Open Education Week

Student Perspectives on Working in Open
2025-03-03 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Toronto) | Conestoga College, 299 Doon Valley Dr, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
This panel discussion will include student OER Assistants from Fanshawe’s Design Studio, Centennial’s OER Hub, and Conestoga’s Open Learning team. OER Assistants will share perspectives on Open, the types of projects they work on and what a day in the life of an OER assistant entails. There will be time for Q&A.

McMaster University OER Grant & Lightning Talks
2025-03-03 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Toronto) | McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
This event features McMaster faculty and instructors who are incorporating open education into their teaching. Hear from some of the 2024-2025 OER Grantees as they update us on their awarded projects. Learn about the open resources being created for McMaster courses and hear about experiences in creating open and accessible content.
Gather ideas for possible OER projects of your own. Find out more about the McMaster OER Grant which will be offered again in Spring 2025.

Open Education 101
2025-03-03 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | University of British Columbia, 2329 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada
Would you like to learn more about open education and open educational resources but don’t know where to start? This introductory workshop is for you.
This session will provide an overview of the open education movement including what it is and why it matters. This session will cover:

Definition and examples of open educational resources
Benefits of OER to both students and faculty
First steps toward adopting, adapting, or creating OER
How to find additional support with OE at UBC Library

OER Project Management: A Strategic Framework
2025-03-03 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | LibreTexts, Davis, CA, United States
Effective OER program management in higher education goes beyond good intentions—it requires strategy, structure, communication, and project management (PM) tools.
Join Rachel Fleming, OER Librarian at Irvine Valley College, as she explores OER PM methodologies, including Work Breakdown Structures (WBS), Critical Paths, risk assessment, and stakeholder engagement/information behaviors, while providing practical strategies for sustainability and scalability.
This presentation will cover project scope, scope creep, implement tracking systems, basic communication management, and leverage free PM software like LibreTexts Conductor pages to streamline collaboration at the individual project level.

Open Homework Systems: Cost-Effective and Customizable Alternatives to the Big Publishers
2025-03-03 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Regina) | University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
In this session, we will explore innovative alternatives to traditional textbook publisher homework systems, focusing on solutions that save students money and offer the instructor greater customization options.
We will explore the potential of Canvas New Quizzes and Item Banks as the path forward. Additionally, we will examine the benefits and functionalities of OpenStax Assignable and LibreTexts ADAPT, two powerful platforms that provide free, high-quality educational resources. Join us to discover how these alternatives open new opportunities and alleviate your reliance on the high-cost systems.

Open Pedagogical Practices: Using Wikipedia in the Classroom with guest presenter Sarah Severson
2025-03-03 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Denver) | SCFL 3-071@NorQuest, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Wikipedia in the classroom is often seen as something to avoid or “consumed at your peril.” In this presentation, Sarah will discuss how we can reshape this perspective to demonstrate that Wikipedia is an open educational resource that can be utilized alongside open pedagogical practices. Instead of viewing Wikipedia as something we passively consume as readers, she will emphasize how it can serve as a valuable resource for teaching media literacy, critical thinking, writing, and research skills. This hybrid presentation will include examples of Wikipedia-based assignments, case studies, and available resources.
Sarah Severson (she/her) is a librarian at the University of Alberta Library, residing in amiskwaciy-wâskahikan (Edmonton) on Treaty 6 and Métis territory. She has been a casual Wikipedia editor for over ten years and has participated in many edit-a-thons and training sessions. In 2020, she supervised the Wikipedian-in-Residence at the University of Alberta and has served on the board of directors of Wikimedia Canada since 2019. This year, she joined the Art + Feminism campaign as a Regional Ambassador. Sarah views Wikipedia as an important alternative publishing model within our media landscape and believes it’s vital to engage with it critically as a librarian.

Keeping Courses Affordable with Open Educational Resources
2025-03-03 13:00 - 14:30 (America/Toronto) | Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities (MCU) now requires faculty to include an itemized cost breakdown of all textbooks and learning materials, both required and optional, in their course outlines. Seeing high course fees can be discouraging to students.
One potential solution to keep costs down is through the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are learning, teaching, and research materials that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open licence permitting no-cost access (UNESCO). By using OER textbooks available through eCampus Ontario, faculty have saved students in Ontario over $26 million dollars.
Join the Toronto Metropolitan University Libraries, the Centre for Excellence in Learning & Teaching, and the Chang School to learn how the MCU directive will impact your teaching, and how you can leverage Open Educational Resources to reduce costs and make your courses more appealing to students. We will review how to find, adapt, and create OERs, and hear from a panel of faculty and students about their experience with OERs.

OER In Action: Faculty Stories of Success
2025-03-03 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Indiana/Indianapolis) | Indiana Unviersity Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN, United States
Discover how faculty at IU Indianapolis are transforming their classrooms with Open Educational Resources. Hear from nominees and winners of the IU Indianapolis Open Education Award as they share their OER beginnings, challenges, and successes in using OER to impact student success.

OER at Minnesota State
2025-03-03 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Chicago) | Minnesota State, Saint Paul, MN, United States
Minnesota State has fostered the development and use of open educational resources since the early 2010s. This presentation will provide an overview of the work that has been supported, including OER Learning Circles, faculty development workshops, Z-degrees, library resources, grant initiatives, as well as the plans for future support.

Retrospective on Open Access Publishing
2025-03-03 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Edmonton) | Athabasca University, 1 University Dr, Athabasca, AB T9S 3A3, Athabasca, Alberta, Canada
“Open access (OA) ensures that scholarly research is freely accessible to all, breaking down barriers to information due to subscription costs or institutional access limitations. This democratization of knowledge fosters equity, enabling researchers, educators, policymakers, and the public worldwide to engage with research findings without financial hindrance. Open access distribution facilitates collaboration, innovation, and the adaptation of research for and from diverse contexts—empowering institutions and individuals to improve practices and outcomes. By removing paywalls, OA promotes transparency and accelerates the global exchange of ideas, vital for addressing challenges including sustainability, health crises, and education and research disparities.” (Anderson et al., 2025)
In this session, Professor Rory McGreal will provide a retrospective on OA publishing and the experience of IRRODL over the past twenty-five years as a Diamond open access journal.
Retrospective on Open Access Publishing
Dr. Rory McGreal
March 3, 2025, 11am MT
http://www.cideresearch.ca/session/mcgreal-2025
This is the first of three CIDER sessions celebrating Open Education Week 2025 and the 25th anniversary of the open access journal, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning. These three free, online sessions exploring the critical role of openness in education will be held on Monday, March 3, Wednesday, March 5, and Friday, March 7, 2025.

Shifting to Community Owned and Operated Open Knowledge
2025-03-03 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Regina) | University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
To celebrate Open Education Week (March 3 – 7, 2025), the University of Regina’s Centre for Teaching and Learning OEP Program invites you to a special online presentation by Dr. Cable Green, Director of Open Knowledge at Creative Commons.
Abstract
If we are going to solve the world’s most pressing challenges (e.g., climate change), the knowledge about those challenges must be open.
This talk will explore what open knowledge structures society might need to ensure the knowledge components necessary for education and science – both critical elements in solving global challenges – are open by default. Open Education and Open Science both require significant, stable public funding. Both education and science are public goods and the production, reuse and revisions of education and science resources should be publicly funded and openly licensed to ensure educational opportunities for all.
What might “Community Owned and Operated Open Education” look like? What are the barriers and the opportunities? What if funding currently spent on expensive commercial educational resources were redirected to support the creation, stewardship and sharing of effective OER in every discipline, in every grade level in multiple languages? What if we redirected existing public funding to create a sustained shared open learning infrastructure for the public good?

Unlocking Education: Discover the Power of OER
2025-03-03 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Toronto) | St Claire College, Chattam-Kent, ON, Canada
Brought to you by Collab4Open.
Join us for an eye-opening webinar on Open Educational Resources (OER) and discover how these freely accessible tools can revolutionize your classroom. Learn the benefits of adopting, adapting, and developing your own OER to enhance student engagement and success.
This is an introductory session on OER aimed at addressing the “What” and the “Why.” Attendees of all levels of knowledge and experience are welcome!

Creating Engaging and Interactive Learning Experiences with Pressbooks + H5P
2025-03-03 14:00 - 14:30 (America/Toronto) | Pressbooks, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
>> REGISTER HERE
In this session, we’ll share some high-level principles and examples of how to create engaging learning materials in Pressbooks that encourage active learning through the use of social annotation, inline quizzes and other formative assessments.
We’ll also demonstrate how instructors with access to an enterprise Pressbooks network can easily bring this content into courses taught within a learning management system and see grades updated in real time and get deeper insight into what students are learning as they complete individual activities
>> REGISTER HERE

What is OER? at UTA Libraries
2025-03-03 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Chicago) | University of Texas at Arlington, 702 Planetarium Place, Arlington, TX, United States
In this presentation from UTA Libraries we will explore Open Educational Resources (OER) as an innovative educational movement by breaking down the elements that define OER, and the benefits for faculty and students We will conclude with what OER support is available for UTA faculty and students.
Attend “What is OER?” via Teams

Panel: Using LibreTexts for Your Chemistry Courses
2025-03-03 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | LibreTexts, Davis, CA, United States
Join instructors Lisa Sharpe Elles (Kansas State University) and Sheba Kuruvilla (Mt. San Jacinto Community College) as they answer questions from participants about how they use LibreTexts in their Chemistry courses.

Shifting to Community Owned and Operated Open Knowledge
2025-03-03 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Regina) | University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
To celebrate Open Education Week (March 3 – 7, 2025), the University of Regina Centre for Teaching and Learning’s OEP Program invites you to a special online presentation by Dr. Cable Green, Director of Open Knowledge at Creative Commons.
Abstract
If we are going to solve the world’s most pressing challenges (e.g., climate change), the knowledge about those challenges must be open. This talk will explore what open knowledge structures society might need to ensure the knowledge components necessary for education and science – both critical elements in solving global challenges – are open by default. Open Education and Open Science both require significant, stable public funding. Both education and science are public goods and the production, reuse and revisions of education and science resources should be publicly funded and openly licensed to ensure educational opportunities for all. What might “Community Owned and Operated Open Education” look like? What are the barriers and the opportunities? What if funding currently spent on expensive commercial educational resources were redirected to support the creation, stewardship and sharing of effective OER in every discipline, in every grade level in multiple languages? What if we redirected existing public funding to create a sustained shared open learning infrastructure for the public good?

Open Innovation: AI and Impact on Open Education
2025-03-03 22:00 - 23:30 (Asia/Riyadh) | National eLearning Center, Ar Riyad, Saudi Arabia
This event from the National eLearning Center (Saudi Arabia) explores the intersection of Open Innovation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Open Education. Experts will discuss how AI-driven innovation is transforming learning ecosystems, content creation, and accessibility in open education. The session will also examine potential challenges, ethical considerations, and strategies for harnessing AI to enhance equity and inclusion in education.

NorQuest Open Education Pecha Kucha
2025-03-03 12:10 - 13:00 (America/Denver) | SCFL 3-071@NorQuest, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
NorQuest continues to do incredible work in Open Education! Faculty at NorQuest College have published a number of successful OERs. Besides being used in our own courses here at the college, many have found an audience in the wider post-secondary world.
Join us for a visual journey through the creation of these works, hosted by their authors.

"Open House" - Celebrating 10 years of Open at USask
2025-03-03 13:30 - 14:30 (America/Regina) | University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Celebrate with us – It’s been 10 years of Open at USask! Since the start of this journey in 2014, our USask community have worked together on the creation of open educational resources (OER) and open pedagogy projects. Our dedicated work has saved USask students over $9,000,000!
During this event we will hear from USask leadership, instructors who have created Open textbooks and resources, and from students who have been impacted by this work. Please join us to learn more about these projects and how you can get started too! – Registration is not required to attend, however space may be limited.

Got Money? Oregon’s Brain Trust for Local OER Funds
2025-03-03 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Open Oregon, Portland, OR, United States
Local funding for OER and textbook affordability from your own institution’s budget can complement statewide grants and other external sources of support. A group of librarians from Oregon institutions with local funding meet as an informal brain trust to ask questions, share surprises and lessons learned, and showcase projects made possible by funding from their institutions. Join the conversation at this Open Ed Week panel!
This webinar takes place from 12:00-1:00 pm Pacific time, March 3, 2025. The session will be recorded and captioned to share later. We will enable automatic captions in the session.

Welcome to the LibreTexts “LibreVerse”
2025-03-03 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | LibreTexts, Davis, CA, United States
Join a member of the LibreTexts team as we introduce you to the LibreTexts project.
We will guide you through each component of what we refers to as the greater “LibreVerse” including: the LibreTexts repository, home to over a million pages of OER content; our state of the art Remixer that allows you to take any content in the repository and remix it into something new for your course; LibreTexts project management platform, Conductor, and Workbench tool to help keep your projects and teams organized and on track; our open homework and assessment platform, ADAPT; and much, much more.

Distributing open education to reduce inequity and transform higher education
2025-03-04 07:00 - 08:00 (Australia/Sydney) | Online from Multiple Locations
This online session puts open education and open publishing in the broader context of knowledge equity and transformation of higher education. It will feature discussion of a new open online course Distributing education and knowledge creation designed to help build capacity for distributing knowledge to reduce inequity. During the session we will hope to identify a cohort of interested people to enrol in the course afterwards to work through it together to improve and adapt it to use in their setting and to advocate for university reform.
The session will be led by E/Professor Dick Heller, Australia and A/Professor Upasana Gitanjali Singh, South Africa and will start with a short presentation followed by an open discussion.
Timing is planned to take place directly after the presentation by Cable Green https://oeweek.oeglobal.org/activity/shifting-to-community-owned-and-operated-open-knowledge/ which also identifies a broad societal context for open knowledge.

Comic Jam Workshop for Students
2025-03-03 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Justice Institute of BC, 715 McBride Boulevard, New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Hi Students! Want to have some fun, get creative, and score a FREE lunch and gift? 🎉 Join us for a 60-minute Comic Jam workshop where you’ll draw your experiences using free, open textbooks, meet other students, and have a blast—no drawing skills needed!
Here’s what’s in it for you:
✅ Get creative and draw comics about Open Educational Resources (OER) in a fun, easy way
✅ Discover Creative Commons licenses and how to share your work
✅ Enjoy a FREE lunch🍕
✅ Take home a thank-you gift! 🎁
📅 Spots are limited—register before Wednesday, February 26!

This event is made possible thanks to generous funding from BCcampus.

Keynote with Flower Darby - Small Steps with OER: Building Momentum, Promoting Success
2025-03-03 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | San Diego Community College District, San Diego, CA, United States
The prospect of updating your class with freely available materials can seem daunting, yet reducing textbook costs and enhancing course relevance is key to advancing equitable student learning. Join us to identify small steps we can take, practical strategies that aren’t overwhelming, to begin or progress your OER journey. Find fresh inspiration to teach engaging classes in which you and your students can thrive and succeed.
Join the San Diego Community College District Open Ed Week via Zoom Events and attend this keynote session with invited speaker Flower Darby.

Interview: OER and Social Justice – Glenda Cox
2025-03-03 12:00 - 12:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Vancouver, Vancouver, BC, Canada
The interview highlights the intersections of open education and social justice, emphasising the potential and challenges posed by generative AI. While AI can exacerbate the digital divide by benefiting higher-income countries with better infrastructure, open education remains a critical tool for ensuring equitable access to learning materials through OER. Additionally, the interview emphasises the importance of student co-creation in knowledge production while noting the need for government policies that promote transformational justice by integrating open education into national frameworks.

Hunting for Open Educational Resources Suited to Your Discipline (In Person)
2025-03-03 15:00 - 16:30 (America/Toronto) | Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free learning materials for students, which can easily be adapted or tailored for accessible, course-specific learning. This workshop introduces OER basics such as renewable assignments and open textbooks and their place in the open ecosystem. You will learn to search for and discover OER relevant to your courses and disciplines.
In an open document, we will collaboratively search OER repositories for materials that can be added to Concordia’s OER By Discipline Resource Guide, which you might find useful to your studies. Through collaborative small group discussions and guided practice, you can benefit yourself and your fellow students, and leave equipped to advocate more effectively for OER in your classrooms.
Learning Objectives:
Understand the basic differences between OER, paywalled textbooks, and pirated resources
Search OER repositories for OER suited to your courses
Co-adapt Concordia’s OER By Discipline Resource Guide – 2nd edition

Part of Open Education Month at Concordia University Library

Teaching with Wikipedia
2025-03-03 14:30 - 15:30 (America/Regina) | Saskatchewan Polytechnic, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
In this 50-minute webinar, you’ll learn how to use a Wikipedia assignment and how to access Wiki Education’s free support and resources. You can still catch our event recordings, if you missed the registration.
With the rise of AI, assessing student work is challenging. This session, presented by Andrés Vera from Wiki Education will show how a Wikipedia assignment can take students beyond the classroom.
By using faculty expertise and Wikipedia’s rules, students can fill content gaps, improve representation, and enhance citations. Wiki Education supports many faculty in the U.S. and Canada with custom syllabi, resources, training, and staff support. Students gain research, writing, and digital literacy skills while improving knowledge equity.

Poco a poco, se va lejos: Developing a Spanish Z-degree at Colorado State University Pueblo
2025-03-03 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Denver) | University of Northern Colorado, 406 Dunne Dr., Greeley, CO, United States
This talk explores the development and implementation of the Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) Spanish degree at Colorado State University Pueblo, a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). It examines both the theoretical and practical considerations that shaped the process, emphasizing how a custom-built curriculum can integrate students’ lived experiences and identities while aligning with program objectives and course learning outcomes. This approach enhances accessibility while advancing inclusion, diversity, equity, and student-centered pedagogy.
As with any creative endeavor, the curriculum continues to evolve through ongoing refinement and improvement. The presentation will highlight key lessons learned, challenges faced, and potential alternative approaches, offering recommendations for those interested in developing a Z-degree. Ample time will be provided for questions and discussion.

OE Week Live! March 3 Open Conversations
2025-03-03 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Regina) | Online from Multiple Locations
Open Education Week 2025 is happening this week and we are hosting a few of our OEWeek Live webcasts as open conversations. For each show we invite a group of open educators willing to have a discussion that lacks an agenda and slides with bullet points.
These conversational sessions start with sharing of their current projects, activities, and interests but flow into general discussions of what is happening in the world of open education. We invite questions and comments from the audience through the chat.
Guests so far confirmed for this show include:

Todd Conaway (University of Washington-Bothell) on Community
Verena Roberts (Thompson Rivers University) on Open practices in asynchronous learning environments / Open Learning Design Online
Gardner Campbell (Virginia Commonwealth University) on Idealism and unintended consequences
Ken Bauer (Tec de Monterey) on #educoffee events during OE Week

Watch live and ask questions send comments to the guests in the studio via chat or watch later

Learn More:

Open Education Week https://oeweek.oeglobal.org/
OE Week Live Schedule https://connect.oeglobal.org/t/oeweek-live-webcasts/7383

Introduction to LibreTexts ADAPT Open Homework and Assessment Platform
2025-03-03 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | LibreTexts, Davis, CA, United States
Join LibreTexts Founder and Executive Director, Delmar Larsen, as he gives you an inside look at LibreTexts open homework and assessment platform, ADAPT. Participants will get a firsthand, guided tour on how ADAPT is changing the game when it comes to homework platforms in higher education. Currently sponsored by the California Education Learning Lab (CELL), ADAPT is free for all California instructors and students. For educators outside of California, ADAPT is available at cost–with a price point far below what traditional publishers charge.
