Free Books: Open Publishing at Concordia
2025-03-03 08:00 - 2025-04-30 17:00 (America/Toronto) | Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
To celebrate Open Education Month, Concordia Library is pleased to present a new display highlighting open publishing at the Library and Concordia University Press (CUP). Together, the Library and CUP collaborate to make scholarship and education free and accessible within and beyond the university.
Open Educational Resources (OER) are digital resources for teaching, learning, and research that are made available for use and re-purposing. They increase the variety of instructional resources in students’ learning experiences while lowering the financial barriers. OER in the form of open textbooks are a hallmark of Concordia’s OER program. Although open-access publications from university presses often do not permit repurposing in the same way that open textbooks do, they are nonetheless free for students and can be adopted in courses. In parallel with open publishing, Course Reserves also offer a free option for students.
This collaborative display illustrates how open education and open scholarship can nurture each other. As higher education becomes increasingly costly, students stand to gain from the cost-saving benefits of viable alternatives to commercial textbooks. Meanwhile, professors can choose to deepen their research and pedagogical impact by developing open-access and knowledge-mobilization plans to benefit students and the wider public.
Organized in six sections, this display introduces students and faculty to the parallels between CUP and the Library’s OER program. In the vitrine and the digital counter, you will find awareness efforts alongside physical and digital books from CUP and Concordia’s OER program. QR codes make these titles easily accessible, while OER and CUP buttons and slogans promote the importance of open publishing.
Finally, the horizons of free course material options can be expanded through student advocacy and faculty pedagogy. We encourage students to nominate a course for open education and show their support for open publishing by wearing one of our buttons found at the Ask-Us Desk. We encourage faculty to consider open textbook grants, course reserves, and open-access university presses.
Let’s reduce barriers to higher education together!
Curated by the Library’s OER Team and Concordia University Press, the exhibition will be on display from March 3 until April 30, 2025. Special thanks to Zo Kopyna, Chhayhee Sok, Saelan Twerdy, Meredith Carruthers and Rachel Harris.
Concordia University Library supports open scholarship, education, and science. As part of this commitment, the Library leads the University’s OER Program and continues to develop open scholarship initiatives and services, such as our open guides and institutional repository.
Concordia University Press is a non-profit publisher of peer-reviewed books. Concordia University Press is committed to barrier-free scholarship and our titles are available as free, open-access e-books, as well as for sale in thoughtfully designed print editions.

L'exploitation de REL par les enseignants de français en Inde et au Canada-Perspectives, pratiques et possibilités
2025-03-03 08:30 - 09:30 (America/Toronto) | Université de York, Toronto, Canada
As part of International Open Education Week 2025, this interactive conversation will bring together specialists and educators from Canada and India to explore the opportunities for teaching and learning French in minority context at post secondary level using Open Educational Resources (OER).
Objectives for the chat:
1. To raise awareness of the practices and challenges of teaching French using OER in Canada and India.
2. To share innovative initiatives to enrich language learning with OER and to encourage the adoption and adaptation of OER developed in different educational contexts and tools to respond to local needs and global access.
3. To reflect on strategies that bring together the adaptation and creation of OER adapted to learning communities.

Speakers: Dominique Scheffel-Dunand (Université York, Canada), Natasha Gomez (Goa University), India

Being a Teacher is Difficult- Open Educational Resources Can Help Us
2025-03-03 16:00 - 18:00 (Europe/Bucharest) | Facultatea de Științe Politice – SNSPA, Bd. Expoziţiei, Nr. 30 A, Sector 1, Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
Nowadays, being a teacher is a challenge. The curriculum evolves, the social context changes, the graduate’s profile is (or should be) entirely different.
For undergraduate students aiming to become teachers, preparation is now more intense, more varied and more demanding than ever. They will be working with generations of students whose basic and specialized competencies, namely declarative knowledge (knowing how to communicate), procedural knowledge (abilities – knowing how to do something), as well as attitudes and values (the way in which we relate to what we know and do), will be built in the context of a flexible and customized academic journey.
How are such teachers trained? How will they work with their students? Open educational resources could contribute to a better correlation between teaching-learning-assessment practices and the competencies that need to be fostered in students. How do we select these resources? Can we build them ourselves? How?
Questions such as these will be discussed during a workshop organized by the Laboratory for Didactical Innovation, intended mainly for students enrolled in the psycho-pedagogy module.

Northeast OER Summit
2025-03-03 09:00 - 2025-03-04 17:00 (America/New_York) | University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, United States
The Northeast Open Educational Resources (OER) Summit is a virtual event for new and experienced OER advocates offering the opportunity to learn and share effective practices in awareness building, implementation, collaboration, strategy, and research.
The theme of our 2025 Summit is All Hands on Deck: Exploring Open Education Through Collaboration and Innovation.

Ready for Take-off? How Emerging Technologies are Fuelling New Approaches Around OER in the UK & the US
2025-03-03 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Amsterdam) | University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, United States
Today we are faced with emerging technologies such as (Gen)AI, which have incredible potential – yet also significant risks and challenges. During this panel session at the Northeast OER Summit, we will hear from two forward-looking universities in the UK and the US about their views and experiences with (Gen)AI and OER. While both are unique in terms of their local context, challenges and levels of experience with OER, they are unified by their ambition to locally grow OER success and by their high expectations for its future.
From this session, expect to learn more about practical and real-world examples of (Gen)AI use at these two universities and their library today: how it is used to identify OER gaps, how to understand local OER potential as well as convincing senior leadership to get behind this. Moreover, expect to walk away with concrete ideas for how we can fuel a scaleable OER future at any institution and why now is the time really for this to take off.
During this panel session, we will hear from two different institutions in the UK and the US about their views and experiences with (Gen)AI and OER. While both are unique in terms of their local context, challenges and levels of experience with OER, they are unified by their ambition to locally grow OER success and by their high expectations for its future. You’ll hear practical and real-world examples of (Gen)AI use, such as how it is used to identify OER gaps and to understand the potential of OER.
We’ll hear from each of the panelists about where they are with OER today and why they feel now is the time for OER to take off.

Dal Badesha, Head of Learning Resources and Student Engagement, Coventry University. Dal oversees the learning resources and student engagement team at Coventry University. She plays a crucial role in making sure students can find and use learning resources, including OER.
William Walters, Executive Library Director, Manhattan University. William Walters is the executive library director at Manhattan University. His current research focuses on scholarly communication, academic librarianship, AI in higher education, nonprofit management, and assessment. In one of his latest publications he took a deep dive into the online discoverability of open textbooks.
Tom Mosterd, Co-Founder & Director, Higher Education, Sylla. Tom is one of the cofounders of Sylla, a new technology solution that helps libraries and faculty to easily find, assess and adopt OER tailored to their teaching. At Sylla he works on ensuring new technologies are used for the benefit of libraries.

Announcement of Creative Commons Open Education Platform Activity Winners!
2025-03-03 09:30 - 2025-03-07 17:00 (America/New_York) | Online from Multiple Locations
Between March 3 and 7, in honor of Open Education Week, Creative Commons will announce the winners of a community-run competition for open education activities. Run through the Creative Commons Open Education Platform, a global community group of approximately 1000 members, the competition invited community members to propose open education projects, eligible for up to US$ 5K in funding. The community then reviewed proposals and voted on their top choices.
Creative Commons will grant the community winners funding for their work in 2025, announcing the winners during Open Education Week on Medium.
See Creative Commons: We Like to Share for updates, and please join us in congratulating the winners!

Sustaining OER Adoption by Simplifying Processes and Sharing Resources
2025-03-03 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Toronto) | Conestoga College, 299 Doon Valley Dr, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
Brought to you by Collab4Open:
Discover how faculty, library support, and students (from three institutions: Conestoga, Georgian and Sheridan) collaborated to share resources and develop supplementary materials.

Open Education Week Special Program: Student Staff Talks! Behind-the-scenes of Nagoya University OpenCourseWare (NUOCW)
2025-03-04 - 2025-03-08 | Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
As part of Open Education Week, Nagoya University OpenCourseWare (NUOCW) has organized an informative program featuring interviews with student staff members. This initiative offers valuable insights into their experiences and contributions. To view the interview, please click the link provided. Please note that the interview is conducted in Japanese.

Open Education Weekにあたり、名大の授業（NUOCW）がお届けする特別企画です。NUOCW学生スタッフへのインタビューを行いました！ こちらからご視聴ください↓
Open Education Week 特別企画：学生スタッフが語る！「名大の授業」舞台裏-Behind-the-scenes of NUOCW-

By Students for Students In-person Information Booth (Conestoga College, Kitchener Campus)
2025-03-03 11:00 - 13:00 (America/Toronto) | Conestoga College, 299 Doon Valley Dr, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
Visit our in-person information booth at our downtown Kitchener campus, run by the Open Learning co-op and work-study students. Get informed on the basics of OER and be entered to win prizes. This event is geared towards current students but everyone is welcome!

OEWeek Live: It's the 2025 Open Education Week Launch!
2025-03-03 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Regina) | Online from Multiple Locations
Open Education Week 2025 kicks off today and we launch our live streamed series of conversations with welcomes and perspectives of OE Global co-Executive Directors Igor Lesko and Marcela Morales.
These conversational sessions start with sharing of 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.
Other Guests in the studio include

Glenda Cox (University of Cape Town / OE Global Board Vice President) on UNESCO’s UNITWIN Network on Open Education
Colin de La Higuera (Nantes University, UNESCO Chair) on another launch- the UNOE, the Unitwin Network on Open Education’s 23 Good Reasons to adopt Open Education blog series for which Glenda Cox is also an author. Glenda’s post on Translation and Localisaton published today is the first of the series.
Curt Newton (MIT) on bringing open education more effectively into building “K to gray” climate change literacy and engagement.
Perrine de Coëtlogon (University of Lille, OE Global Board President) on Updates on OEG francophone & OEG Wallets

See the latest 23 Good Reasons https://oeweek.oeglobal.org/23-reasons/
Watch live and ask questions send comments via chat or watch the recording later:

Learn More:

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

Online University of Windsor Open Education Week Conference
2025-03-03 12:00 - 2025-03-06 17:00 (America/Toronto) | Online from Multiple Locations
The Office of Open Learning at the University of Windsor is hosting a conference throughout the Open Education Week and everyone is invited to join us for a week of free events. Events will be added over time, so check the site regularly.
This year will feature presentations about open educational practices, as well as some presentations about educational technologies.

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.
