The Legacy & History of Open Education

"Library" by thievingjoker is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Event Details

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Creative Commons invites you to explore the legacy and history of Open Education—tracing how a set of principled ideas about access, sharing, and collaboration grew into a global movement. This panel brings together leaders who have helped shape and steward this work over time to reflect on the origins of the open education movement, the milestones that defined its evolution, and the communities that carried it forward across regions and generations.

Speakers will share stories from the field: the early experiments, pivotal policy wins, institutional shifts, and grassroots efforts that enabled open education to take root in different parts of the world. Together, we’ll examine how local context—cultural, political, and economic—has influenced what openness looks like in practice, and how these variations have contributed to a rich and evolving global ecosystem.

Audience members will be invited to reflect on their own educational communities, connect past to present, and surface insights that can help shape the next chapter of open education.

Meet the speakers

  • Kathryn Kure

    Kathryn Kure is the Chapter Lead of Creative Commons South Africa, in which role she has been deeply engaged in supporting the recommendations to Parliament around sorely-needed Copyright reform in relation to the Copyright Amendment Bill and has actively advocated for tax policy changes to enable more OER resources to…

  • Dr. Cable Green

    Dr. Cable Green was the Director of Open Education at Creative Commons. He works with open education, science and research communities to leverage open licensing, content, practices and policies to expand equitable access and contributions to open education. Cable’s work is focused on identifying complex problems (e.g., UN SDGs) where…

  • Dr. Angela DeBarger

    Dr. Angela DeBarger, Program Co-Lead for the Catalyst Fund at Renaissance Philanthropy, is a leader in philanthropy, science education, and the learning sciences. Previously, she served as a Program Officer and Acting Program Director at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation directing strategy and grantmaking to expand access to ambitious,…

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