A change effort is not just an announcement, but a threshold people must be able to cross. Most change efforts begin with an announcement. A new policy. A revised workflow. A technology rollout. An invitation to participate in a professional learning program. The message is drafted, reviewed, scheduled, and sent. But what if the most important design work happens before anyone writes the announcement? I built the Threshold Check as a practitioner after watching people hesitat

The question many educators have been asking is deceptively simple: Did this student use AI to complete the assignment? In August 2026, that question is becoming less useful: not because academic integrity no longer matters, but because AI detectors cannot provide the certainty that high-stakes decisions require. A recent Inside Higher Ed report describes a growing number of institutions prohibiting or discouraging reliance on AI detectors. The reasons include false positives

AI adoption is no longer something only large companies need to think about. Small businesses are already using AI for marketing, customer service, bookkeeping, scheduling, content creation, and administrative work. The question in 2026 is less whether small businesses will use AI and more how reliably they can use it. That distinction matters. The latest Intuit AI Impact Report reports that AI use among small and midsize businesses has become widespread, with roughly seven i

AI is arriving in nonprofit work during a difficult season. Organizations are navigating capacity pressure, rising demand, uncertain funding, strained staff, and growing expectations to demonstrate impact. Some teams are experimenting with AI to draft communications, analyze information, translate materials, support fundraising, or reduce administrative workload. Others are choosing not to use it, at least for now. Both decisions can be responsible. The more important questio

Introducing Open Practice Project Spaces Open education is rarely as simple as finding a free textbook. The real work happens in the messy middle: defining the project, searching for resources, evaluating what fits, working through licensing and ethical questions, designing learning experiences, coordinating collaborators, and planning how the work will continue over time. Open Practice Project Spaces, or OPPS, is a free, guided workspace designed to support that work. OPPS w

A Calm, Six-Phase Guide for Planning an Open Education Project Open education projects can feel beautifully possible and wildly overwhelming at the exact same time. You may be redesigning a course, replacing an expensive textbook, building a new resource, applying for a grant, or trying to shape an open practice idea that still feels a little fuzzy. The challenge is rarely a lack of possibility. More often, it’s knowing what to do next and how to keep track of the many decisi

A practical tool for OER programs, nonprofits, small businesses, and mission-driven teams After publishing my recent post, Open Education Doesn’t Need More Clutter. It Needs Clearer Pathways, I kept thinking about one thing: The problem I was describing is not only an OER problem. It is a program design problem. In that post, I looked at the Open Education Association’s National Needs Assessment Survey Results and related OER program evaluation resources to explore what OER,

Resource type: Capstone project, open education curriculum, implementation model Best for: OER program leaders, librarians, instructional designers, faculty developers, teaching and learning staff, open education advocates Open Education in Practice is my Texas OER Fellowship capstone project and a public documentation space for the curriculum, tools, and implementation model I developed to help people move from open education theory into open education practice. The project

I created a new free resource: the Open Education Field Guide, an interactive companion to my Open Education in Practice curriculum. The guide is designed for faculty and the people who support them: librarians, instructional designers, teaching and learning staff, OER program leaders, graduate students, and anyone helping educators move from open education theory to open practice. Most faculty do not get stuck because they do not care about affordability, access, or student

What the National Needs Assessment reveals about OER, open educational resources, and the next layer of affordable learning support. Open education has never lacked values. The field knows how to talk about access, affordability, equity, student agency, shared knowledge, and the public good. Those values matter. They’re why many of us found our way into this work in the first place. But the Open Education Association’s National Needs Assessment points to a different kind of c

And how to fix them So, you’ve decided to move toward Open Educational Resources. Maybe you’re excited about lowering costs for students. Maybe you want faculty to have more freedom to adapt materials. Maybe you see OER as part of a larger commitment to access, equity, teaching, learning, and institutional change. And then reality shows up. The materials do not quite fit the course. Faculty are overwhelmed. The “free” resource takes hours to evaluate, revise, or rebuild. Lice