Office Hours: Five Years of Open Conversation

Office Hours has been a monthly opportunity for the open education community to discuss open publishing and related topics since 2017. After five years, the 59th and final Office Hours session co-hosted by the Open Education Network (OEN) and Rebus Community was held in November 2022.

The series finalé, Reflections on Community, explored how open education has evolved over the last several years, honored the informal conversations the community has shared together at Office Hours, and looked to the community to inform the future. 

“Office Hours began as a space for open textbook producers and users to share lessons learned, and in the five years it has been running, it has stayed true to this core value,” said Apurva Ashok, Assistant Director and Director of Open Education at Rebus. “The informal nature of the conversations has really let people share their successes, challenges, and vulnerabilities, and through doing so, I hope we’ve helped them thrive.”

The Office Hours team worked to provide a relaxed, welcoming atmosphere that would be conducive to sharing. Conversations typically drew input from diverse roles in open education and various levels of experience which, in turn, led to a wide range of applicable advice and resources. 

“Office Hours has been a good introduction [to open education] for me,” said Phoebe Daurio, Grant Project Manager for Open Oregon Educational Resources. “I’m pretty new to the field, and…I’ve appreciated the welcoming feeling. It seems easy to enter, speak, and contribute. I’ve learned from the speakers, but I’ve also learned a lot from the participants and what they’ve shared.”

Over the years, the series has featured 145 speakers who’ve addressed a variety of open education issues. Almost all sessions were recorded and are archived on the Open Education Network YouTube channel. A sampling of popular Office Hours sessions includes:

You can also find Office Hours audio and chat transcripts posted on the Open Education Network Blog and on the Rebus Blog.

“Office Hours has been a productive and rewarding five-year partnership with the Rebus Community,” said Karen Lauritsen, OEN’s Publishing Director. “I’ve learned so much from Office Hours guests and attendees, and I’m thankful for our time together as a community.”

Apurva agrees that it has been a valuable partnership that made Office Hours possible. “Office Hours is a testament to the partnership between Rebus and the Open Education Network,” Apurva observed. “We recognized early on that we are both values-driven organizations with common goals, and used Office Hours as a means to align our efforts in small ways. I’m fairly confident that this won’t be the last time we collaborate!” 

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We’d love to know what the Office Hours series has meant to you. If you’d like to share, please take part in this short, anonymous survey to let us know what you’ve learned from our community conversations, how the series informed your practice, what’s on your wishlist for future programming, or additional comments. Thank you!