twillo at the BiblioCon25: Using OER infrastructures and AI creatively

twillo was rep­re­sented with two for­mats at BiblioCon25 — the cen­tral spe­cial­ist con­gress for libraries and infor­ma­tion sci­ence in Europe with around 4,000 vis­i­tors. While the hands-on lab on the cre­ative and legally com­pli­ant use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) in OER cre­ation offered prac­ti­cal insights, the dis­cus­sion for­mat #Freiraum25 encour­aged dis­cus­sion of demo­c­ra­tic, transna­tional edu­ca­tional infra­struc­tures. In dif­fer­ent ways, both con­tri­bu­tions addressed key issues relat­ing to open edu­ca­tion, dig­i­tal respon­si­bil­ity and par­tic­i­pa­tory teach­ing devel­op­ment.

Freiraum25: Thinking about OER infrastructures in a federal context

The first for­mat focused on the devel­op­ment of transna­tional OER infra­struc­tures. With the twillo­Hub ini­tia­tive, twillo is con­tribut­ing to the devel­op­ment of a com­mon tech­ni­cal and orga­ni­za­tional basis for open edu­ca­tional resources in Ger­many. At #Freiraum25, par­tic­i­pants dis­cussed the struc­tural require­ments needed to ensure that OER remain vis­i­ble, usable and find­able in the long term — even beyond insti­tu­tional bor­ders. It quickly became clear that demo­c­ra­tic edu­ca­tional spaces not only need open con­tent, but also sus­tain­able infra­struc­tures, clear respon­si­bil­i­ties and close net­work­ing between stake­hold­ers.

AI as a co-creator for OER — legally compliant and inspiring

The twillo hands-on lab started with a legal impulse: What legal frame­work con­di­tions apply to the use of gen­er­a­tive AI in open uni­ver­sity teach­ing? What needs to be con­sid­ered with regard to copy­right? This was fol­lowed by lively group work in which case stud­ies were worked on and dis­cussed together — often con­tro­ver­sially, but always con­struc­tively. It became par­tic­u­larly clear that the use of AI in teach­ing is nei­ther purely tech­ni­cal nor purely legal. It is about didac­tic respon­si­bil­ity, cre­ative design and reflec­tive, respon­si­ble prac­tice. Finally, there was a prac­ti­cal insight into con­crete appli­ca­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties: How can AI be used to rethink teach­ing con­tent — for exam­ple in the form of sim­u­la­tions, text vignettes or gen­er­ated visu­al­iza­tions? And one thing became par­tic­u­larly clear:

“Access is not the problem — understanding is.”

At a time when dig­i­tal resources and AI-gen­er­ated infor­ma­tion are seem­ingly avail­able in unlim­ited quan­ti­ties, the real chal­lenge lies in under­stand­ing and cat­e­go­riz­ing con­tent and think­ing about it together. This requires spaces in which knowl­edge can cir­cu­late openly — spaces such as those cre­ated by OER. This is pre­cisely the core of our work. The mate­ri­als for the Hands-On-Lab can be accessed via the fol­low­ing link: https://go.uos.de/twillo

Connections to the congress motto “#LibrariesDecidedDemocratic”

The motto of BiblioCon25 focused on the social respon­si­bil­ity of libraries. Even though the twillo for­mats emerged from exist­ing work con­texts, numer­ous links to the con­gress motto became appar­ent in Bre­men.

The hands-on lab focused on enabling the inde­pen­dent, reflec­tive use of dig­i­tal tools in teach­ing — a con­tri­bu­tion to demo­c­ra­tic par­tic­i­pa­tion in edu­ca­tional processes. The twillo­Hub dis­cus­sion for­mat, on the other hand, made it clear that dig­i­tal edu­ca­tional infra­struc­tures are not only of a tech­ni­cal nature, but also an expres­sion of social val­ues: open­ness, acces­si­bil­ity, trans­parency.

Both events showed how libraries and OER ini­tia­tives can work together to cre­ate spaces for access, under­stand­ing and co-cre­ation.

Conclusion: spaces for exchange, orientation and creative freedom

BiblioCon25 has shown how strong the inter­est is in open, tech­nol­ogy-sup­ported and respon­si­bly designed edu­ca­tional approaches in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety. We are tak­ing a lot of ideas with us — and the inten­sive exchange has strength­ened our resolve to con­tinue think­ing about OER with new tech­nolo­gies and to actively help shape their struc­tural anchor­ing in demo­c­ra­tic edu­ca­tion sys­tems.