As artificial intelligence reshapes education, what literacies will define our collective future? Grounded in longitudinal global research with educators across six continents, this forthcoming field guide by Angela Gunder, Cristi Ford, Josh Herron, Nicole Weber, and Colette Chelf illuminates eight interconnected dimensions of AI literacies: the constellations of mindsets and skill sets that empower learners, educators, and leaders to navigate complexity and change with intentionality and care.
How might we move from a harmful binary of AI literacy (AI literate vs. illiterate) into a plurality of skillsets and mindsets within a spectrum of AI literacies?
Influenced by the work of Doug Belshaw’s Eight Essential Elements of Digital Literacies, this project seeks to advance the field’s understanding of AI literacies as culturally-contextualized and socially negotiated across formal and informal digital environments. This work brings together collaborators from six continents and over 20 countries in creating a rich resource to spotlight competencies and skills needed for the future of education, work, and society. More than just an open resource, this taxonomy has now expanded into an open course called AI Literacies Unlocked, as well as an open Case Example Database highlighting the constellations of AI literacies as geographically- and temporally-situated across multiple contexts for teaching and learning.
How might we transform scholarly publishing from a gatekeeping process into a living ecosystem, tended by the community it serves?
Opened Culture Collections is a multimodal scholarly publishing ecosystem where community-contributed works are gathered into living collections rather than closed issues. A video essay, an audio conversation, an interactive experience, and a written article all publish here as first-class scholarship, each open access, openly licensed at the collection level, and carrying a DOI so it stays citable and discoverable. Collections follow the rhythms of a forest: some grow for years, while others complete a season and go dormant, reseeding as remixes and new growth elsewhere. Contributors cultivate their works within the Understory, our community of practice, before publishing into the Canopy for the world to read. The first collection, Breaking Ground, is growing now, gathering practitioners’ lived experiences of AI in research, teaching, and learning design.
What does it take to sustain academic innovation when conditions are hardest?
Convened by The University of Texas at San Antonio, APLU, and Opened Culture, the Academic Innovation Alliance brings together leaders and partners who believe academic innovation is cultural practice, enacted across roles and sectors, often without formal recognition. Through in-person design sprints and an ongoing virtual series, a community that has more than doubled since 2024 is documenting what it takes for change to last.
Born of the collaborative ideation of Lev Gonick, CIO at Arizona State University, and led by ASU’s Enterprise Technology and SAB Creative and Consulting, Opened Culture is providing strategic guidance, advocacy, and community engagement in support of the mission of this collective—to advance access and opportunity through academic innovation so that every learner gets the education they need to thrive. OEC was honored to be featured in the 2074 and 2075 Guide in their spotlight on Future Scenarios: Influential Work, and is one of the leading planners of the next 100 Year Ed Tech Project Design Summit hosted at The University of Central Florida in 2027.
Working in partnership with faculty at The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, this research study seeks to surface ubiquitous challenges that instructional designers face in locating comprehensive support for designing their future career. From clearly and compellingly demonstrating the competencies and durable skills that employers are looking for in instructional designers to leveraging narrative practices for understanding one’s unqiue value proposition and brand identity as an ID professional, this study interrogates the ways in which generative AI might make the process of career planning a more impactful and empowering experience.
Inspired by Opened Culture’s HBCU AI Action Guides for Educators, Students, and Leaders, this series of professional development offerings was developed to provide action steps and calls to actions for educators and learners at HBCUs to harness the power of generative AI in teaching and learning contexts. With a focus on empowering the 100+ HBCUs serving over 220,000 students across the US in leading digital learning transformation for an AI-enabled world, these courses were developed for educators of differentiated roles and skill levels to complement emerging and established AI initiatives and strategic plans at the institutional, departmental, and course levels.
