Documenting 25 years of Hewlett's Open Education Programme - Book/Report Project

OEGlobal 2026 Session Conversations
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Hi! For those who attended yesterday’s session, ‘A Conversation on Open Education’s Next Chapter,’ it will have been clear that the envisioned synthesis report has already been closely defined and will not be of a length that could support a detailed description or evaluation of the achievements of the 25 years of the Open Education Program.

Like others, I will look forward to Dr. Dieterle’s report with optimism.

However, the restricted scope and ambition of the planned report leaves the task of documenting and evaluating the impact and successes of the Open Education Program unaddressed.

I am wondering whether there is an appetite among Hewlett grantees to engage in longer manuscript project which would attempt to provide an overall narrative and evaluation but also provide detailed case studies on specific grantees, their achievements, and what was learned.

The goal here would partly be to chronicle these things while they are still fresh, but also to provide a process of collective reflection and sense-making. Such a book could also support future fundraising activities and current activity in places with less developed open education infrastructures.

It would depend how many were involved - I would anticipate a wide and diverse author base - and how much they wanted to write, but I would expect any volume attempting to do justice to summarising and evaluating the program to run to several hundred pages. There is also an opportunity to include all kinds of resources and outputs in a consolidated list. (Maybe there is an additional opportunity here to identify any archiving needs and put a plan in place for this.)

While I do hope to meet with Dr. Dieterle in the near future, I am not in contact with Hewlett about this, and I am not saying I would necessarily have to be the person to lead such a project (though I would consider it).

However, I wanted to put the idea out there for discussion and thought and see if there was wider appetite for such a book/report.

It could only work with a lot of grantees taking part and sharing their perspectives!

I’m aware that a significant part of the story also predates my own experience in the field, and it would be necessary to include those who were active in the first 10 years of the program.

Anyway, I thought I would try and get the ball rolling on a discussion about this. I know many people have important stories to tell about their work in open education and it seems like the right time to share and reflect on these…

For research-oriented folks like myself there could also be some scientific work to be done with the data we could gather.

Let me know what you think about this idea, either here or by email! Thanks!

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I very much like this idea. I tremble a bit because our OEN staff is small and we are laser focused on serving our community without a lot of flexibility to add projects like this to our plates even though the work could actually pay off in such material ways for our future labor resources. But we also have a wide community, and there may be researchers in our network who would be willing to help us tell the story of how our network has emerged and had such massive impact on the field/community/our colleges/our students. So it’s a tentative YES LET’S DO IT with just a bit of concern about workload (more than a bit maybe) (perennial issue of course).

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Is the Hewlett Foundation planning to sunset funding for Open Education? I saw in Dr. Dieterle’s bio that he is writing, "A state-of-the-field synthesis report commissioned by the Hewlett Foundation, documenting the arc of the open education movement as the foundation exits the field."

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That is my understanding, though I believe some organisations have been offered an extension of current funding to support transition and sustainability.

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Rob, great leadership in seeing an issue for the community and moving forward on an idea. I like this concept, and I could participate and focus in on the first decade. To work, I expect we would need enough volunteers and folks/projects to make a contribution so their work, and associated outcomes, are appropriately documented.

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Thanks Cathy, I appreciate that! Additionally, you are one of the people who could really enable the success of a project like this, so it would be great to have you involved. Agree that we need a sizeable team to make it work, though.

I guess the way I would see it working would be a general introduction and overview to the programme, a collection of narrative/interpretive essays and then brief case studies of all the projects that could be identified. I think there’s also potentially scope for some cool data visualisations.

I’ll continue to think about developing the concept… but you’re right, the key thing right now is volunteers!

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Bring on the visualizations! And perhaps not all participation is chapter length stuff, even project vignettes.

I was not able to catch the presentation- the abstract mentions a “shared resource folder” where might that be?

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I’m afraid I do not know where to find the folder… totally agree on the vignettes, though.

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Agree that we would need to consider what form engages high level participation so many/all can share their OER work. Can link to existing documents, create a short form level of contribution, and provide a analytic framing of the arc.

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This looks a great idea but without knowing the scope of the commissioned report I am not sure what is the added value that Rob is asking for. If the report highlights the overall impact of HF funding is the additional report/book providing the stories from the grantee perspective and/or the place of HF in the OE ecosystem. Having just written a lengthy account of 20 years of OpenLearn - Open Research Online - this could be a big job. and who is it for? I wrote my piece firstly for an Open University audience as so many do not know how OpenLearn came about and I was in at the beginning but knowing others outside might also be interested. I am not saying not do it, just that the rationale needs to carefully thought through.

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Thanks Andy! Appreciate the input and I agree about scope. There are many grantees to cover.

We know a bit about the commissioned report because the outline was presented at OE Global recently. It will be 25 pages long and the structure is already decided. It will be very much a short synthesis, it seems.

This is how the idea of a longer and more detailed project presented itself. I fully agree that it still needs to be properly scoped, but it would certainly not overlap with the synthesis report. I did not get the impression that the synthesis report would be impact focused.

My thinking is that there is an archival function to this: to document the projects and their impact. There is also room for some more reflective/evaluative pieces which I am thinking of as ‘essays’ but maybe this sounds a bit dry!

There are many grantees and it’s perhaps unlikely we would be able to get direct contributions from everyone. It might be that most of them are documented in (at most) 1-2 pages each. Maybe we could do some interesting data visualisations. I think there’s also scope for a few essays at the start which might be a bit more evaluative/reflective. I can also see that some grantees who have been active for a long time might need a bit more space to tell their story.

Maybe there could also be an option for those who want to make a small and/or creative contribution (e.g. postcard, picture, photos).

We could make use of relevant openly licenced content where it exists, and maybe it will be possible to get some support from Hewlett and/or the existing and previous programme officers to bring together resources and people - that would make things more manageable.

There is also the question of where/who potentially publishes the output, but I think that’s downstream.

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Rob, I realise this is not an easy task to coordinate but I still think scope and purpose are important. You seem to imply an archival purpose perhaps coupled with an analytical purpose. Perhaps we need to organise something around some key themes. For example I have previously talked about the OE movement in terms of communities and networks of practice. That would allow some analytical observations plus ‘case studies’ of particular grantees. Another could be around framing of open education through metaphor or the interplay between policy and practice (does practice need policy or can practice drive policy). I am sure there are others but it does need a clear rationale for it to attractive to more than just the immediate OE community.