Nominate a colleague for the 2025 Open Educator Award
Do you know a CU educator who has implemented, adapted, authored, or shared high quality open educational resources? All CU educators, including graduate students, are eligible to be nominated for campus-wide recognition. Nominations, including self nominations, will be accepted until midnight on Feb. 12, 2025.
The Open Educator Award recognizes educators who demonstrate exemplary use of OER in their classrooms or teaching practice.
Open educational resources (OER) “are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge" (William + Flora Hewlett Foundation).
OER can provide students with day-one access to course materials, serve as free or low-cost alternatives to costly textbooks, support students’ equitable access to course learning, and support pedagogical innovation by educators.
“Students can realize important course materials cost savings and more equitable access to learning because OER are immediately and openly accessible, most typically online,” said Merinda McLure, professor and one of three OER Leads for the University Libraries. “The open licensing of these educational materials also provides unique affordances to educators that benefit students, such as customizing OER to best support teaching and student learning.”
One local example of an OER is the Origins of European Civilization, an open textbook that CU Boulder professor David Paradis and colleagues created by revising and adapting an existing open textbook, to specifically support students enrolled in HIST 1011.
Previous winners of the Open Educators Award include:
2024: Runqing Qi
2023: Mike Klymkowsky
2022: Nikolaus Correll and Alan Mickelson
2021: Nicole Jobin and Beth Osnes
2020: Matthew Burrows
2019: Leah Wasser
2018: Diana Maggiore
The 2025 Open Educator Award is sponsored by CU Boulder Student Government and the University Libraries.
The Open Educational Resources guide provides resources for educators who are interested in exploring and identifying OER. The guide includes contact information for the Libraries’ OER Leads, Caroline Sinkinson, Melissa Hart Cantrell, and Merinda McLure, who are available to provide assistance.