Open Education Conference 2012 Updates

I’m happy to announce the conference theme for #OpenEd12 – “Open Education: Beyond Content.” You can read more about the conference theme below, or skip straight to the Call for Papers and Call for Action.

Open Education has come of age. The tiny movement that began in the late 1990s as a desire to increase access to educational opportunity has blossomed into requirements in national grant programs, key strategies in state legislatures and offices of education, content sharing initiatives at hundreds of universities and high schools, and a wide range of innovation and entrepreneurship in both the commercial and nonprofit sectors.

We have largely succeeded in building out a vast, high quality content infrastructure atop which a new generation of educational innovations are being built. Open educational resources are increasing learning throughout the world and saving students, institutions, and governments money. Come join us as the Open Education 2012 Conference celebrates these successes.

For over a decade the focus of the open education community has been on open educational resources. As we celebrate the success of that work the Open Education 2012 Conference will also lay out a road map for the next decade where open education moves beyond content.

Join us in showcasing projects building the new generation of open education innovations including:

• institutional and governmental policy and strategy
• assessments – formative and summative, diagnostic and adaptive – required to help orient learners and those who support them
• open study groups and other opportunities for social interaction
• new pedagogies that leverage the reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute potential of OER
• permeable institutions and processes that connect with community-based and informal education in the wider world
• collaborations that refine and scale open education
• models to financially sustain programs of openness
• and other open inventions

In each of these areas – open policy, open assessment, open support, open teaching, and open business models, a small but growing number of successful initiatives exist. Open Education 2012 is your opportunity to learn from this work and help the field expand systematically into each of these areas of the learning ecosystem.

As open education expands out we’ve come to see our work as part of a broader context of openness – open data, open access, open government, open source, to name a few. At Open Education 2012 we’re looking to connect our thinking and build synergies with these parallel movements.

OpenEd12, the ninth annual Open Education Conference, will frame the conversation about the future of open education. Come be part of the discussion – we need your energy, brains, passion, and dedication!

Join us for the “annual reunion of the open education family,” spanning three stimulating days in Vancouver, BC, October 16-18.