Looking Back (and forward) to the Sharing is a Challenge Series

We are very grateful to Colin de la Higuera and his UNESCO RELIA Chair colleagues at Nantes Université for bring to this year’s Open Education Week the multi-author, multi-lingual, multi-web site blog series covering 16 topics in the Sharing is a Challenge series.

The series was published four times a week over the month of March, the collective output of 30 authors from 15 countries published in six different languages, their thoughts on “obstacles they encountered during their experiences of sharing, and proposed solutions to overcome them and take on the challenge of making sharing easier.” This was a followup to the 2023 series of thought pieces in 23 Good Reasons for Open Education.

I was amongst a large group who got invited to take on a topic via an email sent in January, with the 16 challenges outlined in a shared document. We were asked to claim one we’d like to author. If one was taken (and they did go fast), we had the option to contact and open up the writing as a collaboration.

Open Education Global was well represented in this year’s series, actually bookending it. My colleague, OEGlobal co-Executive Director Marcela Morales addressed the first topic of Legitimacy in Beyond Prestige: Whose Knowledge Counts in Open Education? published March 3, 2026.

Beyond Prestige: Whose Knowledge Counts in Open Education? (Sharing is a Challenge Series)

And I authored the last post in the series published March 30, 2026, on the challenge of Ungratefulness as Potential Serendipity over Expectations of Gratitude

Potential Serendipity over Expectations of Gratitude (Sharing is a Challenge)

In addition, OEGlobal Board Member Robert Lawson (Norquest College) was a co-author on the challenge of Colonialism in Open Education: When Sharing Becomes Colonization.

I also added a few portions to the topic of Judgement in From Judgement to Sharing: Rethinking Teaching Practices in the Era of Open Education. This was an interesting process as my co-authors Latifa Chahbi, Loubna Terhzaz, and Khalid Berrada wrote and communicated in French (we communicated much with the help of Google Translation),

The final collection of articles is available at https://unitwin-unoe.org/partager-est-un-defi/. And on the Open Education Week website, using a means to combine RSS feeds from multiple sources, we were able to create a place that automatically added new articles as they were published.

I also want to thank Erwan Louërat who added an announcement post to the OEG Connect Community space all tagged 16-challenges opening all of the topics up for discussion (and they are and will remain open for that).

Colin de la Higuera wrote a comprehensive summary of the Sharing is a Challenge series, identifying key themes and hinted at more to come as an outcome. I have also hear from Colin and his team is working now to publish the series as a Pressbook, first in French, and hopefully soon, one in English. I will definitely order a print copy of this book!

We are grateful too that on March 23, 2026, we were able to schedule a recording for episode 97 of the OEGlobal Voices podcast. Our guests include Marcela, Colin, his project collaborator Lucie Grasset, and most importantly, Virginia Rodés as this was the day the post she co-authored with Regina Motz on the topic of Misuse published as Between openness and responsibility: how to make good use of Open Educational Resources.

OEG Voices 097: Virginia Rodés, Colin de la Higuera, Lucie Grasset, and Marcela Morales

All of this is a prime example of what we can accomplish as a global community of open educators and as well a key example of what Open Education Week is designed to represent. And as we can see, this consideration of the challenges of sharing is ongoing.

Now in the back of my mind, I am wondering what Colin has in mind for what the series will address in 2027.

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Featured Image: Combination of the Sharing is a Challenge banner image and icons for the 16 Challenges in the series, all images are Remixes created by the UNESCO RELIA Chair based on artwork from The Greats collection shared under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.