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.