About

FYI on the Open Education Awards for Excellence

The Open Education Awards for Excellence provide annual recognition to outstanding contributions in the Open Education community, recognizing exemplary leaders, distinctive Open Educational Resources, Open Projects & Initiatives, plus each year and updated set of Special Awards.

Starting in 2011, each year Open Education Global recognizes the people and projects through the Open Education Awards for Excellence (OEAwards), reflecting the outstanding achievements and shared wealth of the open education community.

To appreciate the range of recognition, here are five ones selected at random from the 229 total awards since 2011.

Explore and get inspired by the full collection in the Awards Hall of Fame.

Award categories are reviewed each year and evolved to ensure they are current, relevant, and reflect the emerging innovations in the Open Education movement. The awards are organized broadly into groups of People in Open (Individual Awards), What We Share (Open Assets), How We Share (Open Practices), and Special Awards. Visit the 2024 Category Explorer to review the current set of awards that open for nomination on May 13, 2024.

I was honored to accept the award on behalf of the Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas…. The recognized resource is Texas Learn OER, a ten-module, self-paced introductory course that has since been adapted by other states and institutions. I think that the OE Award was crucial for providing visibility to the resource.

Judith Sebesta

Texas Learn OER — Open Reuse / Remix / Adaptation Award 2021

Last year I was nominated for the Leadership Award, but to my big and pleasant surprise, I was awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award. A big surprise, because it made me realize the impact I had on the open community outside of the Netherlands. I was not aware of this. For me, this award motivates me to continue my work in the open field after my retirement at the beginning of this year. At times, it is a conversation starter with newbies in this field to advocate for adoption of OER.

Robert Schuwer

Lifetime Achievement Award (2022)

Pragmatically, these awards have helped us legitimize the practice of open education in our system with those whom may not have a deep understanding, or even awareness of, open education. This has been especially true with some of our primary funders who may not be aware that open education is a global movement and practice and the work we do locally on their behalf has a global impact. To be able to show them that the financial investment they make in our work locally has a global impact is a powerful story to tell, and the awards have been a tool for us to tell that story to them.

Clint Lalonde

BCcampus, Open Education Challenge Series– Open Pedagogy Award (2021), BC Open Textbook Project– Open Innovation Award (2015)

I’ve dedicated my life’s work to open sourcing education. As many OER practitioners know, there is a lot of hard, collaborative, but unseen work that goes on in the trenches behind the scenes… The OEG Award of Excellence is the only accolade I’ve received, that has a permanent and dedicated spot on my desk – I see it every working day and it is a motivation that work in open does get noticed. It is gratifying when a peer takes the time to submit a nomination for these awards.

Wayne Mackintosh

OER Foundation, Leadership Award (2020), OERF’s Digital Learning Ecosystem—Open Infrastructure Award (2021)

The OEAwards (2013, 2014) made me a visible and dominant educator in Taiwan. Utilizing the visibility and influence, I initiated a series of efforts to improve science education in high schools. This year (2021) the efforts are recognized by the most prestigious National Excellent Teacher Award in Taiwan.

Hsiu-Hau Lin

National Tsing Hua University, Thermal and Statistical Physics (2013) & General Physics (2014) • Video & Multimedia Award (2013) & Outstanding Course Award (2014)

Thanks to the Award and to the time investment we did internally in METID, the Unit devoted to learning innovation at Polimi, we could organize together with OE Global the 2019 edition of the OE Global Conference and I just finished a course on Open Education with faculty members. We are taking it one step at a time, relentlessly. […]
I’d like to share also that thanks to this first openly licensed MOOC our Polimi Open Knowledge platform is now full of openly licensed MOOCs, and we implemented a process that gives priority to open licenses, embraced by the large majority of our content experts and professors.

Paola Corti

Politecnico di Milano, OER101 – Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching Open MOOC Award 2017

Receiving the President’s Award helped me to realize that my many years of behind-the-scenes work had, in fact, been seen and appreciated by my colleagues.

James Glapa-Grossklag

College of the Canyons, Service to OEG, President’s Award 2019

The project focused on creating and implementing an Arithmetic MOOC. I taught several sessions of the class offered to hundreds of students all around the world. That project ended around 2015, however, I have continued to write OER materials and create OER-supported learning opportunities for my students.

Donna Slaughter

Scottsdale Community College, Basic Arithmetic Video and Multimedia Award 2013

Embedding OER into higher education and College Promise programs continues to be a tenet of making a college education affordable for our nation’s students.

We continue to showcase and advocate for OER in College Promise programs at the local and state level.

Martha Kanter

College Promise. Making a college education freely available, accessible, and affordable has high school has been in the 20th century. President’s Award 2014

The OER Knowledge Cloud became more widely known among OER and MOOC researchers as a result of the award; and we have received a growing number of visits from researchers.

The OER Knowledge Cloud now hosts more than 2700 records by 4667 authors!

Rory McGreal

Athabasca University OER Knowledge Cloud Open Research Award 2014

Get Inspired! Be Part of the Awards Community Process

The awards provide both recognition but also inspiration for the open education community. All nominations come from that community and the review and award selection process is completed by a committee of past awardees.

We invite all open educators to consider the people, organizations, and projects that inspire them and to please consider entering a nomination for a 2024 OEAward.

Questions or Comments?

For any questions about the OEAwards and the process for 2024, contact us by email at awards@oeglobal.org or post a question in our space in OEG Connect.

Together we stand for a world of openness where knowledge is openly and freely accessible. The Open Education Global acknowledges these efforts, alliances and collaborations through the 2024 OEAwards.