Structure and Emergence: How BarCamps and Peer-to-Peer Learning Build Open Education Communities
Hi, I’m Jöran Muuß-Merholz. I’ve been working with OERcamp for 14 years.
And I’m Karoline Lorscheider. My perspective on OERcamp comes especially from being the project manager for over two years.
Together, we want to share what we have learned from OERcamp as a space for Open Education.
We called this talk “Structure and Emergence”. Because we want to look at how BarCamps and peer-to-peer learning can build Open Education communities—and what happens when learning spaces are carefully designed—but not fully controlled.
As you will see, our story is growing through cards and notes.
That’s intentional: At OERcamp ideas often take shape piece by piece, through contribution and connection.
And the first distinction is important: BarCamp is the mechanism. OERcamp is the story: what happens when that mechanism becomes a recurring space for an Open Education community.
A space between structure and emergence—and between people who otherwise might not have met.
1 · Why OERcamp needed a space between contexts
The people who come together around Open Education in Germany do not belong to ONE single professional community. They work in schools, higher education, civil society, public institutions, policy and practice.
One participant once described what happens at OERcamp like this:
“Things keep coming full circle here—all the time.”
Sometimes these are big circles, sometimes small ones. People meet again. Topics reappear in a different context. Projects connect. Earlier conversations lead to new ones.
OERcamp became a recurring space for these connections—and for working on their OER questions with people beyond one’s own institution.
People do not only need information about OER. They need each other.
2 · BarCamp: the mechanism
So how does the BarCamp mechanism help?
A BarCamp is an open, participant-driven unconference. The organisers prepare the framework—time, space, facilitation and a process—but not the sessions themselves.
Participants bring a topic, an experience, or simply a question they want to explore with others. These proposals become the programme.
So the empty agenda is an invitation.
3 · Why this mechanism fits Open Education
And that is exactly why this mechanism fits in with the concept of open education.
Open Education is a question of what resources we make available. And it is also a question of who can contribute knowledge, who can adapt it, whose questions shape the conversation, and what happens to what we learn together.
At OERcamp, a question can become a session. Experience from practice can sit next to institutional knowledge. Someone can come to learn in one session and host a conversation in the next.
Peer-to-peer learning is about developing knowledge together—discussing it, challenging it and bringing different perspectives into the same question.
The roles of participant and contributor can change from one conversation to the next.
The BarCamp extends the logic of openness from resources to participation and knowledge creation.
4 · Structure ↔ Emergence
But this only works because some things are very intentionally not open.
We prepare orientation. We prepare the invitation. We set the time slots and provide rooms, facilitation, session-planning, and documentation.
What we do not decide in advance is which Open Education questions will matter most to this particular group on this particular day.
Those questions may be about teaching practice, licensing, infrastructure, institutional change—or something we did not see coming at all. Participants bring the problems they are actually working on. That is the emergence.
We design only the conditions…
5 · Beyond Borders happens inside the questions
This is also where “Beyond Borders” becomes very concrete for us.
Let’s take one actual session from OERcamp Hannover in 2025. It started with a broad question:
Where are the current pain points around OER and the infrastructures that support it?
Participants approached that question from very different angles:
- Metadata and interoperability.
- Motivation and incentives.
- Collaboration around materials.
- And explicitly: the learner perspective.
So one OER question brought different professional perspectives together.
Instead of organising around institutional affiliation, people organised around a shared question. Metadata specialists, practitioners and people bringing a learner perspective met in one conversation.
6 · The conversation travelled beyond the room
And the session did not simply end when the time slot was over.
One of its results was a public call for a stronger learner perspective in OER.
It connects teacher shortages and self-directed learning with the need for open learning environments designed for learners—not only individual materials.
And the call addresses different levels at once: the OER community, funded OER projects, public institutions and policymakers.
So the conversation travelled beyond the session—and beyond the people who happened to be in the room.
7 · What 14+ years taught us
After more than fourteen years, one thing has surprised us: the basic structure has not needed constant reinvention. Its reliability is part of what makes constant change possible.
But an open format is not automatically an inclusive format. People who are already comfortable with self-organisation often benefit first.
They know how to propose a session, speak up and use the openness of the format for their own interests.
Without additional structure, openness can therefore reinforce existing inequalities.
8 · What openness needs at OERcamp
And that brings us to What openness needs.
So we keep asking: How can people contribute? Who can take part? How do people find their way in? And what remains—and who can use it?
So what does that mean in practice at OERcamp?
- We offer different ways to communicate and contribute.
- And nobody has to go on stage in front of the whole group to propose a session.
- We use gender-inclusive language.
- We work to enable accessible participation.
- We provide childcare.
- And we provide orientation for people who are new to the format.
None of these measures makes participation automatically inclusive. But each of them can lower a threshold.
9 · Documentation
And then there is documentation.
At OERcamp documentation itself becomes OER.
Session notes and materials remain accessible for others to use and build on. And the same principle extends to the OERcamp website, where reporting, images, design materials and other resources are shared openly.
That matters especially at a BarCamp, because nobody can attend all the parallel sessions.
Open documentation turns parallel conversations into shared knowledge—and gives them a life beyond the event.
10 · The transferable lesson
The transferable lesson is not to copy OERcamp. It is to ask what kind of space your Open Education community needs for questions, no single institution or role can answer alone.
First: let the community set some of the questions.
Second: make contribution possible without requiring expert status.
Third: design for continuity beyond the event.
That can mean documentation. Recurring spaces. And ways for people, questions and relationships to return.
Thank you for spending these ten minutes with us.
We hope our OERcamp story has given you something to take into your own work.
Thank you for watching and Goodbye.