The Open Education Conference is an annual conference of organizations that support free and low-cost educational resources and access to higher education materials and publications. Between 2004 and 2019, it was organized by David Wiley, the founder of Lumen Learning. Following his resignation, the conference has been reorganized twice: initially, as an organizational partnership, and later as a community-governed venture with operations hosted by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a project of the left-of-center New Venture Fund.

Background

The first Open Education Conference was held in 2004 and was organized by David Wiley, the chief academic officer and founder of Lumen Learning, an education software company. For the next 15 years, Wiley continued to organize the group’s annual conferences. However, in 2019, Wiley announced that he would be stepping down from his role and that that year’s conference would be the last. ^{1 2}

In a blog post discussing his resignation from the role, Wiley noted his resignation was not a call for another individual or organization to continue the conference, but rather a call for a “reset.” According to reporting from Inside Higher Ed, this decision reflected coalitional fractures among regular conference attendees. ¹

Subjects of controversy that had reportedly given rise to these fractures include an ultimately canceled conference panel on which all the scheduled panelists were representatives of commercial publishers, disagreements on what constituted an open license, and skepticism regarding Wiley’s suitability as an organizer given his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, his being white, and his being male. ¹

Reorganization

In 2020, the Open Education Conference was reorganized as a partnership of four organizations, and in 2022, was again reorganized under a community-elected board. As of June 2024, operations for the conference are hosted by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a project of the left-of-center New Venture Fund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit managed by the Washington, D.C.-based philanthropic consulting firm Arabella Advisors. ^{3 4}

Sponsors

Organizations and agencies that have sponsored the Open Education Conference include the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Michelson 20MM Foundation, Ecampus Ontario, Openstax, the Colorado Department of Education, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, the Maryland Open Source Textbook Initiative, and Pressbooks. ^{5 6}

Leadership

As of June 2024, the board of directors for the Open Education Conference includes Ash Barber, an academic librarian at the University of South Australia; Elizabeth Braatz, a second-year graduate student at Portland State University; Tonja Conerly, a professor of sociology at San Jacinto College; April Crenshaw, an associate professor at Chattanooga State Community College and the founder and principal consultant of Academic Advantage Consulting, LLC in Tennessee; Martonia Gaskill, an associate professor of Education at the University of Nebraska Kearney; Rachel Meisner, a learning resources coordinator in the Colorado Community College System; Simon Omondi, a researcher at Tangaza University College in Kenya; Elita Partosoedarso, a senior teaching professor at OntarioTech University; Rosario Rogel-Salazar, a professor at the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Mexico; Judith Sebesta, a principal with Sebesta Education Consulting; Tanya Spilovoy, the head of institutional partnerships with OpenStax Rice University; and Sarah Stokes, an educational developer and supervisor with the OE Lab at Ontario Tech University. ⁷

1. Burke, Liliah. “Open Education… Is Closed.” Inside Higher Ed. November 5, 2019. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/11/06/david-wiley-steps-down-and-adjourns-open-education-conference
2. “About.” Lumen Learning. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://lumenlearning.com/about/
3. “Who We Are.” SPARC. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://sparcopen.org/who-we-are/
4. “About.” Open Education Conference. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://openeducationconference.org/about
5. “2020 CONFERENCE ARCHIVE.” Open Education Conference. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://openeducationconference.org/2020
6. “2023 CONFERENCE ARCHIVE.” Open Education Conference. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://openeducationconference.org/2023
7. “Our Leadership.” Open Education Conference. Accessed July 1, 2024. https://openeducationconference.org/about/board