Category: Topics in teaching and learning

University of Newcastle Library launches Student as Partners Framework

Kate Davis on

This post was written by Coral Black, University Librarian at the University of Newcastle.

The University of Newcastle Library launched its new Students as Partners Framework on 27 July, building on our strong reputation in delivering excellent student support this takes us one step further where students co-create and co-deliver our services as an integral member of our library team. 

The new framework outlines how we engage and collaborate meaningfully with students through partnership and employment. Our aim is to increase the number of students we employ, engage through internships or on WIL placements to enhance the student experience and help facilitate life-ready graduates.

The Students as Partners Framework is designed to:

  • provide a common language and conceptual lens for staff and students to understand collaborative engagement and Students as Partners approaches.
  • assist in identifying and developing opportunities for student employment and partnerships within the Library.
  • guide thinking and decision making as staff and students generate ideas and begin to develop opportunities, projects, and activities. 

This Framework describes many initiatives the Library has been undertaking for some time, including paid internships, Work Integrated Learning (WIL) projects, paid project related roles, and volunteer roles for students. It distils and formalises the Library’s approach by describing three distinct pillars to which these activities align. These broad anchoring categories help to define the different ways that the Library engages collaboratively with students.​ The pillars are:

  • Employed and Upskilled
  • Included and Empowered
  • Informed and Heard. 
Venn diagram with three overlapping circles: Employed and Upskilled; Included and Empowered; Informed and Heard. An icon representing a student sits at the point where the three circles overlap.
Three pillars: Employed and Upskilled; Included and Empowered; Informed and Heard

The Students as Partners Framework is also a launching pad to expand the scope of student collaborations to identify and develop new ideas and opportunities. To this end, the Framework outlines ten Key Considerations for Library staff and students to inform thinking as we develop new opportunities and evolve existing ones. The considerations relate to:

  1. Inclusiveness
  2. Expertise
  3. Learning
  4. Agency
  5. Recognition
  6. Relevance
  7. Expectations
  8. Reach
  9. Perspectives
  10. Accountability
Inclusiveness: Proactively seek diverse representation Expertise: Acknowledge and value students' lived experience as expertise Learning: Centre learning opportunities and acknowledge teaching and learning as reciprocal Agency: Credit, reward and remunerate student contributions Relevance: Create meaningful and relevant opportunities with reciprocal benefit and value Expectations: Agree realistic expectations and provide appropriate support Reach: Consider ways to increase the number of students who benefit Perspectives: Incorporate a range of student voices and perspectives Accountability: Ensure access to opportunities is equitable, transparent, and accountable.
Ten Key Considerations

The Library will use this Framework to create diverse, inclusive, relevant, transparent, and impactful opportunities for students. Students will be listened to as equal partners, whose expertise is acknowledged and whose contributions are valued and recognised. They will be able to affect change, directly enhancing the student experience and creating life-ready graduates.

Read the Students as Partners Framework. Questions? Contact Imogen Harris-McNeill, Coordinator, Student Employment and Partnerships.

What does it mean to enable a modern curriculum?

Kate Davis on

University libraries play a number of key roles in enabling contemporary teaching and learning, including

  • curating, collecting and creating information resources related to the curriculum
  • consulting and advising through curriculum design processes
  • partnering with educational designers and academic developers to provide holistic support for course development
  • embedding information literacy instruction in the curriculum
  • championing digital literacy
  • supporting academics to find, use, adapt or create open educational resources.

In many institutions, academic skills development is also part of the library’s remit. Even the work libraries undertake that isn’t directly related to teaching and learning impacts it indirectly. For example, supporting open scholarship results in more open access research outputs, which are in turn used in teaching and learning.

Libraries contribute to contemporary teaching and learning in a myriad ways and so our focus on this blog will also be broad. We are keen to explore the various ways that libraries enable a modern curriculum, and to amplify the work CAUL Member institutions do in the teaching and learning space.

So, we have two questions for you!

  1. What topics related to libraries’ role in teaching and learning would you like to see featured here on the blog? Share your thoughts about the topics you’d like to see us explore in the comments! If you’re reading this post as an email, click the post title to head to the blog and add your comment.
  2. Do you have an idea for a blog post you’d like to write? Perhaps there is something great happening at your institution that you’d like to share, an event that you’d like to write an analysis of, an important message you need to get out, or a resource you’d like to highlight. Perhaps you’d like to share about what enabling a modern curriculum means to you. If you would like to write something from the blog, then we would like to hear from you! You can contact me – Kate Davis (CAUL Director, Strategy & Analytics) – with your ideas for posts.

Introducing the Students as Partners project

Karen Miller on

It’s great to be introducing this project and the wonderful team working together on it.  

University communities are increasingly regarding their students as ‘partners’, able to contribute valuable skills and expertise that can shape and improve the student experience across a range of areas.  Lying at the heart of the University experience, academic libraries in particular are well suited to a ‘Students as Partners’ approach, with their long history of collaboration and engagement (Salisbury and Dollinger, 2020).    

The project will generate knowledge and develop practical resources to support good practice in developing Students as Partners projects in academic libraries.  

Project objectives

The three main objectives of the group are to:

1. Develop an understanding of, and report on, current practice related to students as partners in academic libraries in Australia and New Zealand, and internationally.

2. Develop an evidence based toolkit to support CAUL member institutions to engage with students as partners.

3. Model a Students as Partners approach by collaborating with students on the development of the toolkit.

The project has clear and tangible benefits for academic libraries.  It will create opportunities to share ideas and experiences about Students as Partners and provide access to a valuable toolkit designed to support good practice in their institutions.    

Access the project brief (pdf) here.

Please do our Students as Partners survey – everyone working in an academic library is invited to participate!

Our team

The project team, led by Dr. Mollie Dollinger (Deakin University), includes  Danielle Ambriano (University of Technology, Sydney), Kerry Bedford (Australian Catholic University), Kate Conway (Curtin University), Vanessa Crosby (University of New South Wales),  Daniel Hamilton (University of Technology, Sydney), Imogen Harris-McNeill (University of Newcastle), Trent Hennessey (University of Melbourne), Paul McKenna (Deakin University), Karen Miller (Curtin University),  Wendy Ratcliffe (La Trobe University), and Susan Vickery (Macquarie University).

We’re all excited to be part of this project, and hope you will take a few minutes to watch the video below, in which we share some thoughts about the project and what we hope to achieve.

Reference

Fiona Salisbury, Mollie Dollinger & Jessica Vanderlelie (2020) Students as Partners in the Academic Library: Co-Designing for Transformation, New Review of Academic Librarianship, 26:2-4, 304-321, DOI: 10.1080/13614533.2020.1780275

Introducing the Open Educational Resources Collective Pilot project

ChloeUWA on

Open educational resources (OER) are expanding rapidly as a more equitable, flexible and adaptable medium to provide content for teaching and learning, but creating OER texts can feel daunting. The good news is that you don’t need to do it alone!

The CAUL OER Collective Pilot project offers the opportunity to have a go at creating open textbooks in a supportive, collaborative environment.

Sounds good – tell me more!

CAUL is now leading a major initiative to develop, licence and promote a range of OER that leverages the expertise of librarians, copyright experts, academics and authors. The project will oversee the entire open textbook lifecycle, including:

  • Establishing models for governance, management and membership
  • Leading administration and publishing processes
  • Guiding the selection and production of open textbook titles 

The project brief (PDF) provides more detail on the deliverables and timeline. 

This video introduces the CAUL OER Collective Pilot project and highlights the benefits for students, academics and libraries, as well as a summary of recent Australian research into OER. Keep an eye out for guest appearances by members of the project team.

Our team

The project team, led by Tahnee Pearse (University of Southern Queensland), includes Chloe Czerwiec (University of Western Australia), Anna Du Chesne (University of New England), Samantha Elkington-Dent (University of the Sunshine Coast), Richard Levy (University of South Australia), Jane Norton (Charles Sturt University), Craig Patterson (Deakin University), Frank Ponte (RMIT University), Jaime Royals (University of Adelaide), Ashley Sutherland (University of Melbourne) and Fiona Tyson (University of Canterbury).

Interested in being involved?

Subscribe to the blog to receive project updates and keep an eye out for the call for members coming in November 2021!

Four reasons to participate in our Students as Partners National Survey!

Karen Miller on

[Update 5 October 2021: Deadline extended to 18 October]

Are you involved or interested in Students as Partners programs in academic libraries? If so, then please participate in our survey!

The aim of the study is to understand what practices around student partnership have been embedded with Australian university libraries, and how student partnership can continue to be supported to encourage co-design in university libraries.

The research is part of the Enabling a Modern Curriculum with Students as Partners project.

Data collected from the survey will help the project team review and understand Student as Partner practices within university libraries. 

In turn, the review will inform the development of an online toolkit designed to support CAUL member institutions to engage students as partners.

Why you should complete the survey (and pass it on to others to complete):

  1. You’ll be contributing to building knowledge around how we can best support student partnership in academic libraries.
  2. You may alert us to some great examples of Students as Partners projects that can contribute to the Toolkit.
  3. You’ll be supporting your colleagues in the CAUL Enabling a Modern Curriculum project. It may seem like a small thing, but it can make a big difference! 
  4. It only takes 15 minutes to complete.

FAQs about the survey

You may have some questions about the survey, which I hope are answered below.

 Who can participate in the survey?

The survey is open to anyone with interest, knowledge or experience of Students as Partners programs in academic libraries. 

What if my colleagues also participate and discuss the same Students as Partners program?

It’s fine if more than one person refers to the same program in their responses – the more information we get, the happier we are!

Will my personal information be identified in the results?

No. Individual staff will not be identified in the survey results or any resulting publication and nor will the organisations where they work.

Is the survey part of a larger research project?

Yes. The title of the project is National Review of ‘Students as Partners’ in Australian Academic Libraries (La Trobe University ethics reference number HEC21220).  The researchers are Fiona Salisbury, Mollie Dollinger and Kate Davis.  

How do we access the survey?

The survey can be accessed at this link  

When does it need to be done by?

The survey closes on 18 October 2021.  Although there’s plenty of time, why wait?  You could do it today!

Can I share the survey link and information with others?

Yes, please do. We hope you will share the survey with staff in your library and encourage any colleagues who may be interested to participate.

How we’re Enabling a Modern Curriculum

fionasalisbury on

1 CAUL program, 5 projects, 28 institutions, 40 team members and 1 new blog!

As the Program Director for CAUL’s Enabling a Modern Curriculum program, I am excited and delighted to launch the program blog. The purpose of this blog is to keep the library and higher education communities up to date on the program’s progress. With the five projects in the program well underway there is lots to share, and you can expect a regular parade of posts in this space. Project team members are looking forward to providing highlights, sharing work-in-progress, giving news updates, and putting out calls to action.

The CAUL Enabling a Modern Curriculum program is designed to bring together the expertise of library staff and academics in two critical and emerging aspects of the modern curriculum – open educational resources (OER) and students as partners. While our definition of a modern curriculum is broad, focussing on these two areas has the most potential to enable and transform future library practice. Enabling a modern curriculum is a shared endeavour, and the program’s aim is to influence a national agenda in these key areas. In leading a reimagining of how libraries enable the curriculum, CAUL is also supporting library staff to make a difference to the student learning experience and student success at a local level.

Where we started

The program kicked off with a Zoom workshop in September 2020, and we started how we intend to continue – with librarians and academics in dialogue in a collaborative and thought-provoking environment. When reflecting on how academic libraries might enable a modern curriculum the things that jumped out at me as needing more attention were OER, student wellbeing, and students as partners. I invited three academics to the workshop to speak to these issues and the associated current challenges facing the HE sector: Professor Helen Partridge on open education, Professor Sally Kift on student wellbeing, and Dr Mollie Dollinger on students as partners. Their presentations were provocative and the conversation that flowed into the breakout rooms was energised and creative. Collectively the 93 workshop participants wrestled with and debated the issues and affirmed key priorities for the program. On closer analysis of the workshop deliberations, it was clear that in OER space we would need to tackle national OER advocacy, OER professional development, and collaborative open textbook creation for the Australian and New Zealand environment. Additionally, I also thought we needed a forum to showcase insights from the projects and make visible a range of good practice initiatives related to all the ways libraries enable the curriculum.

Five projects emerged

So, all things considered, the program started 2021 with five projects:

How we’re working together

Our ways of working within and across projects encourages experimentation, collective thinking, and sector-wide collaboration. The program is ambitious, but all the projects are in good hands and have an enthusiastic and talented team. Each week I meet with Dr Kate Davis from the CAUL National Office and the Project Team leads – Tahnee Pearse (OER Collective Pilot), Marion Slawson (OER PD Program), Adrian Stagg (OER Advocacy), Dr Mollie Dollinger (Students as partners), Dr Nicole Johnson (CAUL Conference). It’s a great team, and together, our careful stewardship of the projects is ensuring that this impressive program has every chance of realising its objective to transform national and local practice, and will position libraries as key partners in enabling a modern curriculum through OER, and with students as partners.

I’d like to thank the 40 library practitioners from 28 institutions who are collaborating on these five projects. This is important work that has not yet been attempted in this way on a national scale. And, more importantly, I hope everyone involved is having fun and forging new professional friendships (the unwritten objectives of involvement in the program!).

Watch this space

To library and academic colleagues who are interested, or curious, or feel inspired by the program, there will be plenty of opportunities to be involved over the coming two years. Watch this space, and when opportunities arise your contribution will be warmly welcomed.