Category: Digital Dexterity

Practically practising OER: Reflections on the CAUL OER Professional Development Program: Foundations

katyahenry on

Written by:

Dr Sal Kleine, Liaison Librarian, Faculty of Business and Law, QUT

In the role of Library Adviser at the Queensland University of Technology, I provided support for the IFN001: Advanced Information Research Skills (AIRS) unit. In late 2022, the AIRS Team commenced planning for a major unit review, to ensure the continued delivery of a pedagogically informed, engaging, and relevant training program. Whilst the Review is multifaceted and will result in constructive updates to the unit, one thing that won’t change is the ongoing advocacy for open educational practices reflected in the provision of AIRS learning content under Creative Commons licensing. The AIRS content is currently made available via the AIRS website under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Licence. However, given the complexities in maintaining the website, as part of the Review, the AIRS Team is exploring more sustainable approaches to openly providing this material to our QUT Higher Degree Research students and sharing it with external audiences. With this goal in mind, I began my own Open Educational Resource (OER) learning journey, a key part of which was participating in the CAUL OER Professional Development Program: Foundations.

As someone new to this space, the Program offered an introduction to OER in a tertiary education context. The module-based content stepped through introducing and defining OER, licensing and copyright considerations, finding and evaluating OERs and, finally, delved into the intricacies of adopting, adapting and creating OERs. But it wasn’t all reading, and a highlight for me was the weekly guest presentations by experts on various aspects of open education and OER. The sharing of their insights and experiences provoked ideas, questions and new understandings of both the principles and practice of OER. There were also plenty of options for engaging, or working collaboratively, with other participants if desired. The lively discussions in the weekly forums demonstrated the breadth of knowledge and passion in this area and how, as a profession, librarians have the potential to influence the movement towards more open educational teaching and learning activities. Underpinning the learning was a practical task. This involved preparing a Project Plan based on a scenario that could be tailored to suit the participant’s workplace or interests. The Plan provided me with an opportunity to focus my thinking on how to further leverage OERs in the delivery of AIRS, using the production workflows and creation tools introduced as part of the Program.  

By participating in this professional development program, I am building the confidence to meaningfully contribute to the ongoing OER conversation and am better equipped to offer informed advice on the positive impacts of OER. Now, both enlightened and inspired, my next goal is to apply learnings from the Program to, in collaboration with the AIRS Team, develop contemporary OERs that are accessible, inclusive, and representative of our diverse student cohort, and encourage the sharing and reuse of content. So, while I will keep learning and continue to further my understanding of OER, it’s time to start creating!

Register for the 2023 CAUL Open Educational Resources Professional Development Program.

Contribute to The Living Book of Digital Skills

Kate Davis on

This post was written by Dr Sara King, Training and Engagement Lead, AARNET

For the last year, CAUL’s Digital Dexterity Champions have been developing The Living Book of Digital Skills (you never knew you needed until now) (aka the GitBook). The book is a living, open source online guide to ‘modern not-quite-technical computer skills’ for researchers and the broader academic community.  

The Digital Dexterity Champions help realise the goals of CAUL’s Digital Dexterity framework in university libraries through creating and sharing resources across the network, and GitBook is an extension of this work. The Champions identified a need for professional learning for themselves and the research and academic communities they serve related to an ever changing, wide ranging set of digital skills that are needed for library, teaching and research practice.  While there are online instructions in various forms for just about any skill, the academic community uses these skills in particular contexts. The GitBook aims to fill this gap in professional learning for  ‘not-quite-technical’ digital skills. These are the kinds of skills that are not specifically addressed in formal courses or training, but simply expected by the nature of the digital workplace and data-driven research, and ones that library staff are often approached to be able to address.

Our vision for the book is that it is made by everyone, for everyone. We want it to be accessible to both amateurs and professionals, creators and users. For this reason, we are keen to draw on the academic library community to contribute to the creation of this resource as a way to build our collective capacity to support academics working in this space.

The GitBook team has worked together to create the chapter outline, a code of conduct, instructions for contributors and a copyright statement.  

Now, we need you! We’re looking for contributions large and small to build out the book.

A contribution doesn’t have to be anything complex, and you can choose to submit parts of a topic too. 

Here is a sample article. You’ll notice that the text is simple and accessible to everyone, with as little jargon as possible. Where there is specialist language, it is explained and can be added to the glossary.  

We’d like to invite you to contribute to the project. Here is a list of suggested articles. You can use that or if you have some other relevant content that you would like to share, please do! You can use one of the following options for submitting your contribution:

  1. To contribute directly via GitHub account, use these instructions.
  2. You can also use our contributor form, OR 
  3. Email us (digidexlibrarians+gitbook@gmail.com)

For more information about copyright, please see our Copyright Statement.

If you would like to meet the group, we meet on Friday afternoons and we are all super friendly, and welcoming to all. Please write to sara.king@aarnet.edu.au for a meeting invite.