OER Digest – December 19, 2025

Dec 19

Written By

Gabby Hernandez (SPARC) | Volume 198 | December 19, 2025

OPEN ED DIGEST

Your monthly digest of open education updates, opportunities, and reminders

UPCOMING EVENTS

Curated picks from the Open Education Association’s Webinar Calendar and Conference List that relate to a national audience and are open for all.

SAVE THE DATE: OpenCon Ohio 2026 will be offered for free via Zoom on Friday, May 15, 2026, with an in-person preconference on May 14 at Cleveland State University. The conference theme this year is Reimagining Learning: The Future of Open Education. Check the OpenCon Ohio 2026 website for updates.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: The open education field has many opportunities to submit conference proposals and share the amazing work happening across the field. Below is a list of open call for proposals and their deadlines:

2026 Library Publishing Forum Jan. 5th
Language OER Conference Jan. 5th
North East OER Summit Jan. 5th
Open Education Talks 2026 Jan. 9th
Effordability Summit Breakout Session Jan. 30th
2026 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries Feb. 2nd
Florida OER Summit 2026 Feb. 6th
All Things Open Week Conference Feb. 6th
2026 Colorado OER Conference Feb. 15th

UPCOMING OPPORTUNITIES

Curated picks from the Open Education Association’s Opportunity Board that relates to a national audience and are open for all.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Pedagogy Opened: Innovative Theory and Practice, is excited to share a request for papers to be considered for publication in the second edition of the series. This book series is a peer reviewed, openly licensed, accessible online publication that shares emerging research and practice in open pedagogy and related topics.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: The DOERS Innovation Workgroup invites contributions to a forthcoming anthology of case studies on the intersections of generative AI (GenAI) and open educational resources (OER). DOERS seeks abstracts of around 350 words for potential case studies by 01/31. For more details and a link for abstract submission, see the full Call for Authors.

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING: The Creative Commons Certificate Courses are now open and taking applications. You can view the different courses and register here. Registration closes on January 19th.

Browse more events and opportunities in the Open Education Association’s regularly-updated Open Education Conference List, Webinar Calendar, and Opportunity Board.

STORIES FROM THE FIELD

Quick snapshots of those making change on the ground level, and those impacted

From Colorado: The Colorado Commission on Higher Education has approved 28 OERpen grants aimed at reducing textbook costs and expanding zero-cost degree options for students across the state. The grants, totaling $1 million, will support the creation of free, high-quality learning materials. More than half of the funding will go toward developing zero-textbook-cost degrees and collaborative projects. Read More>>

From Minnesota: Rochester Community and Technical College (RCTC) announced that it will launch new “Z Degrees” this spring, enabling students in select two-year programs to complete coursework without buying textbooks. Instead, courses will use open educational resources, open textbooks, and library-curated materials, aligning with a broader shift toward digital, AI-supported learning. Read More>>

HOT OFF THE PRESS

Each edition highlights an interesting, new, openly-licensed resource, including research, guides, templates, podcasts, open textbooks and more!

RESEARCH:

Open Praxis Volume 17 Issue 4 is now available. Open Praxis is a peer-reviewed open access scholarly journal focusing on research and innovation in open, distance, and flexible education. The latest issue features 11 research articles, one innovative practice article, and one critical scholarly conversation.
The Case for Connecting the Opens is a SPARC Europe position paper that launches a new European strategy to connect Open Science and Open Education, aiming to strengthen openness across European higher education and demonstrate the value of equitable access to knowledge.
Leading with Openness is a Report on the Capacity of British Columbia’s Public Post-Secondary Institutions to Support Open Educational Practices. This study assesses institutional capacity to support open educational practices across six groupings, and this research provides a comprehensive look at the state of support for open education practices in B.C. public post-secondary institutions.

COURSE MATERIALS: Open Oregon Educational Resources is delighted to share their openly licensed course materials with an equity lens in Human Development and Family Studies, Sociology, and Criminal Justice, along with the newly launched Open Curriculum Development Model. Each textbook has a course pack of integrated course materials where we share ancillaries. Read more here.