The Open Education Consortium is pleased to again announce the winners of its annual ACE awards—which provide annual recognition to outstanding contributions in the Open Education Consortium community. These awards recognize distinctive open education sites, technological innovations, notable open courses, and exemplary leaders in Open Education worldwide.

“The Consortium greatly appreciates the enormous and significant contributions from these award winners. Not only are we excited for the winners in 2015, we look forward to nominations for our 2016 global conference,” says Mary Lou Forward, executive director of the OE Consortium.

The Consortium is so pleased to be able to issue two Leadership awards. These winners were nominated by their peers and were recognized for their commitment to open education and notable leadership for the global Open Education community.

One of our prominent winners is Quill West, from the Pierce College District, who said, “When I found out that I won the OEC Leadership Award, I was humbled because this award is more a reflection of the great organizations that give me an opportunity to lead, than a reflection of my own skill. Honestly, I feel like this award is recognition of the trust and investment that I owe to my colleagues. I owe any accolades for my work to groups like CCCOER, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, the OEC, SPARC, and the colleges that make an investment in open education. I can be an open education leader, because they continue to support people who want to be a part of the open conversation.”

Another one of the Consortium’s winners was TU Delft for an open course and a MOOC. Martjin Ouwehand said “at TU Delft we believe the Open Education Awards for Excellence are of incredible importance. Not only does it stimulate and acknowledgement excellence in Open Education in the global community, both in and outside of the Open Education Consortium, but especially within our own university and the impact of the awards is incredible. On a personal level our instructors greatly appreciate the acknowledgement for their efforts. And on an institutional level the awards help increase the awareness of Open Education and increase the willingness to take new steps in (open) educational innovation. Thanks to the Open Education Awards for Excellence, TU Delft is better able to fulfill its mission to educate engineers of tomorrow and challenge the engineering challenges of today.”

The following are the award winners in all categories.

INDIVIDUAL AWARDS: The OE’s individual awards recognize career achievements in two categories, Leadership & Educator.

Leadership Award: Leaders are nominated by their peers and are recognized for their commitment to open education and notable leadership in the Open Education community.

Dr. Peter Smith is the Founding President of the Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU) and Senior Vice President of Academic Strategy for Kaplan Higher Education Group. With 40+ years of experience as a higher education innovator and noteworthy advocate for higher education, Smith was instrumental in the development and launch of Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU). OC@KU is a unique initiative that merges education technology and customized service to help learners meet their academic and professional goals. By offering access to open courses, credit assessments, and faculty mentors, OC@KU provides resources to help learners reduce the cost and time to earn a degree.

Quill West is Open Education Project Manager at Pierce College District and is the second recipient of the Leadership Award for her outstanding work as an inspirational leader, motivating faculty, students, and institutions to increase adoption of openly licensed resources on a global scale. West builds projects where success is measured not only in dollars saved, but also in student achievement, faculty satisfaction, and increased advocacy.

Educator Award: The Educator award recognizes educators whom actively develop and/or use open educational resources in creative and significant ways over a sustained period of time.

Anne Marenco is a Professor of Sociology at College of the Canyons and has worked tirelessly to expand, adapt, and author open textbooks that are used by 1,200 students per year at her institution. In addition, she has involved and inspired a dozen other faculty members to produce and adopt open textbooks that are used at other institutions. She has done this work without the benefit of financial support or research assistants. She is pleased that her students have access to high-quality learning materials.

Li-chaun Ou, Professor of Chinese Literature at the National Taiwan University, is the second recipient of an Educator Award for her dedication to open education. Prof. Ou has been involved with the open movement since 2012. She has made over 107 course videos and 70 handouts under the license of Creative Commons for NTU OCW. Prof. Ou’s course materials are mainly based on her academic studies on Redology. She is both an excellent teacher and a prolific scholar. Her book “A Round Character Study of the Dream of the Red Chamber” was published in 2006, which received NTU Scholarly Book Award and Outstanding Book Award. In 2007, Prof. Ou further published “A Grand View of the Red Chamber: General Introduction”. These two books not only enrich her instructions, but also strengthen the materials for her OCW courses.

SITE & COURSE AWARDS: Site and course awards recognize outstanding contributions in three categories: 1) sites, 2) courses and 3) MOOCs.

OUTSTANDING SITES: Recognizes excellence in an OCW site. A site of exemplary quality in its presentation of educational content (in breadth, depth, creativity).

1. OC@KU: Open College at Kaplan University
2. Mountain Heights Academy OpenCourseWare: Mountain Heights Academy
3. HCC Libraries: Houston Community College

OUTSTANDING COURSES: Recognizes excellence in the presentation of a course. A course of exemplary quality in its presentation of educational content (in breadth, depth and creativity)

1. The Human Controller: TU Delft/David Abbink
2. Music Theory: Mountain Heights Academy
3. Matemáticas. Grado en Ciencia y Tecnología de los alimentos : Universidad de Zaragoza

OPEN MOOC: Recognizes excellence in an openly licensed MOOC. A MOOC of exemplary quality in its presentation of educational content in breadth, depth and creativity.

1. Delft Design Approach: TU Delft/Jaap Daalhuizen
2. Solving Complex Problems: TU Delft/Alexander de Haan
3. Mobiles for Development: Commonwealth of Learning (COL)/Asha Kanwar

PROJECT AWARDS

Projects awards recognize the efforts that support the production, use and/or promotion of OCW/OER in ways other than the creation and use of material resources.  

CREATIVE INNOVATION: Recognizes outstanding innovations that bring a new approach to Open Education. Ideas or solutions presented as sites, courses or projects that substantially improve the discoverability, presentation, usability, accessibility or availability of course materials. 

1. BCcampus OpenEd: BCcampus/Mary Burgess
2. Open Chemistry: University of California, Irvine/James Nowick
3. CYP-Media: The Open University (UK)/Tony Coughlan

OPEN RESEARCH: Recognizes excellence in research studies about open education and/or related areas. Studies that help advance our understanding and demonstrate effectiveness related to challenges in discoverability, presentation, usability, accessibility or availability of OCW/OER.

1. Qualitative Investigation of Faculty OER Usage: Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges/Boyoung Chae & Mark Jenkins
2. The Open University (UK): Patrina Law/Leigh-Anne Perryman

Congratulations to all of our winners. We’re looking forward to seeing you at the 2016 Global Conference.