Community Pass Option for OTESSA Online June 8 & 9, 2026

This year, we will be offering a $50 Community Pass option for non-presenters at our online conference next week (June 8 & 9). We understand the economic shifts happening across sectors, while noting that being informed about emerging research and practice is more important than ever in order to enact positive change.

—-> Register for a $50 Community Pass <—–

You are also welcome to become a member (optional). Rates are $110 (regular) and $50 (discounted groups). To learn more about membership, please visit our Membership Info page. This year, we plan a number of online community events for our members, including meets with authors publishing in our SSHRC-funded journal, SSHRC workshops, technical workshops, and more.

We have an incredible program with amazing keynotes and invited speakers. You can view their abstracts and bios on the Online Conference page.

Keynotes:

• Bonnie Stewart, University of Windsor, on “Beyond BigAI: Agency as Educational Practice”
• Marti Cleveland-Innes, Athabasca University, on “Higher Education Transformation and Lifelong Learning”
• Robert Luke from eCampusOntario
• Dave McAlinden, Columbia University, on “Beautiful Ideas, Missing Machinery: Why Bad Ideas Spread in Education, and How to Use Models Without Being Used by Them”

Invited Speakers:

• Emma Irwin, founder and principal consultant of Open Practice Consulting and formerly with Microsoft and Mozilla, on “Digital Sovereignty in Canada: Why and How Higher Education Can Lead”
• Hannah Grossman, UCLA/Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, on “Designing Learning Climate for Collaborative Reasoning”
• Don Avison, BC Government Independent Review Consultant and former BC Deputy Minister of Education/Advanced Education, on “Sector Transformation in BC Higher Education”
• Royce Kimmons, Brigham Young University, on “AI Killed OER… Long Live OER!”
• Tim B. Castillo, Sarah Helms, and Karol Ibarra Zetter from the University of New Mexico Office of Community Engagement on “Community-Based Participatory Research and Ethical Engagement”

The online conference will be hosted on the Sched platform and will be using Zoom. The most current program can be found there. We do provide a public-facing OTESSA Online 20026 program on our OTESSA website; however, please do not depend on this one if you are a registered participant. We have incredible speakers lined up in our concurrent sessions, including Cash Ahenakew (UBC Canada Research Chair on Indigenous Peoples’ Well-Being), Stephen Downes (Personal Learning in the Age of AI), Brenna Clarke-Gray (Care-Centred Procurement Practices), Elizabeth Childs (Opterna: An Open AI Study Companion for the BC Open Textbook Collection), and Connie Blomgren and Randy LaBonte (Critical Supports for K12 Online Learning Success).

We will also provide some breakout rooms at the end of both days: one for open networking and the other for unconference topics. We hope you will join us! Please share in your networks so this opportunity is not missed!