Open Education Week 2017 is just around the corner, taking place March 27 - March 31, 2017. The goal of this week is to raise awareness around Open Education: educational resources, practices and tools that are openly available to access, modify, and reuse.

Because this week is all about raising awareness and having impactful discussions about Open Education, it is a great opportunity to host an OpenCon satellite event! These events are local meetings held in partnership with the global OpenCon meeting. These events can be organized anywhere in the world, and by anyone in the OpenCon community—including you! In 2016, over 2000 people participated in 28 satellite events, across 19 countries. You can meet some of last year’s fantastic hosts here.

Your satellite event could be anything from a full day conference to an afternoon workshop or a few hours of programming on Open Education. After submitting a plan for your event, we’d help you get your event logos designed, your website set up, and spread the word to relevant networks.  Don’t know where to start? Here are some potential ideas for hosting an awesome OpenCon satellite event for Open Education Week!

Invite a local Open Education expert to give a public lecture about their work and projects. Check if there’s any faculty, librarians, or students who might be doing interesting work at your institution, or in your region.  You can also see if there’s anyone you can invite in our Speakers Database(search Open Education to find relevant speakers).

Organize a ‘work party’ to draft a motion for your faculty senate or student government to adopt an OER policy.  If you require a starting point, example documents from other institutions can be found here.

Host an Open Textbook hackathon. Collaborate with invited faculty members and senior students to “hack” an Open Educational Resource (OER): work together to remix and improve an existing Open Textbook or educational tool. You can find some useful resources on hacking OER here and here.

Organize a watch party.  Can’t find a speaker? Book a room on your campus and screen some of the awesome talks on Open Education from our previous OpenCon meetings, such as ‘From Open to Justice’ by Audrey Watters, or our Open Education 101 webcast.

Need more inspiration? Browse some of last year’s Open Education Week events held around the world here.

Want to host an OpenCon satellite event this Open Education Week? If you want to learn more before submitting an event plan for approval, please register your interest at the form on this page. If you already know what you want kind of event you want to host, please go ahead and submit a plan for your event here. We’ll review your application and approve it as an official OpenCon satellite event as soon as possible! 

We'll be discussing Open Education Week events during the February OpenCon Community Call on February 22, 2017 (6PM CET / 5PM BST / 12 PM EDT / 9AM PST).  Anyone is welcome to join! Instructions on how to join and a link to RSVP can be found here. Please RSVP if you plan on joining.  

If you have any questions, please e-mail Lorraine at lorraine(at)sparcopen.org.