Connect & Organize

In order for substantive change to happen, you need to connect, collaborate, and organize.  Expand your network well beyond your own region – the open education movement is a global movement and we can learn a lot from one another and share our experiences.

A quote we share in Making Ripples: A Guidebook to Challenge Status Quo in OER Creation, is “Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” (Ryunosuke Satoro). As individuals, our ability to substantially change educational systems is constrained by our resources and capacities. However, we can work together to increase our capacity as a whole!

The exciting part is that when we collaborate and combine our strengths, skills, and perspectives, we can dramatically increase our collective capacity. By working together, we can create an agile collaborative effort that enables us to develop multifaceted strategies by utilizing a range of viewpoints, skills, and resources. This coordinated effort enables us to approach the complexities of education from various angles, ultimately resulting in a larger impact.

Examples of this include organizations like SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. While based in North America, SPARC has coalitions in Africa, Europe, and Japan as well as individual member organizations in Australia, Hong Kong, and Saudi Arabia. SPARC utilizes this international network to advocate for policy change, support member action, and cultivate communities whose work examines the ways that colonialism, racism, and other forms of injustice have excluded people and groups in knowledge sharing.