twillo receives Open Education Award for Excellence 2025

twillo is one of the eight win­ners in the Open Assets cat­e­gory of the Open Edu­ca­tion Awards for Excel­lence in 2025. Orga­nized by Open Edu­ca­tion Global (OEGlobal), the OEAwards have been rec­og­niz­ing out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to open edu­ca­tion world­wide — peo­ple, resources and prac­tices — since 2011. The award high­lights the grow­ing impor­tance of high-qual­ity, freely reusable teaching/learning mate­ri­als (OER) — and the role of an active com­mu­nity that strength­ens open­ness in higher edu­ca­tion.

What sets the OEAwards apart — and why this is relevant

The OEAwards are pre­sented annu­ally by OEGlobal, the inter­na­tional net­work for open edu­ca­tion. Since 2011, 284 entries have been inducted into the “Hall of Fame” — an indi­ca­tor of the con­ti­nu­ity and reach of this award in the global open edu­ca­tion com­mu­nity. In 2025, the win­ners were announced at a global reveal event.
There was again broad par­tic­i­pa­tion for 2025: 196 nom­i­na­tions from over 40 coun­tries were received from the com­mu­nity; the short­list com­prised 48 final­ists, selected by a com­mit­tee of pre­vi­ous award win­ners and mem­bers of the OEGlobal Board. In the main cat­e­gories, 87 nom­i­na­tions (Indi­vid­u­als), 55 (Open Assets) and 54 (Open Prac­tices) were counted. These fig­ures under­line the fact that the OEAwards act as an inter­na­tional ref­er­ence point for good prac­tice in open edu­ca­tion.

What “Open Assets” means

The Open Assets cat­e­gory rec­og­nizes edu­ca­tional resources that are devel­oped and made avail­able in the spirit of open edu­ca­tion. The award rec­og­nizes projects that not only pro­vide such open mate­ri­als, but also curate and dis­sem­i­nate them in such a way that they can be used sus­tain­ably in learn­ing and teach­ing con­texts.

What the award means for twillo

The recog­ni­tion in “Open Assets” does not only address the plat­form, but above all the com­mu­nity and infra­struc­ture that sup­port twillo: peo­ple who make mate­r­ial openly avail­able; teaching/learning con­texts that actively use OER; struc­tures that pro­mote open­ness. twillo makes OER vis­i­ble and find­able, makes them avail­able in a struc­tured way and sup­ports their fur­ther devel­op­ment with a broad port­fo­lio of advice and sup­port — a con­tri­bu­tion to a com­mon, open knowl­edge space in open uni­ver­sity teach­ing. The inte­gra­tion of the Open Edu­ca­tional Resources Search Index (OERSI) on twillo, which makes over 90,000 open edu­ca­tional mate­ri­als from all over the world search­able and can be expanded to include addi­tional sources at any time, received spe­cial recog­ni­tion. In addi­tion, the OERSI can also be inte­grated into other web­sites and repos­i­to­ries via an open source plug-in.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the offi­cial announce­ment of the award can be found on the Open Edu­ca­tion Global web­site: https://awards.oeglobal.org

Congratulations to all projects

The twillo team would like to thank all nom­i­nated and win­ning ini­tia­tives, projects and indi­vid­u­als for their diverse and excit­ing work in pro­mot­ing open edu­ca­tion around the world.

Support for entry into open education

twillo offers a com­pre­hen­sive range of free advice and sup­port for any­one who wants to cre­ate, pro­vide or use OER in teach­ing. Every Thurs­day, twillo-thurs­day takes place — an open dig­i­tal con­sul­ta­tion hour on all ques­tions relat­ing to OER and the por­tal, which is also attended by our fully qual­i­fied lawyer from the project team. In addi­tion, twillo offers prac­ti­cal work­shops and fur­ther train­ing courses on open uni­ver­sity teach­ing as well as reg­u­lar prac­ti­cal insights in the twillo blog.
The topic page “AI in open uni­ver­sity teach­ing” bun­dles cur­rent infor­ma­tion at the inter­face of teach­ing and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Prac­ti­cal mate­ri­als for cre­at­ing OER are also avail­able under “Tem­plates and tools” — from check­lists and OER tem­plates to licens­ing infor­ma­tion. The twillo FAQ pro­vides answers to fre­quently asked ques­tions, and sup­port is avail­able for indi­vid­ual con­cerns at info@twillo.de.

Take part: make your own OER available on twillo

twillo makes it easy to pro­vide your own open edu­ca­tional resources and con­tribute to open uni­ver­sity teach­ing. Access is usu­ally straight­for­ward for uni­ver­sity mem­bers via their own uni­ver­sity ID using sin­gle sign-on; alter­na­tively, an account can be set up man­u­ally on request. The per­sonal work­space can be accessed via the “Login” but­ton. There, mate­ri­als can be cre­ated and described in a struc­tured man­ner before they are delib­er­ately released for pub­li­ca­tion. In this way, the process remains trans­par­ent and con­trolled — and at the same time open for the shared use and fur­ther devel­op­ment of OER. A step-by-step intro­duc­tion to mak­ing mate­ri­als avail­able can be found on the Share OER page.

Stay up to date

The twillo newslet­ter reg­u­larly sum­ma­rizes cur­rent events, a selec­tion of best prac­tice OER and devel­op­ments relat­ing to open uni­ver­sity teach­ing: https://www.twillo.de/newsletter/