For the 2025 Open Education Awards for Excellence we are simplifying the number of award categories while at the time providing nominators more ways to specify the focus of an award.
Like previous years, in 2024 awards were into the four broad areas (People, Assets, Practices, and Special Awards), each with four sub-categories, making a total of sixteen possible awards to consider for a nomination.
Going forward we now ask you to choose from only three categories: Individual Awards (People of Open), Open Assets (What We Share), and Open Practices (How we Share) — all previous awards still align in these categories. When submitting a nomination, after choosing the category, you have an place to list more specifically a specific focus. These might be a previous category or a newly specified designation for the award, so an award might become an Open Asset Award for a Significant Impact OER or an Open Practice Award for Increasing Accessibility through Language Translation.
The 2025 Category Explorer includes award descriptions and an inspiring set of previous winners as to help you develop the focus for an award nomination in 2025.
If you have a person, asset, or practice in mind to nominate, use the Category Explorer to help frame your nomination. On the other hand, if you are not sure who or what to nominate, see below to generate ideas for who or what deserves an award for excellence. We also have available our collection of Award Impact Stories from previous winners. Or just sample a randomly chosen one past award!
Individual Awards (People of Open)
Individual awards are special merit awards presented to individuals in who have made extraordinary and influential contributions to advance open education. Their achievements are worthy of global recognition and the work that they do are models for our community. Who are the people active, effective, and influential in the world of open education?
In previous years, awards were nominated in fixed sub categories of Leader, Educator, Catalyst (previously Support Staff), or Student. In 2025 you can now nominate an individual for an award in those roles or be more specific in naming their role- e.g. Librarian, Designer, Visionary, Technologist– you are invited to craft your own title that best described the individual you are nominating.
Look for inspiration in the previous 67 Individual Awardees.
What We Share
Open Assets are what open educators create and share, tangible goods (usually digital) with educational purpose and value. Open Assets are produced, curated, and distributed in ways that make them freely accessible, usable, and improvable by others. What assets or projects that have been openly shared have made an impact on your open education work?
In previous years, Open Assets Awards were nominated in sub categories such as OER, Open Course, Open Infrastructure, Open Repository, Open Data, Open Remix, and many more. In 2025 you are invited to name specifically the type of Open Asset, any of the previous categories, or something new, like Open AI Platform, Interactive Media, Published Collections, etc.
Look for inspiration in the previous 113 Open Asset Awardees.
Open Practices (How We Share)
Open Practices are behaviors, techniques, actions, programs that open up access to educational opportunities, they might be seen as putting the Open Assets into play. These practices promote and support the use of open educational resources, technologies and social networks to facilitate collaborative and flexible teaching and learning. Where have you seen the outstanding examples of practices that have enabled and expanded the reach and impact of open education?
In previous years, Open Practices Awards were nominated in sub categories such as Open Pedagogy, Research, Collaboration, Resilience, Science, Policy, Innovation, and more. These continue as possible focus areas for an Open Practice award but we also invite you to specifically name the type of practice being recognized.
Look for inspiration in the previous 55 Open Practice Awardees.
Now that you are hopefully inspired, review the Nominations Guide to review all information needed to enter a 2025 Open Awards for Excellence nomination or proceed directly to the nomination form.