Last week, CAUL launched the OER Collective with an inaugural Community Day for academics and library staff at 30 participating universities across Australia and New Zealand.
Highlights of the day included:
- The Open Textbooks 101 session, which explore the basics of OERs generally and open textbooks specifically – what they are, how they work and the key benefits to academics, students and libraries.
- A keynote from Amy Hofer, Statewide Open Education Program Director for Open Oregon. Amy provided lots of practical advice on how we can collaboratively push forward the open textbook agenda.
- A panel discussion on open textbook advocacy, featuring academics and librarians from across Australia and New Zealand.
- An extended Q&A session with a panel of experienced open practice librarians.
The event also featured short presentations about the OER Collective, including:
- An overview of the Collective model
- An introduction to the Communities of Practice
- An introduction to the Collective Publishing Workflow and the documentation to support it
- An introduction to the Collective Grants Program (EOIs now open!).
We had lots of great feedback:
This has been fantastic and inspirational. Thanks so much to all who ran it and contributed their knowledge on this topic.
I am very new to this space, so the sessions today have been a fantastic introduction to the world of OERs. The posting of links to resources that were being discussed throughout the sessions was super helpful. Thanks so much for organising the session and I’ll definitely be checking out the CAUL OER guide and joining the CoP.
Terrific, informative, collegial day today!
We can’t wait to do it again next year, but in the mean time, you can catch up on the event via the recording. The recording includes bookmarks so you can jump between the sessions.
You can also find a document containing all the links that were shared in the chat during the event on the event listing on the CAUL website.
Even if your institution isn’t participating in the Collective, there is lots of useful information and inspiration in the recording.
A huge big thank you to the OER Collective Project Team, particularly Tahnee Pearse, Fiona Tyson, Jaime Royals and Richard Levy, who all worked hard to bring the day together. Thanks also to our speakers and panelists, and CAUL’s Engagement & Administration Officer Cicy Zheng. Finally, a big thanks to the 300+ registrants who signed up for the event and joined us at various points during the day. The conversation in the chat was fantastic, and it was so good to see so many people together, furthering the conversation about open textbooks.