About TOPA | The Open Practice Academy

About The Open Practice Academy (TOPA)

Mission

The Open Practice Academy helps people and organizations build learning, training, and change initiatives that are actually doable.

Rooted in open values, care ethics, and practical implementation, TOPA designs capacity-aware systems that help teams move from intention to action, from action to adoption, and from adoption to sustainable change.

What we mean by “Open Practice”

Open Practice is not just sharing resources, publishing materials, or asking people to be more collaborative.

It is the day-to-day discipline of designing learning, leadership, and support systems in ways that are transparent, humane, participatory, and sustainable.

At The Open Practice Academy, “open” names a set of values and behaviors rooted in Open Education but useful far beyond it: transparency, generosity, shared ownership, reciprocal learning, and an orientation toward learning in public when it is safe to do so.

“Practice” matters because this work is never finished. We do not treat leadership, teaching, training, or systems change as something people master once and then simply apply. We treat them as ongoing cycles of trying, reflecting, adjusting, and trying again.

Open Practice is how we move values into reality. It is how we design the conditions that make good work more enterable, more durable, and less dependent on individual heroics.

Open Practice systems are:

Transparent

People can understand the purpose, pathway, decisions, and expectations.

Reciprocal

Openness is practiced by everyone involved, not demanded from some people by others.

Human-centered

The design accounts for real constraints, cognitive load, accessibility needs, and human capacity.

Multimodal

There are multiple ways to enter, participate, contribute, and grow.

Sustainable

The work is supported by roles, workflows, artifacts, and renewal cycles, not just enthusiasm.

Our Values

Care as Infrastructure

Care is not a personality trait, a soft skill, or a nice extra. Care is a design responsibility.

We build systems that reduce hidden labor, protect human capacity, and make follow-through more possible. That means designing clear entry points, realistic pacing, usable tools, thoughtful handoffs, and support structures that do not quietly depend on burnout.

Enterability

If people cannot tell where to start, they usually do not start.

We design for the “next right step”: the smallest meaningful action someone can take without shame, confusion, or unnecessary risk. Enterability is not about lowering expectations. It is about removing avoidable friction so people can begin.

Clarity Over Cleverness

A framework only matters if people can use it.

We prioritize plain language, practical templates, visible pathways, and decision-ready artifacts over abstract ideas that sound impressive but do not land in real conditions. Good design should make the work easier to understand, explain, and continue.

Accessibility by Design

Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning are not compliance add-ons. They are markers of quality.

We design for real bodies, real brains, real schedules, and real constraints. That includes multiple ways to access information, participate in learning, demonstrate progress, and stay connected to the work.

Distributed Ownership

Sustainable initiatives do not live in one person’s head.

We help teams define roles, contribution pathways, decision rights, documentation practices, and handoffs so the work can survive turnover, growth, and shifting capacity. The goal is not to make one person indispensable. The goal is to make the system stronger.

Evidence-Informed Iteration

We treat programs, trainings, and initiatives as living systems.

That means piloting, listening, revising, and repeating. We pay attention not only to outputs, but also to practice shift: what people begin to understand, believe, try, adapt, and carry forward.

What We Do

The Open Practice Academy supports individuals, teams, and organizations that are building learning, training, leadership, and change initiatives inside real-world constraints.

We help turn values into working systems through:

professional development pathways
planning sessions and focused support blocks
workshops and facilitated learning experiences
curriculum and learning experience design
implementation strategy and operational design
program architecture, workflows, roles, and governance
microcredentials, course hubs, templates, and toolkits
documentation and artifacts that support adoption, handoff, and sustainability
open education and affordable learning support as one specialized application of Open Practice

Our work is practical by design. We help people clarify the real problem, identify the next right step, build usable structures, and create systems that can continue beyond a single meeting, champion, or launch moment.

Who This Is For

The Open Practice Academy works with people who are carrying out meaningful work and trying to make it sustainable.

Most often, this includes people and teams who are:

building professional learning, onboarding, or internal training systems
leading Open Education, affordable learning, or open pedagogy initiatives
designing programs, services, or community learning experiences
supporting faculty, staff, students, or community learners at scale
trying to move an initiative from idea to implementation
navigating institutional complexity, limited capacity, or unclear ownership
trying to make values like access, care, equity, and participation operational

This work is especially for people who can see what needs to change, but need help turning that vision into clear steps, shared structures, and sustainable practice.

If you are carrying something that matters and it keeps collapsing under ambiguity, overload, hidden labor, or heroics, this is the kind of problem we work on.

Our Approach

TOPA uses an Open Practice Leadership approach: a practical leadership style and implementation protocol for building sustainable, human-care-centered systems and initiatives.

We begin by treating constraints as design requirements, not personal failures.

Instead of asking, “Why aren’t people more motivated?” we ask:

What makes the first step unclear?
Where is the cognitive load too high?
Where is participation socially or professionally risky?
What hidden labor is holding the system together?
What artifacts, roles, or workflows are missing?
What needs to be made more enterable, visible, and sustainable?

From there, we help teams design systems around five core parts:

Assets: the reusable materials, tools, templates, examples, and artifacts that support the work
Experience: the participant journey, including pacing, accessibility, cognitive load, and emotional reality
Delivery: the workflows, platforms, facilitation structures, and communication patterns that make the work run
Adoption: the messaging, champions, incentives, permissions, and social pathways that help the work spread
Sustainability: the ownership, refresh cycles, governance, evidence, and handoffs that keep the work alive

The result is not just a plan. It is a usable operating system for turning good intentions into durable practice.

How to Work with TOPA

The Open Practice Academy supports educators, leaders, small teams, programs, and institutions through flexible learning and implementation pathways.

Some people come to TOPA to build their own knowledge and confidence. Some come with a specific question, course, project, or stuck point. Others come because they are trying to build something bigger: a program, initiative, professional learning pathway, support model, or culture shift that needs to work beyond one person.

TOPA offers five main ways to work together.

TOPA Learning Pathways

For individuals, educators, leaders, and small teams who want structured professional learning.

TOPA Learning Pathways include self-paced and facilitated learning experiences that help people move from curiosity to confidence to applied practice. These pathways may include online courses, certificates, webinars, reflection activities, implementation tools, and guided opportunities to apply learning in real contexts.

One core pathway is Open Education in Practice, an evidence-based, interactive online course and certificate designed for educators and leaders who want to understand, apply, and sustain open education in their own settings.

Participants may choose a free version for independent learning or a paid support version that includes additional guidance, feedback, live touchpoints, or implementation support.

TOPA Support Studio

For individuals and small teams who need direct professional support.

TOPA Support Studio offers one-on-one and small-team support for educators, instructional leaders, librarians, designers, and practitioners who want help thinking through a specific question, idea, challenge, or deliverable.

This support may include pedagogy and andragogy support, open education guidance, course or assignment design, accessibility and UDL-informed design, learning technology support, student engagement ideas, curriculum planning, or implementation troubleshooting.

Support Studio options may include one-hour virtual appointments, focused Q&A sessions, brainstorming meetings, email-based support, or monthly and semester-based support blocks.

You can bring a question, a messy idea, a half-built resource, a course challenge, or a project that needs a second brain. We will work through what we can together and identify clear next steps.

TOPA Strategy & Implementation

For programs, departments, initiatives, and institutions building something larger.

TOPA Strategy & Implementation supports leaders and teams who are trying to design, strengthen, evaluate, scale, or sustain learning and change initiatives. This is the deeper systems work: clarifying the vision, naming the constraints, identifying where people are getting stuck, and building the structures needed for the work to last.

This support may include program visioning, implementation planning, evaluation design, sustainability planning, workflow development, role clarity, governance structures, documentation systems, and narrative or culture-shift strategy.

This is a good fit when a team is trying to move from “we care about this” to “we have a clear, usable, sustainable way to do this.”

TOPA Custom Learning Partnerships

For institutions and organizations that want professional development designed around their people, goals, and context.

TOPA Custom Learning Partnerships provide tailored learning experiences such as custom cohorts, live webinars, workshop series, facilitated learning plans, applied activities, templates, examples, and implementation tools.

These partnerships can be built around the Open Education in Practice curriculum or designed around a broader learning, leadership, accessibility, instructional design, professional development, or change initiative.

This option is especially useful when an organization wants more than a one-time workshop. TOPA can help design a learning experience with preparation, facilitation, applied practice, reflection, and follow-through.

TOPA Embedded Support

For institutions, programs, or teams that need ongoing access to specialist support.

TOPA Embedded Support gives organizations access to professional learning, open education, instructional design, educational technology, accessibility, or implementation support without needing to create a full-time internal role.

Embedded support may include scheduled email support, virtual office hours, one-on-one or small-group appointments, course and resource review, custom webinars or trainings, faculty and staff support, implementation help, and monthly or semester-based support packages.

This is a good fit for organizations that need reliable expert support on standby, especially when internal teams are stretched thin or when a specialized role does not currently exist.

Choosing the right starting point

If you want to learn independently, start with TOPA Learning Pathways.

If you have a specific question, project, or stuck point, start with TOPA Support Studio.

If your team is building or improving a larger program or initiative, start with TOPA Strategy & Implementation.

If your organization needs a tailored learning experience, explore TOPA Custom Learning Partnerships.

If your institution needs ongoing specialist capacity, consider TOPA Embedded Support.