About the OEAwards

Awards in an Ecosystem of Recognition in Open Education

Each year since 2011, the Open Education Awards for Excellence (OEAwards) provide recognition for contributions to the Open Education community, recognizing people, resources, and practices that exemplify excellence in the field. Our purpose is not only to showcase the final winners, but to generate and share a diverse range of accomplishments represented by every nomination.

“Every Award Starts as a Seed”

For 2025, we are framing the OEAwards around a gardening theme of excellence being seeded, cultivated, and growing over time and that all the efforts in open education deserve recognition. When we plant seeds, we hope they will develop into showy flowers or towering trees. It’s the small and focused actions that result in award-worthy achievements. The OEAwards aim to recognize efforts at all levels.

The OEAwards provide recognition and inspiration for the open education community. All nominations come from the global open education community, and a committee of past awardees review and select the awardees.

For 2025, we invite nominations in three broad areas: People in Open (Individual Awards), What We Share (Open Assets), and How We Share (Open Practices). While the OEAwards were previously subdivided into fixed subcategories, this year we offer you the flexibility to define a focus speciality to describe an award.

Where do you start? Visit the 2025 Category Explorer to understand where to assign a nomination and see examples of past award winners. From there, consider the nomination process, with helpful suggestions in the 2025 OEAward Guidelines, where you will also find the 2025 Nomination form. Nominations open on June 9, 2025.

Let the Examples Speak for Excellence

Many types of OEAwards have been awarded since 2011. To appreciate the breadth of open education excellence awarded, here are five randomly selected OEAward winners from the 254 people, practices and assets recognised by the open education community over the years.

Explore! Be inspired by the OEAwards Hall of Fame. In their own words, hear the awards’ impact on previous OEAward winners.

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)

Photo of Robert Schwer

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

Read more OEAward Stories of Impact.

Together, we stand for a world where knowledge is openly and freely accessible. Open Education Global acknowledges these efforts, alliances and collaborations through the 2025 OEAwards.

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 the OEAwards zone in OEGlobal Connect.


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