Open Education Week 2026

Hosted by Open Education Global (OEG), Open Education Week is an annual, week-long event that aims to raise awareness, showcase initiatives and highlight open education efforts in teaching and learning worldwide. Launched in 2012, Open Education Week provides instructors, practitioners and students with an opportunity to gain an understanding of open educational practices (OEP) and be inspired by the wealth of open educational resources (OER) being developed by the local and global communities.

More Information About Open Educational Resources

Schedule of Events

OER Grants Lightning Talks & Information Session

This event features McMaster faculty and instructors who are incorporating open education into their teaching. Hear from some of the 2025-2026 OER Grantees as they update us on their awarded projects. Learn about the open resources being created for McMaster courses and hear about experiences in creating open and accessible content. Gather ideas for possible OER projects of your own. Find out more about the McMaster OER Grant which will be offered again in Spring 2026.

This event will be held virtually on Zoom.

Register here.

Creating Open Content with Pressbooks and h5P

Did you know McMaster has single-sign on to Pressbooks, an easy-to-use open content publishing platform for creating (or adapting) online resources such as textbooks, guidebooks, modules, lab manuals, student-generated assignments, and more? This session will provide an overview of Pressbooks and the dynamic features that are natively baked in – including H5P interactivity, Hypothes.is annotation and embedded multimedia. If you’re looking to self-publish content of any length, and want a simple tool that enables customization, flexibility and accessible, varied publishing formats with web-hosting options, Pressbooks may be right for you. We’ll look at examples of instructor-created and student-created content and get you started on using Pressbooks for your teaching and learning.
 

eCampusOntario offers free access to H5P, a powerful tool for creating interactive learning elements? H5P allows you to design engaging activities—such as quizzes, drag-and-drop exercises, interactive videos, and more—that can be seamlessly embedded into Avenue to Learn. This session will provide an overview of H5P and showcase a variety of interactive elements that instructors can use to enhance student engagement in online courses. Whether you’re looking to create dynamic learning experiences or explore innovative ways to present content, H5P offers an intuitive and flexible solution. Join us to see real-world examples, learn how to integrate H5P into your course, and get started with designing interactive activities for your teaching and learning.

This workshop will be held virtually on Zoom.

Register here.

Sharing Research Differently: Mobilizing Knowledge with Open Educational Resources (OER) [uOttawa session]

To celebrate Open Education Week, we invite you to learn more about how open educational resources (OER) play an important role in advancing knowledge mobilization. In this bilingual session, we will explore the fundamentals of OER and their role in making knowledge creation more collaborative. You will hear from OER creators about their experiences, and we will highlight strategies to showcase OER contributions in your dossier for tenure, promotion, or funding applications.

Objectives:

·         Discover how OER support the dissemination and sharing of scholarly and educational knowledge

·         Gain insights from researchers who have created an OER with and for the community

·         Explore strategies to showcase OER activities in one’s dossier

Speakers:

·         Mélanie Brunet, Copyright and Affordable Learning Librarian, University of Ottawa

·         Savage Bear, Director and Assistant Professor, McMaster Indigenous Research Institute, McMaster University

·         Josée Boulanger, Professor and Researcher, Collège La Cité

·         Jenna Richards, Pianist, Researcher, and Programmer, Ottawa Chamberfest and Xenia Concerts Inc.

This event will be held virtually on Teams and recorded.

ORGANIZED BY: Library & Research and Innovation - University of Ottawa

Register here. 

Finding and Using OER

One of the biggest barriers to OER adoption and use is finding the right resource. In this session, we will look at some McMaster-specific resources that will help you in your search (including McMaster’s OER by Discipline Guide version 2.0 and the OER Finding Service), explore some OER repositories, and consider some strategies to fine tune your results. We will also look at how you can evaluate the OER you’ve found for possible use in your teaching.

This event will be held virtually on Zoom.

Register here.