Plant Seeds of Recognition- Community Colleges and the 2025 Open Education Awards for Excellence
Alan Levine
For those of us in the northern half of the globe, summer is the time for many of us to be out tending their gardens. Think of this as a means of making the open education work at community colleges more known to the world through the 2025 Open Education Awards for Excellence.
I say this as my entire career has been an outcome of the culture and innovation in the environment at the Maricopa Community Colleges in the early 1990s. My roots there began alongside among numerous colleagues, notably thinking especially my good friend Lisa Young.
Nominations for the 2025 Open Education Awards for Excellence are now open through July 21. This is the 15th year of OEGlobal’s recognition program for contributions to the Open Education community, recognizing people, resources, and practices that exemplify excellence in the field.
Community Colleges are represented strongly in at least 30 winners of OEAwards since 2011, including four in 2024, and many more in the broader group of short-listed finalists (2024). Get a taste of the variety of excellence in the collection of all past awardees plus hear directly what recognition means in the Impact Stories of OEAwards.
I’m appealing to this list to make an even stronger presence of community colleges in the 2025 OEAwards. I see posts every week here that represent work worthy of recognition.
Winning awards is of course desirable, but don’t make that the only goal. This year, we encourage you to look at the awards as part of a broader landscape of recognition. Our theme for 2025 invites you to view our collective work in open education as a form of gardening. The resources and practices of open education, and recognition itself, blossom often from the simple act of planting a seed.
Please consider planting one of these seeds by nominating a person, resource, or practice for the 2025 OEAwards. Dig deep! Please do not rule something out by comparing it to the past winners or assume that the work you do in open education is not “big” enough. All nominees will be shared publicly, as each contributes to the field, and digital badges/certificates will be issued to all nominated people and projects.
Prepare a nomination with the materials from the 2025 Awards Nomination Guide, including editable templates to draft your entries. You have plenty of time, as nominations are open until the end of the day everywhere July 21.
One more little secret. Many people will craft their own nomination, which is welcome. But a much more significant effect of recognition is when you make the effort to recognize someone else. Imagine what it means to be surprised by being notified in late July that your work was nominated.
For any questions or comments, contact me. Join us and spread the seeds of recognition of community colleges for the world to see!
Alan Levine, OEGlobal