OEGlobal at OER25: Stories, AI, and the Future of Open

The 16th Annual Open Education Conference (OER25), hosted by the Association for Learning Technology (ALT), took place on June 23 – 24, 2025, in London at the Resource for London conference centre. This year’s theme, Speaking Truth to Power: Open Education and AI in the Age of Populism, brought together educators, practitioners, leaders, and advocates to explore key questions involving how AI creation can or cannot support Open practitioners, how Open learning can remain a public good in a time of political polarisation, and “critical, compassionate, and equitable approaches to education.”

OEGlobal was represented by Heather Blicher, Director of CCCOER, OEGlobal Board Member, Paola Corti of Politecnico di Milano, and OEGlobal Board Vice President Constance Blomgren of Athabasca University. Together, they contributed to important conversations and offered thoughtful reflections on the evolving landscape of Open Education, AI, and global collaboration.

Heather Blicher, Paola Corti, and Mira Buist-Zhuk presented at OER25.

In “Stories of Resistance: Uniting Open Practitioners in Times of Crisis,” Heather, Paola, and Mira Buist-Zhuk (University of Groningen, Netherlands) led an interactive, hour-long workshop exploring how Open Education is more than a public good – it is an act of resistance. By preserving knowledge, amplifying voices, and fostering global support, Open practitioners create essential spaces for connection, understanding, and change. At the heart of the workshop was the power of storytelling – not only as a way to understand the challenges faced by practitioners, but also as a tool for resilience, advocacy, and action.

Heather presented with MIT’s Christopher Cappozzola, Sarah Hansen, and Shira Segal, and Oak National Academy’s Will Gayne, Matt Gregory, and Margaux Dowland.

Heather also participated in Cross-Sector Critical Conversations about Leveraging AI to Assess Open Resources, a panel discussion centered on MIT Open Learning’s AI + Open Education Initiative. Joined by MIT’s Open Learning team, Christopher Cappozzola, Sarah Hansen, and Shira Segal, and Oak National Academy’s Will Gayne, Matt Gregory, and Margaux Dowland, the panel explored possibilities and tensions around AI’s role in evaluating open content. Learn more about Oak Academy’s work on AI auto-evaluation here.

Constance Blomgren shared her insights in:

Openness, Values, and Weaving GenAI Through Graduate Education
Co-presented with Paola Corti and Jonathon Poritz in Toward the Open Future We Make

Connie and Paola presented "Towards The Open Future We Make" along with Jonathan Poritz. — Connie and Paola presented “Towards The Open Future We Make” along with Jonathan Poritz.

Paola Corti contributed her expertise to additional sessions, including:

Enhancing Education Through Open Opportunities: A Radical Approach to MOOC Design and Dataset Sharing
Co-presented with Mira Buist-Zhuk in Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Open Education: Enhancing, Not Replacing, Human Collaboration

Together, these sessions reflect OEGlobal’s continued commitment to advancing equity, openness, and innovation – while keeping human connection and shared purpose at the center.

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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

We are pleased to return to our series that introducse you to members of OEGlobal Board of Directors. In this episode, we take you to Nagoya, Japan, for a conversation with Takaya Yamazato, who joined the board in 2024. Listen in to learn more about Takaya’s background, motivations, and vision for open education. You will also hear right in the opening music a fascinating insight into his many talents and his research into the micro details of one of the most iconic paintings.

As professor and Deputy Director at the Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Nagoya University, Takaya’s specializes in wireless and visual light communication and also leads Nagoya University’s OpenCourseWare initiative, working with faculty to publish and enhance course content. He describes how their OCW effort are much more than uploading content aimed at supporting materials to “preserve a legacy of teaching excellence.”

We offered Takaya the option to reply to our questions in his natural language, but he went beyond that in replying in both English and Japanese. He shared his responses in notes as a PDF we are sharing as a download, which is well worth looking at because Takaya added photos to show key locations near his location in Nagoya, a beautiful photo of him as a child, and examples of his open education achievements.

Side by side photos of Takaya Yamazota sitting in his office and Alan Levine in his home library. — In the OEGlobal Voices studio with Takaya Yamazota (left) and Alan Levine (right).

You find many inspiring and global level viewpoints from Takaya:

We believe that this is a message that will bring back the way of education from the bottom up. The education that a person needs now is to grow people who are able to do the right thing. We must grow people who are not just for efficiency, profit, or national gain, but also for the good of the world.
Open education has the potential to provide a space for that reflection. It can create opportunities for ethical reasoning, global dialogue, and personal transformation, not just academic advancement.
Takaya Yamazota

Episode 84 Transcript Download

Notes on This Episode

We are pleased to offer this conversation with Takaya’s voice heard in both English and Japanese and offer a transcript of the English portions. Unfortunately the Descript editing tool we use was unable to process the dual languages, so we lack the usual listen option with the transcript and its GenAI summary.

The episode required additional editing in Audacity to add Takaya’s audio and we used MacWhisper to obtain a transcript of his responses in English. But we do offer as a bonus the full musical track that Takaya shared so we could we use in the episode’s introduction and closing. You should listen to the full episode to appreciate the story behind the music.

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 84

diverse regions and disciplines, all united by the belief that education should be freely available and socially meaningful.
It’s not just about strategy, it’s about values. And it’s given me hope that open education can help build bridges where politics cannot.
Takaya Yamazota

Nagoya University https://en.nagoya-u.ac.jp/
- Nagoya University Motto 勇気ある知識人 — courageous intellectual via Wikipedia
Takaya Yamazota (OE Global Board profile)
- Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Nagoya University)
- Nagoya University OpenCourseWare (NUOCW)
- YLAB – Yamazota Laboratory (Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Nagoya University)
The Secret of the Eyes of Mona Lisa (2024, The Review Policy and Current Status of the IEICE Transactions)

Italian researchers discovered the letters “LV” hidden in the Mona Lisa’s pupil, unseen for centuries, and only revealed thanks to modern technology with very precise microscope lenses.
Similarly, in telecommunications, the LDPC code was overlooked for decades before being rediscovered and becoming fundamental to today’s wireless standards.
And these examples remind us if we evaluate ideas only by today’s capabilities, we may miss tomorrow’s breakthrough.
That’s why our OCW is designed not just to present knowledge, but to inspire, reinterpretation, and rediscovering. I believe open education should be an invitation not just to learn, but to look again with new eyes.
Takaya Yamazota

Our open licensed music for this episode is “Ceramic Feeling” recorded from a live performance by Takaya’s band “Rough Diamonds” and is shared under a Creative Commons By Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.