Today, 10 August 2026, we held our weekly meeting to write and edit our white paper on behalf of ASEF7 and ASEF7 Innolab. (Yes, we had a meeting last week as well). Today we concentrated on our design for our presentation at the Nottingham conference from 24-28 August 2026.
Our topic is the triangulation of Open Education/OER, AI, and the SDGs. Our main question is: How can Quality Open Education shape the future of AI and sustainability? The central premise of this white paper is captured in the mantra: Human Wisdom. Trusted AI. Sustainable Futures. These three pillars are mutually reinforcing. Human wisdom provides the ethical judgment, critical thinking, and contextual understanding that AI cannot replace. Trusted AI enables responsible and transparent use of technology while respecting human values and rights. Open Education provides the knowledge infrastructure that allows reliable, multilingual, openly accessible educational resources to be created, shared, adapted, and continuously improved in support of the SDGs.
In today’s world, universities have a global social responsibility to help create dynamic, sustainable communities founded on equality of wealth, gender, and cultural background. International higher education has been criticised for being too neoliberal; now is the time for it to change. Hence, our white paper also focuses on the role of universities and on innovative, future-oriented leaders who have the courage for change, agility, and resilience.
Open Education Week 2026 is the global town square (or plaza, piazza, alun-alun, центра́льная пло́щадь, platz, maydan, etc) to gather to meet, celebrate, and exchange Open Education resources and practices.OEWeek 2026 “officially” launches by Open Education Global March 2-6, but we collect and share events, in-person or online, occurring between February 1 and the end of April. Open Education Week is hosted by Open Education Global.
Today, 4 March 2026, I hosted, together with colleagues, a session on behalf of the Research Network for Innovative Sustainable, Seamless Education (IRN-ISSE) on the theme "Be the change you want to see". Research projects from IRN-ISSE were presented. During the webinar, participants met some of the partners in IRN-ISSE. Presenters were: Ebba Ossiannilsson, Sweden; Ioana Andrea Stefan, Romania; Karen Ferreira-Meyers, Eswatini; and Helga Hambrock, South Africa, IRN-ISSE Co-ordinator. The team presented ongoing research and initiatives. Participants had the opportunity to discuss with the team and the audience interesting changes in education, including those brought about by the AI era. They also learned how they could become involved in the IRN-ISSE partnership. See more on the session https://oeweek.oeglobal.org/activity/be-the-change/
The International Research Network for Innovative Sustainable and Seamless Education (IRN-ISSE) is a global research partnership that began at mLearn 2018 at Concordia University in Chicago. The vision of IRN-ISSE is to build an international community of practice, inviting researchers and specialists to collaborate for the greater good, with a specific focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4(SDG 4): “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” The mission of IRN-ISSE is to study, support, inform, share, and implement research globally to improve access to and quality of education worldwide. The goal is to stand together and learn with and from each other, striving to remain at the forefront of innovative, sustainable, and seamless educational practice. Learn more about IRN ISSE here https://irnisse.weebly.com
The community has a global reach, including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and India. The partnership is working on several initiatives, such as:
The Seamless Learning Experience Design Model which identifies five themes relevant to designing a seamless learning experience: 1) seamless learning concepts, 2) positive concepts, 3) practical concepts, 4) human concepts, and 5) design concepts. Based on these five concepts, a Seamless Learning Experience Design (SLED) framework was developed.
Research and ongoing work include the “Be the change to see the change” (this was the theme for interviews and larger podcasts) initiative, and on-demand, driven learning.
Currently we face both a swell of support for open educational resources (OER) and devastating upheaval of our traditional education systems. Resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, over 1.5 billion youth are out of school, countless teachers and parents are pivoting to online teaching and education systems face immense financial strain. While OER are not a magic cure for the current education crisis, there are opportunities to work with open education efforts to build greater resiliency within our learning ecosystems and also support open government efforts.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to retain, use, change and share the works with others. OER are one facet of open education, or efforts to make education more affordable, accessible and effective–providing unfettered access to learning to as many people as possible. Open education involves open practices, open policies and open educational resources.
Today, we have a stronger need and the established international frameworks to use OER to fuel our education efforts and collective commitments. This pandemic highlights the effects closing access to information and communication has on communities; conversely it demonstrates how essential open practices (free sharing of information, unfettered access to education materials) are to our collective human security.
Now more than ever, governments recognize the potential of OER–and the opportunity to partner under international frameworks that support open education goals. In November 2019, UNESCO unanimously passed the UNESCO Open Educational Resources (OER) Recommendation to advance the construction of open, inclusive and participatory knowledge societies and established a Dynamic Coalition of government, civil society and private sector experts connected to support the recommendations. The OER Recommendation dovetails with SDG4efforts, emphasizing that open education can support “inclusive and equitable quality education” and “lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
How can you get involved?
Open education networks have provided outreach–offering “how to” webinars, support for emotional wellbeing, and lists of open resources for use. View this wikipedia article section collecting just a few of the resources and responses.
Join the Creative Commons open education listserv or Slack community or discuss opportunities for engagement in open education efforts with This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; or open data and open source efforts with This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
OGP is excited to launch Open Response + Open Recovery, a new campaign to ensure open gov values are forefront as we move through COVID-19 response and recovery.
Have a resource, webinar, or article you'd like to promote through the campaign? Drop us an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or tag OGP on social media.
Some of the slides I used are available at my SlideShare
Contemporary society is characterized by major and rapid changes related to technological development, globalization, limited resources, migrations and numerous other challenges. In managing these changes, it is necessary to use all available potential, so changes are also needed in the field of education. On a global scale, open education, which increases the accessibility and flexibility of education with solutions based on new information and communication technologies (ICT), is becoming increasingly important. It enables a more rational use of resources and fulfills the needs of new generations.
The study programme has been prepared in cooperation with the UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Learning at the Jožef Stefan Institute. The programme is designed based on the experience from our joint online mentoring programme Open Education for a Better Worldwith contributions of international experts from both the UNESCO and the Jožef Stefan Institute. The programme contributes to the implementation of the UNESCO Recommendations on Open Educational Resources by building the capacities needed to meet their valuable goals.
They offer individual consultations to prospective candidates, students and graduates to help them in the process of choosing their path of study and career. You are welcome to contact us any time before, during or after your studies. We also offer help in finding financial support for your study costs (scholarships, sponsors).
The main objective of the study programme is to educate postgraduates who will be able to manage projects, initiatives, communities and strategic development in the area of open education in a competent manner. They will be qualified to plan, implement and manage open education at all levels of formal education, and in non-formal education, academic and business environments. They will acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to develop and implement open education on a full scale of granularity, from learning outcomes, courses, study programmes, to institutional, national and transnational levels. Graduates will know how to improve educational processes by using modern information and communication technologies and successful didactic practices in a reasonable way. With the full understanding of connections between technological and pedagogical as well as business and social aspects, they will be able to professionally analyze, develop and manage the education systems at the national level or a wider one. This will enable them to conceive strategies and policies and competently provide management in the field of open education.
The syllabus has a distinct interdisciplinary character, connecting information technologies, business studies and educational sciences. The programme consists of obligatory subjects, compulsory elective subjects, general elective subjects, team project, individual project and master’s thesis.
Nine obligatory subjects enable an acquisition of in-depth knowledge, necessary for understanding the contemporary working principles in the key segments of open education, namely in its (1) design, (2) implementation and (3) management; these are the core segments of the study programme and are consistently addressed in the two years of study.
Students may choose their preferred key segment by selecting one of the three compulsory elective subjects, and may further supplement their professional profile with three additional elective subjects. The team project, the individual project and the master’s thesis are obligatory parts of the study programme. With an emphasis on solving challenging open education tasks, these obligatory parts require an interdisciplinary understanding of the field and add to the development of students’ general competencies. Subject-specific competences are naturally developed as well (a list of these competences is also provided to the student).
Knowledge is assessed through project work and results, public presentations, seminar papers, midterm examinations, and written and oral examinations. The student completes his or her studies by defending the master's thesis in front of a three-member committee.
ebba.ossiannilsson
