Open education is growing rapidly across the education ecosystem, ensuring more diverse and inclusive opportunities to access and benefit from education. Pioneering open education work has spread from tertiary (higher) education into primary and secondary (K-12) education, workplace learning, digital learning, and informal lifelong learning. Everyone who wants to ought to be empowered to join us.
As part of its Field Building strategy, OE Global hosts three annual events where the global open education community celebrates their collective work, shares ideas, inspires each other, and expands the use of open education around the world.
Open Education Week
Every year, in March, OE Global hosts a week-long global event called Open Education Week. Its goal is to raise awareness, showcase initiatives, and celebrate the impact of open education on teaching and learning worldwide. During Open Education Week, educators organize and conduct online and local events such as workshops, webinars, discussions, debates, and other activities for the public or specific audiences, such as faculty or students. All these events are listed on OE Global’s open education week website, providing a forum for promotion, participation, and curation.
Open Education Week has been running since 2013 and, over the years, has become a landmark event people plan for and anticipate. Open education week is one of the foremost global community events raising awareness and showcasing exemplary open education work worldwide.
Open Education Week 2024 is taking place from March 4-8, 2024.
Open Education Awards for Excellence
OE Global’s Open Education Awards for Excellence annually recognize outstanding contributions to the open education community. The four main category groups together make up the 16 annual awards.
- People in Open – four Open Individual awards are special merit awards presented to individuals in four categories who have made extraordinary contributions to advance openness in education.
- What We Share – four awards focused on celebrating Open Assets, the tangible products (usually digital, but not always) that open education initiatives create, distribute, and use that have educational purpose and value.
- How We Share – four awards are given out for Open Practices that show the collective behaviors and techniques that open up access to educational opportunities.
- Special Awards – while the main categories of the OEAwards (Individual, Assets & Practices) remain the same each year, we always look for ways to reflect new trends and emerging innovations; this category allows flexibility to be open in our celebration.
Since the OE Awards’ inception in 2011, 212 awards have been presented. Read about the impact of the OEAwards on the open education community.
OE Global Conference
The Open Education Global Conference is where the world meets to present and advance how open solutions improve access, participation, and success within the education sector. Through a combination of keynotes, presentations, action labs, and other activities, participants network and learn about the latest trends and advancements in open education. The conference is usually in person (except in 2020 and 2021) and is accompanied by online support and outreach activities.
The conference was first held in 2005 as the OCWC Global Conference. Since then, the OE Global Conference has become the most internationally diverse annual event devoted exclusively to open education, attracting researchers, practitioners, policymakers, educators, and students from countries worldwide. This is the conference for anyone wanting a global perspective on open education.
The Open Education Global Conference is a three-day in-person conference. Each year it is hosted by an OEGlobal Member institution under a theme that drives open education policies and practices and ensures the practical activation and implementation of the UNESCO OER Recommendation.
OEGlobal and NorQuest will co-host the OE Global Conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, from 16-18 October 2023.