Founded in 2013 by the Open Education Consortium, the goal of Open Education Week is to raise awareness and showcase the impact of open education on teaching and learning worldwide. Open Education Week has become one of the foremost global events recognizing high achievement and excellence in open education.
The week-long event spotlights amazing work from over a dozen categories including live, face-to-face events, webinars, projects, and resources. The Best-of-the-Best participate in Open Education Week.
What is Open Education:
Open Education employs a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide. It combines the traditions of knowledge sharing and creation with 21st century technology to create a vast pool of openly shared educational resources, while harnessing today’s collaborative spirit to develop educational approaches that are more responsive to learner’s needs.
Basic Principals and Benefits:
- seeks to scale up educational opportunities by taking advantage of the power of the internet, allowing rapid and essentially free dissemination, and enabling people around the world to access knowledge, connect and collaborate.
- open allows not just access, but the freedom to modify and use materials, information and networks so education can be personalized to individual users or woven together in new ways for diverse audiences, large and small.
- by providing free and open access to education and knowledge, open education helps create a world to support learning. Students can get additional information, viewpoints and materials to help them succeed. Workers can learn things that will help them on the job. Faculty can draw on resources from all around the world. Researchers can share data and develop new networks. Teachers can find new ways to help students learn.
- people can connect with others they wouldn’t otherwise meet to share ideas and information. Materials can be translated, mixed together, broken apart and openly shared again, increasing access and inviting fresh approaches. Anyone can access educational materials, scholarly articles, and supportive learning communities anytime they want to. Education is available, accessible, modifiable and free.
Who participates?
Universities, colleges, schools, organizations and individuals from around the world committed to the ideals of open education participate in Open Education Week. In 2018, over 2,500 participants from 98 countries contributed to Open Education Week.
How to Contribute?
There are many ways you can contribute to the Open Education Week. Consider hosting one or more the following events and have it featured on the Open Education Week Calendar:
Local Events:
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Workshop: Hold a workshop for the general public or a specific audience, such as faculty members or students, on how to use open materials, understanding open licenses, how to modify materials for classroom use, how to create OER, etc.
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Mini-conference/forum on open education: Invite local professors who use or contribute OER, open access journal articles or other open practices. Link up with other institutions for a live chat or debate.
Online Events:
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Webinars: Offer a webinar open to the world during Open Education Week. The topic can be on anything related to open education: tools, resources, impacts, practices, case studies, debates, etc. You can also stream your local event, or simulcast lectures or talks.
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Online discussions: Feature a live chat, discussion forum or global conversation around related topics, trends, challenges or issues via an interactive online platform. Discussions can be synchronous and moderated or open and asynchronous. The idea is to create a space for dialog.
Involve one, two, many or all aspects of open. Organize an event with organizations related to “open” in your region. Consider open licensing, open culture, open access, open governance, open data, open source software, etc. in the design of your event. Do you have something new to offer?
Promoting your event
Your event can be featured on the Open Education Week Events Calendar by filling out the OEW Submission Form. Entries must be submitted by February 25th, 2019 to be featured in the calendar. Generate more excitement by promoting your event through your local networks and local media. Please use the hashtag #OEWeek on social media so that the Open Education Consortium can find and amplify your messages.
If your campus is not offering or hosting an event – you can still get involved by helping to promote Open Education Week in general. Here are some additional ideas on how to participate helping promote Open Education Week:
- Display the Open Education Week banner on your website or blog
- Post or retweet tweets using #OEWeek
- Follow @OEWeek on Twitter
- Write an opinion piece for the editorial page of your local newspaper or your favorite websites
- Contact community education or on-campus groups and offer to help them organize an event
- Write blog posts on Open Education Week (email us at info@openeducationweek.org and we’ll post a link on the website)
- Customize the Open Education Week poster and hang them up
- Send an email to your colleagues and friends to let them know about all the events and information available at www.openeducationweek.org
Download Open Education Week logos, web banners, posters and more at OEW Promotional Materials. You’re welcome to customize these materials to fit your needs – they’re openly licensed, too.
We at the State Library would love to learn more about what you are doing for Open Education Week – and with Open Educational Resources. Please email me (harper_r@cde.state.co.us) and let me know what your campus is up to and we will share on future Colorado Virtual Library posts. I look forward to learning more.