Open Education Handbook/How this book was written

The Open Education Handbook is a community project of the Open Education Working Group, initiated by the LinkedUp Project and contributed to other organisations (e.g., Creative Commons and Mozilla) and individuals.

The writing of this handbook was co-ordinated by Open Knowledge, a worldwide network of people passionate about openness, using advocacy, technology and training to unlock information and enable people to work with it to create and share knowledge. Open Knowledge believes knowledge can empower everyone, enabling people to work together to tackle local and global challenges, understand our world, expose inefficiency and challenge inequality and hold governments and companies accountable.

The content of the Handbook has been crowdsourced and was drafted over a series of online and offline events. The initial outline was created by 17 open education experts at a booksprint in London in September 2013, with refinement continuing online after the booksprint. A second booksprint took place in Berlin in November 2013, and further ideas were contributed to the book as a result of OPPI: Helsinki Learning Festival in April 2014. The latest draft was further reviewed at OKFestival in Berlin July 2014. Sections have also been formulated through collaborative efforts based on the 'Friday Chats' from the Open Education Working group mailing list. An editorial review of the handbook took place in September 2014.

We continue to be interested in contributions from experts and practictioners who can help us to further refine the information we have gathered, and encourage feedback.