This post was written by GO-GN scholarship recipient Manisha Khetarpal (Athabasca University).
Attending the Denver Open Education Conference was an enriching experience filled with learning from people, conversations, presentations, posters, keynotes, handouts, and shared resources. A highlight was the mentorship and guidance I received from Bethany Eldridge, a GO-GN member, whose thoughtful communication on WhatsApp made the experience even more meaningful.
I deepened my expertise in micro-credentials for work-integrated learning by using templates shared during the session “Intersections on the Horizon in Workforce Development.” This knowledge helped me design micro-credentials and a digital badge for the Foundations Pathway within the Indigenous Cultural Understanding Framework (ICUF). Micro-credentials play a vital role in recognizing learning and validating industry-specific competencies.
I also explored AI in education, learning how to create audiobooks while addressing challenges such as accuracy, data discrepancies, and data poisoning. Strategies included training AI tools with metadata, prompts, provenance tracing, and integrating human expertise—recognizing teachers as domain-specific knowledge holders.
A poster session introduced me to the Value Creation Framework by Wenger et al. (2011), which I applied to co-create social work content with students. Building meaningful connections allowed us to design authentic assignments, including a documentary review and discussion activity for HIST 375: Roots of Imperialism. This course, offered through a tribal college in an urban setting, resulted in open assessment resources and ancillary materials that reflect local context and Indigenous perspectives. Guided by the principle that community is the curriculum, students exercised agency by creating their own discussion questions—an embodiment of OER values.
OER as data session helped me design an openly licensed authentic assessment on indigenous knowledge and ways of being. This will be shared as part of the forthcoming Canada Hub book in early 2026. I am very grateful for this opportunity as the ideas and knowledge gained is helping me build my research capacity for my study which focuses on the use of open educational practices by contract instructors in Western Canada. I am also exploring the professional development supports provided to contract instructors.
Finally, I discovered a research study on no-cost, low-cost, and very low-cost open textbooks, reinforcing the importance of affordability and accessibility in education. I found the SCOPE framework interesting. The research design of this study is helping me create a framework for my research proposal.
Sessions attended by Manisha:
- Diversity, equity, inclusion, and access in open education research https://opened25.sched.com/event/270HK/diversity-equity-inclusion-and-access-in-open-education-research
- Intersections on the horizon in workforce development and OER https://opened25.sched.com/event/270DY/intersections-on-the-horizon-in-workforce-development-and-oer
- Tapping into the power of possibility: Reframing OERs as data https://opened25.sched.com/event/270J1/tapping-into-the-power-of-possibility-reframing-oers-as-data
- Disrupting the illusion of learning and knowing: open pedagogy meets generative AI https://opened25.sched.com/event/270JP/disrupting-the-illusion-of-learning-and-knowing-open-pedagogy-meets-generative-ai
- Innovating for Al: AI -Powered audiobook creation in open textbook publishing https://opened25.sched.com/event/270JA/innovating-for-all-ai-powered-audiobook-creation-in-open-textbook-publishing
- AI impact on open education: Insights from educators, learners, and Industry experts https://opened25.sched.com/event/270Im/ai-impact-on-open-education-insights-from-educators-learners-and-industry-experts
Read more about Manisha’s scholarship.
Featured image credit: Open Ideas by opensource.com is licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.
