The Open Education Network (OEN) is a growing, vibrant, and supportive community that advances higher education equity, affordability, and access through open education.

We work with more than 1700 higher education institutions and are based at the College of Education and Human Development's Center for Open Education at the University of Minnesota. We are not a vendor. We are higher ed.

We are a community. We believe that by working together, we can transform higher education.

How do we do that?

We are an action-oriented organization that shares holistic open education strategies that support OER adoption, the integration of open pedagogy, and open textbook publishing.
We provide shared solutions - such as the Open Textbook Library and Open Pedagogy Portal, slide decks for faculty outreach, and data collection via the Open Education Data Dashboard to track the impact of your open education program, including faculty adoptions and subsequent student savings.
Our community shares their experience and expertise, allowing us to compile best practices for open education through guides, templates, community conversations, professional development events, the Certificate in Open Education Librarianship, and the Certificate in Open Pedagogy.
As collaboration and mutual support are cornerstones of our community, we help facilitate connections between open education professionals via our Google Group community of practice, Colleague Connector program, NICE Forum, and events like OEN Engage!

OEN Community visual, outlining Strategies, Best Practices, Shared Solutions, Connections, and Community embracing everything.

At the center of what we do and who we are is our community. Our Guiding Principles and our community's input and needs steer our work and actions.

Upcoming modules will delve deeper into what guides our community, and ways you can contribute, support, connect, and engage with other members.

Meet Our Team

OEN staff is here for you and happy to help. Feel free to reach out to Director of Community Engagement, Barb Thees, with any questions or feedback you may have (thee0017@umn.edu).

OEN Staff Headshots.jpg

Up Next: The OEN's Guiding Principles