OER’s effectiveness with regard to accessibility, distribution, remix, learning, or social change.

OERs are not just limited to textbooks and teaching guides; the materials that can be included in this category are Open Courses, Interactive Education Materials, Open Textbooks, Videos, Simulations, Animations, Audio, Audiobooks, etc.

Which OER should you nominate? When you think of which project or resource to nominate for this category, think about the OERs you keep returning to or couldn’t do your work without – or the ones you wish you had created – and share that with us. Perhaps it is a particularly innovative adaptation of an OER into a new language or application to another sector than it was first intended. If you’re not sure what an Open Education Resource is, find out here.

Focus on the Wildcard Award

The first recipient of the Wildcard Award in 2024.

We created the Special Awards Grouping to acknowledge that open education is an ever-evolving field. As the global community grows, takes on more education challenges, and responds to technology and other advances, we must adapt and expand the awards to embrace this change. Sometimes, it is in response to recognising innovative approaches in unexpected or extremely challenging circumstances. Other times, it is righting historical wrongs by shining a light on those who are already blazing a path towards an equitable future.

Whatever the trigger, it is important that Open Education work is often the ideal response to change, whether that change is good or bad. The category we are looking at today is the Wildcard Category.

Which open education wildcard should you nominate? This virtually new award was first posed in 2023. It recognises something or someone but does not quite fit into any of the other OEAwards categories. Our thinking behind this award is to have community feedback on what inspires them in the Open Education world and share that with us. In essence, we are asking you to create your own award under criteria that make sense to you and help the world of open educators recognize that everything is possible in open education.

Last years Wildcard award went to TUDelft’s “We Like Sharing” Open Photo Competition. Launched in 2021 during Open Education Week (OEWeek) and held every year since it was created as a way of introducing the concepts and benefits of Openness through a photography contest. Staff, students and alumni of TU Delft (their friends and families too!) are invited to submit a photograph that represents what openness means to them. The last edition has been the most successful to date, with 95 entries. Read about the 2023 competition and the winners, including the three winning photographs.

What’s Next?

If these examples make you think of resources or courses that stood out for you and enable your open education work or projects/programs, please nominate them now. If you are looking for more inspiration, please explore the 229 awardees that have been recognized since 2011 via category or year.

Get started by reading the 2024 OE Awards Nomination Guide, which includes the kinds of information you will need to submit a nomination, planning documents, and some suggestions for entering your information. You can also go directly to this year’s nomination form, which might result in the awardees being recognized this year.

Stay tuned for next week’s post, including details and examples from two more award categories, or refer to the previous posts in this series.

If you have questions or suggestions about the awards, you can follow up with us in discussions below on these categories (and more) from the OE Awards space in OEG Connect.

Reply in OEG Connect

Do you have suggestions or questions about these award categories? We have an open discussion topic in OEG Connect available for this post.

Latest News

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.

Episide 81 TranscriptDownload
Listen with Transcript

at Descript.com

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
A look down to the study places below, from high inside the cone of the Library in TU Delft,
TU Delft Library by Carel van der Lippe, released under CC BY-NC-ND
At first glance, this image might seem like an abstract composition, but it captures a simple, everyday object—stacked chairs—transformed through perspective and repetition. The interplay of light on the chrome frames, the precise alignment, and the rhythmic curves create a striking modern aesthetic. Taken inside the Architecture Block, this image reflects how design exists in even the most functional elements of our surroundings.
Abstract utility by Krishna Koushik Venigalla, released under CC BY-NC-SA
A cat, looking out of an open window in a brick wall,
The Observer by Jonas Leander von Heusinger, released under CC BY-NC-SA
Looking up to the sky from the bottom of a canyon with wavy walls.
Moving spaces by Tian Qing Yen, released under Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

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 shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.

Episode play icon
OEG Voices 081: Bea de los Arcos on We Like Sharing
Episode Description
Episode play icon
OEG Voices 080: Bryan Mathers on the Fabulous Remixer Machine
Episode Description
Episode play icon
OEG Voices 079: Significant Impact OER Award Winner Confident Supervisors
Episode Description
Episode play icon
OEG Voices 078: Significant Impact OER Award Winner Frontiers for Young Minds
Episode Description
Episode play icon
OEG Voices 077: Patrina Law on OE Award for Leadership
Episode Description
Search Results placeholder
Share with your community