10 Years of Ripples: Looking Back & Ahead
On April 7, 2016, Rebus was incorporated as a Canadian non-profit organization (becoming a registered charity in 2019), founded on a simple but powerful belief that education has the potential to create better spaces for us all. Ten years later, we've grown into a global community of educators, learners, and changemakers. Together, we've published openly licensed resources used in classrooms around the world and built relationships that outlast any single project. There’s a lot to celebrate this anniversary year!
Looking Back: Where We Started
Rebus was founded in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal) on the traditional, unceded territory of the Kanienʼkehá:ka Nation. We're grateful for the vision of our founders, Hugh McGuire and Boris Anthony, who imagined what Rebus could be and laid the groundwork for everything that's followed.
Photo by Kelly Leonard via Pexels
The decade since has been experimental, winding, and joyful. What began as an in-person team in Montréal has become a distributed one: our core staff is now spread across Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Asheville with Board members and facilitators across the US, Canada, and beyond. Over the years, we've launched new projects, grown our team, welcomed new Board members, and cultivated communities in ways the founding team could never have predicted. The organization you see today is very much the product of the people behind it – staff, board, facilitators, alumni, partners, and the wider community of educators who carry this work forward.
A Decade of Ripples
Rebus' work starts from a simple premise: small, deliberate acts of openness spread across classrooms, institutions, and the wider field. This idea shows up in our mission and in the ripple effects that follow the publication of an open resource.
Our Open Publishing Projects Certificate (OPC) and Supplemental Materials Development Certificate (SMC) have welcomed 29 cohorts since 2019, supporting hundreds of educators worldwide and helping publish more than 100 openly licensed titles. The OPC focuses on primary course materials like textbooks and lab manuals while the SMC supports creation of ancillary resources that turn an open textbook into a complete course. Together, these resources are in use across the world.
Rebus also builds fellowships and communities of practice that give education leaders space to slow down, connect with peers, and grow into more sustainable forms of leadership. This year, the Rebus Luminary Fellowship for Education Leaders, designed in partnership with the Leadership Learning Community, brought together an inaugural cohort of 15 postsecondary leaders from across Canada and the US to explore what liberatory leadership looks like in practice – work that earned a 2026 Open Education Award for Excellence nomination under the Open Practices Awards category for Leadership Development. This November, we'll carry that model forward with the Rising Tides Open Education Leadership Program in partnership with BCcampus.
Our consulting partnerships have produced resources that shape the field, including the forthcoming publication of Bridging the Gap: The OER Workforce Playbook for Higher Education and Industry, developed with the DOERS Collaborative to help higher education and industry find common ground around open educational resources.
And perhaps Rebus’ most enduring ripple: every one of our 20 current facilitators is a graduate of the program they now lead. An educator joins a cohort, publishes a resource, and returns to guide the next group of educators doing the same. The ripples don't just spread outward; they return.
Looking Ahead: The Next Ripples
Reflections from the Luminary Fellows
As the capstone project for the inaugural 2026 cohort of the Rebus Luminary Fellowship for Education Leaders, each Fellow was invited to share a reflection with the broader community. We'll keep publishing new reflections over the coming months, each one a chance for the Fellow to shine a light on their own leadership journey. We invite you to read along as the series unfolds.
OEGlobal Conference 2026
The 2026 OEGlobal Conference (October 7-9) invites the open community to cultivate new ways of safeguarding knowledge for the benefit of all under the theme, “Come Invent With Us! Innovating Open Practices to Uphold and Uplift Knowledge as a Public Good.” Whether you’re attending in-person or online, you can learn more about what Rebus has been up to this year at the following sessions:
Practicing Rebellion: Strategies to Sustain Open Education Leadership from the Luminary Fellows
Slowing Down to Lead: Design Lessons from the Rebus Luminary Fellowship from Apurva Ashok and Amber Hoye
Preparing for the Future of Work: Communications Between Workforce and OER from Jaimie Henthorn and Mindy Newfarmer (DOERS)
Open Education Conference 2026
The OpenEd26 (October 27-29) conference theme “The Space Between” invites attendees to examine the possibilities that exist in the spaces we often overlook. Recognizing that openness is fundamentally relational, it acknowledges the gaps that remain in our open education work and how we might work together to bridge them. Here’s where you’ll find Rebus at this online-only event:
Sustaining Yourself as a Leader in These Times: Voices from the Rebus Luminary Fellowship from Apurva Ashok, Amber Hoye, and the Luminary Fellows
Bridging the Gap: The Workforce OER Playbook for Higher Education and Industry from Kaitlin Schilling, Amber Hoye, Jaimie Henthorn, and Mindy Newfarmer
Open Resources, Closed Gaps: An Anti-Oppressive Model for OER Development in the Social Sciences from Becky Cottrell, Kelly Nelson, Erin Boyce, Perri Corvino, and Karen Sobel, a Rebus OPC team from MSU Denver
Learn more about their Colorado OER Award-winning project in our June newsletter!
Support the Next Decade
A gift today funds our next decade: scholarships for educators who couldn't otherwise join our certificate programs, stipends for the facilitators who lead our cohorts, the day-to-day work behind this community, and more.
Consider a one-time gift or donating monthly. If Rebus has meant something to your work, a gift of any size keeps us moving.
Celebrating All Year Long
We're marking this milestone with a full year of moments to reflect, celebrate, and look ahead together. There's plenty in the works, and we can't wait to share more soon. Subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn to be the first to know.
To the practitioners who persisted through busy semesters, the facilitators who returned to mentor new cohorts, and the partners who believed in our work — thank you for a decade of ripples. Here's to the next ten years with more ripples to come!
