Robert Lawson

Norquest College
Location: Edmonton, Canada
Term: 2024-2027

Robert Lawson is an Educational Developer at NorQuest College in Edmonton, where he has been promoting open education since joining the institution in 2016. His early efforts focused on encouraging faculty to integrate open images into their online courses. In 2020, Robert led the Reimagine Higher Education initiative, which envisions NorQuest as a largely textbook-free institution by 2030. The college now has an active textbook publishing program that is producing three open textbooks a year.

Beyond NorQuest, Robert is a prominent advocate for open education, both nationally and globally. In 2019, he organized the Alberta Open Education Spring Summit, bringing together open educators and advocates from across the province. Currently, he is co-director of the Open Education Alberta textbook publishing consortium steering committee. In 2023, he served as program co-chair for the 2023 Open Education Global Conference in Edmonton.

As a member of the Board of Directors, he is excited to have the opportunity to support OEG’s mission of building connections that advance open education on a global basis.