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The Long Shortlist of Finalists for the 2023 OEAwards

Now in its 13th year, the Open Education Awards for Excellence again provides recognition for the people, resources, and practices in Open Education through a community-driven process.

From an open call for nominations that opened in May, we collected 172 nominations across the 16 award categories, representing people and projects from 38 countries. Next, our review committee, which includes 20 former award winners combined with the input of the OEGlobal Board of Directors, gets us to the current stage. It’s time to meet the finalists for the 2023 OEAwards!

In the spirit of widening the scope of recognition, like last year, we are first announcing the OEAwards shortlist of finalists highlighting the achievements of 15 individuals and 34 open education initiatives and practices that are contenders for the awards.

Take some time to scan the 2023 OEAwards Finalists organized by the award categories or as listed below. Please show your appreciation by replying to or reposting our @OEGlobal social media messages. Please use the hashtag #OEAwards23 or reply to this announcement in our OEG Connect Awards space (you access the Connect page below).

What’s next? The final award winners will be announced in an OEG Live webcast at 17:00 UTC on September 13 (check for local time). The special session for OEAwardees at the November 16-18 OEGlobal Conference in Edmonton will also be live-streamed.

And now… take in the long list of our finalists below or explore them more (with links) in the OEAwards website gallery of the 2023 Finalists.

PEOPLE IN OPEN (Individual Awards)

Catalyst Award

This award is presented to an individual actively engaged in promoting the creation and implementation of OER and application Open Practices. A Catalyst is someone other than a professor/teacher who supports the ideals of the Open Education movement through their own practices and who creates engagement in Openness within an organization or community.

  • Abbey Elder
  • Kathy Essmiller
  • Jonathan Poritz
  • Jennryn Wetzler

Educator Award

This award honors an innovative teacher/professor who has published and/or used a significant body of Open Resources and/or applied Open Practices over a sustained period (at least one year) in their teaching practice. This individual’s open course materials and professional practices have been recognized for impacting student learning and influencing peers to share more openly.

  • Maha Bali
  • James Brunton

Student Award

This award recognizes the outstanding endeavors of a student who has advocated for or benefitted academically from using open educational resources or open educational practices. It is presented to a student whose achievements may inspire others to pursue degree programs that utilize open resources and/or someone who played a prominent role in advocating successfully for the promotion and advancement of open education.

  • Henry Agnew, Ethan Turner, and Matthew Barkovich
  • Yasser Tamer Atef

Leadership Award

This award is presented to an individual who has demonstrated significant leadership and longstanding involvement with Open Education. This person has made significant and clear contributions to the furtherance of the Open Education movement, with contributions to Open Education that have spanned regions and/or had a global impact.

  • Catherine Cronin
  • Patrina Law
  • Lisa Petrides
  • Martin Weller

WHAT WE SHARE (Open Asset Awards)

Open Curation / Repository Award

This award is given to an exceptional collection of high-quality open materials made available via a process of curation or review. More than merely collecting content on a specific subject, strong curation involves carefully selecting content. evaluating it for specific purposes, and making it available in a meaningful way that can then be customized and re-shared for other people..

  • Mada ICT-AID Competency Framework Aligned OER Hub
  • Proyecto EDIA
  • Storyweaver
  • VCCS Transfer Course Mapping Hub

Open Infrastructure Award

This award is for implementing or developing a set of technologies that encompass open-source tools for creating open educational resources, use in an educational context, curation, improvement, and reuse, as well as sharing. The “infrastructure” is broader than open-source software; it also includes open hardware, open standards enabling interoperability, and other open technologies that are instrumental in enabling open education.

  • convOERter (OER Conversion Tool)
  • Openverse

Open Reuse / Remix / Adaptation Award

This award is given to an exceptional collection of high-quality open materials made available via a process of curation or review. More than merely collecting content on a specific subject, robust curation involves carefully selecting content. evaluating it for specific purposes, and making it available in a meaningful way that can then be customized and re-shared for other people.

  • 《少年的自我療傷—甘耀明《殺鬼》少年圖書改編》客家語多媒體教材(“Multimedia Open Textbook for Self-Healing of a Teenager: a Picture Book Adapted from Ghost Slayer by Gan Yaoming” )
  • Français inclusif
  • HUM 1: Modern Humanities on Manifold
  • LIDA103fr (Learning in a digital age 103fr: Open education, copyright and open licensing in a digital world)

Significant Impact OER Award

This award recognizes high-quality, innovative teaching and learning materials openly shared that have significantly impacted accessibility, distribution, remix, learning, or social change. These include but are not limited to Open Courses, Open Textbooks, Videos / Simulations / Animations, Audio / Audiobook, etc.

  • American Government Audiobook
  • Futurum Careers’ educational resources
  • Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA)
  • Understanding Homelessness in Canada: From the Street to the Classroom

HOW WE SHARE (Open Practice Awards)

Open Collaboration Award

This award goes to an environment that fosters the collective production of open resources and open practices with a shared goal. Such places allow for an interchange of ideas supported through technologically mediated collaborative platforms, encourage new opportunities for people to form ties with others and create things together, and expand diverse goals, backgrounds, and cultures.

  • Exercise and Physical Activity in Indigenous Health
  • The National Teaching Repository
  • Regional Leaders of Open Education Network (RLOE)
  • STEAM OER LATAM Community

Open Pedagogy Award

This award highlights innovative open teaching practices that incorporate openness in multiple levels of the learning process. Open Pedagogy engages in the production, use, and reuse of content and demonstrates effective open teaching practices and ways of educating that increase access to learning and address equity and fairness.

  • Buds, Branches and Bark: A Guide to Winter Identification in the Pacific Northwest
  • Open for Inclusive Excellence
  • Open for Antiracism Program
  • Competendo Digital Toolbox

Open Policy Award

This award goes to an environment that fosters the collective production of open resources and open practices with a shared goal. Such places allow for an interchange of ideas supported through technologically mediated collaborative platforms, encourage new opportunities for people to form ties with others and create things together, and expand diverse goals, backgrounds, and cultures.

  • Washington OER and Low-Cost Labeling Policies

Open Research Award

This award recognizes research studies or initiatives about open education and/or related areas that help advance our understanding of and demonstrate effectiveness related to the challenges of the Open Education movement. Recognized efforts apply attributes of Openness in the research and dissemination processes.

  • Annual Top 10 “Good Reads” in Open Access Journals in Digital Education
  • OpenResearchLab
  • Special Issue of the Journal for Multicultural Education

SPECIAL AWARDS (Open Practice Awards)

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Award

This award recognizes creativity, innovation, and the creation of opportunities that promote a welcoming and supportive diverse environment and facilitate inclusion and/or access.  Examples are ones that develop cultural awareness and foster intercultural communication and collaboration.

  • A People’s History of Structural Racism in Academia: From A(dministration of Justice) to Z(oology)
  • Enhancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) in Open Educational Resources (OER)
  • GO-GN EDI Guidelines: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Open Education with a focus on Africa and Latin America
  • Maamwi Hub

Open Resilience Award

This award honors practices that have found the best ways of overcoming adversity in the face of unprecedented challenges or crises. Activities that clearly demonstrate the implementation of open educational resources or open educational practices to address challenges arising in any crisis.

  • Academic Development Open Virtual Hub (ADOVH)
  • Responsive OER for Ukrainians

Wildcard Award

Awards ought to be open themselves! This new award is open to recognizing something or someone not entirely covered by any other category. Create your own award criteria, and help recognize everything possible in open education.

  • “Is this an OER?” Addressing the Complex Relationship between Open and Affordable Course Materials
  • “We Like Sharing” Open Photo Competition

Once again, winners will be announced in an OEG Live webcast on September 13. Save the date!

Learn about the finalists in more detail…

Share Your Comments in OEG Connect

What do you think of the shortlisted finalists? Add to the discussions below and share your experiences of these people and platforms.

Latest News

OEG Voices – Latest Podcasts

OE Global Voices

Welcome to the home of podcasts produced by Open Education Global. These shows bring you insight and connection to the application of open education practices from around the world. Listen at podcast.oeglobal.org

OEG Voices 076: Purvi Shah on Storyweaver

In this episode we take you to Bangalore, India to hear about a remarkable publisher, Pratham Books and its Open Education for Excellence Award winning platform Storyweaver, core to Pratham’s mission of a book in the hands of every child in the country, published in that child’s mother tongue.

We welcomed in the studio Purvi Shah, Senior Director of StoryWeaver & Strategy to tell use the story of Storyweaver, which was recognized with a 2023 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Open Repository category. At this time, StoryWeaver offers now over 64,000 stories in more than 370 languages spoken around the world, and offers a place for anyone to contribute images, new translations, and also age and subject specific teaching resources. All of this came about from a bold commitment in 2004 from Pratham Books to embrace open licensing for their published storybooks.

StoryWeaver web site with menu items Read, Translate, Create, Resources, and Discover. One of the rotating banner displays a graphic style image of a teacher reading a book to her students with text: ”Storyweeaver in School, For Educators- We've worked with teachers so closely over the years that we've built these resources to be of real help. You'll find this section packed with stories, themes, activities, and more - all carefully ordered by grade and reading level.From language acquisition and reading comprehension, to textbook concepts and ideas, we'll help you nurture the joy of reading among all your students.”
https://storyweaver.org.in/

Enjoy the enthusiasm in Purvi’a voice as she shares the missions and global reach of StoryWeaver, as well as sharing examples of her favorite titles. And we appreciate the serendipty, than when Purvi offered to read a selection of a favorite story, from among the 60,000 titles in StoryWeaver, the one she chose was What Will Today Bring? authored by someone we know well here at OEGlobal, University of Leeds open educator Chrissi Nerantzi.

We also want to thank Sreemoyee Mukherjee from Pratham Books who joined us in the studio and was instrumental in coordinating this conversation.

Episode 76 TranscriptDownload
Listen with Transcript

at Descript.com

In This Episode

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

In this episode of OEGlobal Voices, host Alan Levine engages in an inspiring conversation with Purvi Shah, a key member of the StoryWeaver initiative by Pratham Books in India. StoryWeaver, a community-driven digital platform, earned the 2023 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Open Curation Repository category.

Key Highlights:

  1. Embracing Openness: Purvi discusses the organization’s decision to adopt open licensing to reach their mission of putting a book in every child’s hand. This shift from a traditional publishing model to an open platform allowed the community to create and translate stories, leading to the birth of StoryWeaver.
  2. The Genesis of StoryWeaver: The platform was launched on International Literacy Day in 2015 with 800 stories in 24 languages. Today, it boasts an impressive collection of 60,000 stories in 370 languages, serving as a vast repository of multilingual and multicultural stories.
  3. Innovative Features: StoryWeaver includes unique features such as “read-alongs,” which combine audio, video, and same-language subtitling to aid language learning and literacy. The platform also offers structured resources for teachers, such as thematic book lists and STEM programs.
  4. Translations and Impact: Purvi shares stories about the extensive translations available on the platform. “Rani’s First Day at School” has been translated into 138 languages, demonstrating the community’s active participation. She also narrates heartwarming anecdotes about how these stories have impacted children and teachers around the world.
  5. Community Contributions: The discussion highlights how users can contribute by translating stories or creating new ones using the platform’s vast library of images and easy-to-use creation tools. Purvi shares examples of innovative projects inspired by StoryWeaver, such as a literacy program developed in Mexico.
  6. Future Goals: Looking ahead, Purvi emphasizes the importance of expanding the depth of stories in each language and leveraging the community’s strengths to ensure that every child can access a book in their mother tongue.

Alan and Purvi’s conversation encapsulates the essence of open education and the incredible work being done by the StoryWeaver team to foster literacy and inclusivity. The episode concludes with a recommendation to explore StoryWeaver and an acknowledgment of the upcoming Open Education Awards.

Tune in to OEGlobal Voices to dive deeper into the world of StoryWeaver and the transformative power of open education.

(end of AI generated show notes)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 76

How can we work with the communities to increase the depth of languages? So that could be a potential future milestone. We were just discussing this in office the other day that it’s so interesting that while the platform has 370 languages and that’s a milestone in itself, but the real milestone is that for that one child reading the first book in their mother tongue is really the milestone.

We hit that milestone almost every day because every day a child is discovering a book in their mother tongue for the first time. That milestone will never get old, I think. And some of the other sort of milestones [has] been just not being a platform where we allow for stories, but say, when we created this whole different platform, the white label StoryWeaver for Room to Read in Indonesia and that helped kickstart their own platform called Literacy Cloud.

That was a pretty important milestone because whatever we have learned, we could empower other organizations. to build off our investments, our learning, in countries that they work with.

Purvi Shah on StoryWeaver’s milestones

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Fairytale Story by Serge Quadrado  licensed under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).

The image of the reading octopus in this episode’s artwork was part of a previous version of the StoryWeaver web site, an illustration credited to Measa Sovonnarea.

This was another episode we are recording on the web in Squadcast. This is part of the Descript platform for AI enabled transcribing and editing audio in text– this has greatly enhanced our ability to produce our shows. We have been exploring some of the other AI features in Descript, but our posts remain human authored except where indicated otherwise.

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