OEWeek Event Organiser Handbook

Where do you start?

Are you an educator, team leader, faculty member, support service, education advocate, or an individual who is passionate about the potential open education has to solve some of our most pressing education issues?

We’re so happy that you are here and you’re curious enough to read this page! If you’re looking for a bit of direction or inspiration, we’ve put together this handbook to help you build an event to advocate, inform, and engage your community.

Below, you’ll find ideas on what events to host during OE Week. There are also several ideas for getting your community, institution, students, staff, or colleagues together for OE Week 2024. Dive right in!

About Open Education Week

Open Education Week (OEWeek) is an annual opportunity every March to celebrate the latest achievements in Open Education worldwide. Launched in 2012, Open Education Global hosts Open Education Week as a collaborative, community-built open forum that allows open education practitioners to advocate for, share with, and learn about the latest achievements in open education worldwide.

OEWeek annually raises awareness about open education and highlights innovative practices and successes worldwide. OEWeek provides a platform for practitioners, educators, and students to build a greater understanding of open educational practices and to be inspired by the wonderful work being developed by the community around the world.

Mission

Open Education Week raises awareness and highlights innovative open education successes worldwide. 

Vision

We seek to be the platform that helps propagate all Open Education Global Initiatives worldwide in one week.

In-person events

Ideas

Over the last 12 years, open education-focused departments and communities have held many different kinds of events at schools, colleges, universities, libraries, and tech hubs. These have ranged from creating awareness and visibility (introduction, training sessions) to driving the open education process at their organization further (presentations, panel discussions) or to using the week to further a specific cause within open education, like activism around open textbooks or translating or adapting existing OERs into local languages. 

You can host many different kinds of events. Here are a few event ideas … 

  • An Open Education Book Fair
  • An Open Education treasure hunt at your library
  • An information session for faculty that don’t know about open education
  • A local meet-and-greet or speaking event with local open education activists
  • A Translate-a-Thon or Adapt-a-Thon – work together to translate or adapt existing OERs into a different or local language
  • Photography contest or visual contest
  • An awareness drive about the impact of the cost of textbooks on your students
  • An OER Create-a-Thon: create an open education text book or study guide
  • Workshop a local challenge together with a wider community
  • A round table or panel discussions
  • A how-to series
  • A seminar, symposium, or conference
  • The only limit is your imagination!
Practical tips for on-the-ground events
  • Host your event in an accessible, walkable location from most public transportation hubs.
  • Make sure you keep an active record of everyone who attends your events for safety purposes in terms of contact tracing in the future.

Online events

Ideas

Local or online

Share with the global community

  • Host an OEG Connect Discussion: get started here
  • Join or start a #OEWeek Hot Topic discussion
  • OER Chat groups or sessions
  • Share a tutorial or training series
  • Host some webinars

Other ideas

  • Hold a live DIY (do-it-yourself) tutorial of Open Education “hacks” and tricks for students. Share the video with the rest of the community.
  • Hold a live Q&A (question-and-answer) session where you let your audience ask questions in the comments related to all things education – and how ‘open’ can solve some of these issues.
  • If you are on Instagram, you can also consider doing a joint livestream with a friend, partner, or collaborator! 
  • Host an event on a livestreaming platform – whether on Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, or Youtube, you can team up with education institutions to showcase the impact.

What to talk about and how

Over the years, OE Weekers have covered an impressive amount of topics. Here are just a few:

  • OERs
  • Open Pedagogy
  • Open Access
  • Open Licences
  • Open Course (OCW / MOOCs)
  • Open Textbook
  • Community and Technical Colleges for Open
  • K-12 Education for Open
  • Open Culture
  • Open Data
  • Open Source Software
  • Open Education Degree
  • Open Web
  • Open Research
  • Open Science
  • Education-focused tech & infrastructure
  • Open Policy
  • Other Open Content
  • Open Repositories
  • Open Education Technology

What you cover depends on your audience and what you want them to do with that information. 

  • Why does Open Education matter – talk about how it impacts local students or stakeholders and what problems it will solve. Share with your audience what they can do to help and learn more.
  • Visualize your education challenge – and workshop how to solve it with open practices or resources.
  • Share tips on engaging with and contributing to Open Education – what have you done, what OERs do you use, and what do you wish you had access to?

Collaborate! 

Collaborate with partners and institutions for greater impact

  • Host some live collaborative events on your social channels,
  • Join forces with another institution that works in Open Ed – or is interested in doing so – and pool your audiences and resources to work through a challenge together,

Are you ready to submit an event?

Submit your Event here
Read the Event Contribution Guide
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