Category Archives: Technology

In-person versus Online: A Conversation

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by Peggy Hsu, Liaison Librarian, Federation University Australia, and Kayleen Wardell, Team Leader Client Services, Southern Cross University Library

Authors’ contact details: p.hsu@federation.edu.au and kayleen.wardell@scu.edu.au

Open laptop with gallery view of online meeting participants, on a desk next to a pottery cup
Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

 “The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air.

Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.”

J. R. R. Tolkien. The Fellowship of the Ring. 1954

It’s starting to happen again. Attending events in person and seeing friends and colleagues from other institutions face-to-face.

Kayleen and I both attended the ‘CAUL: Enabling a Modern Curriculum Conference’ in early September 2022, which had both online and in-person days to the program, so it felt like the appropriate time to interrogate and debate our thoughts on ‘in-person versus online professional development’.

Webinar fatigue

Peggy: I. Love. Webinars.

I can see a webinar from anywhere in the world. With webinars, I don’t hurt my neck or back if I’m seated sideways, and *whispers* I can run to the bathroom with my headset on and still listen to the webinar. Plus, the links and attendee chat are often interesting.

Kayleen: I. Love. In-person events.

I enjoy being in the same physical space with others and engaging with them on a very visceral level. I am energised by their enthusiasm and love working together on activities at the event. This can be exhausting, but not as much as ‘webinar fatigue’.

Connections and networking

Peggy: I am an introvert with ‘weird hearing’. I strain to filter all the conversations happening around me, plus I feel weird sidling up to a group, inserting myself and then having said difficulty hearing the conversation. Ugh!.

I also forget names, like really quickly. I’m sorry and embarrassed now.

Kayleen: For me, the most amazing part of an in-person event is meeting the people who until that moment had only been faces on a Zoom screen.

And during the breaks, it’s great to engage in ‘face to face’ serendipitous or ‘water cooler’ conversations. Especially when standing in front of the vast array of teas, trying to work out which flavour you want to try, and then finding out that the person standing next to you likes that same tea. A conversation then ensues about the other things that you have in common. Pure gold!

Costs: Money or Time (Travel)

Peggy: I’m about 90 minutes from Melbourne, so not that far. For me, the event should ideally be longer than the time it takes travelling and if it’s on the other side of Melbourne, add another hour. Plus, why are universities not near train lines?

Kayleen: I must admit that there are probably not many positives about the cost of travelling to an event in person. Unless the event is just around the corner or your boss is paying the bill. However, adding other activities to the trip, such as visiting colleagues in other libraries, can make it worthwhile.

Equity

Peggy: This article from Scientific American had some great points to make on equity provided by online events.

  • Easier access for disabled or people with children.
  • Environmentally friendlier, if you have a budget for travel.
  • Lastly, online is great for diversity.

The information that really blew my mind though was research reported by Allseated that at online scientific conferences, female attendance increased by 253% and genderqueer attendance “jumped by 700%”.

Kayleen: Peggy has raised some excellent points around specific elements of equity for attendees at online events.

There is also some great information provided by the Australian Human Rights Commission on hosting in-person meetings and events to improve the experience of attendees.

Wrap-up

There are positives and negatives to in-person and online-only events. Hybrid seems to be the way forward, but the technology may not be ready in terms of pricing, access, and ease of set-up. Still, worse, we might be stuck in a binary where the only perceived options are in-person or online, and we aren’t displaying pandemic adaptability and innovation.

References

Allseated. (n.d.). The Return to In-Person Events: What’s Changed. Allseated. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://allseated.com/blog/the-return-to-in-person-events-whats-changed/

Australian Human Rights Commission. (2021). Hosting accessible and inclusive in-person meetings and events. https://includeability.gov.au/resources-employers/hosting-accessible-and-inclusive-person-meetings-and-events

Liu, G. (2020, August 21). The Surprising Advantages of Virtual Conferences. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-surprising-advantages-of-virtual-conferences/

MyHub. (2022, May 24). Water Cooler Conversation: The Essential Guide For Hybrid Workplaces. https://www.myhubintranet.com/water-cooler-conversation/

Robinson, E. (2021, April 21). Study explains ‘cocktail party effect’ in hearing impairment. OHSU. https://news.ohsu.edu/2021/04/21/study-explains-cocktail-party-effect-in-hearing-impairment

The National Press Club (n.d.). Live, Virtual or Hybrid Events – Which Approach Is Best? The National Press Club. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://www.press.org/live-virtual-or-hybrid-events-which-approach-best

Wilson, A. (2021, September 15). What is Webinar Fatigue and how do we manage it? Lernium. https://www.learnium.com/2021/09/15/what-is-webinar-fatigue-and-how-do-we-manage-it/

Crypto scams will increase over the holidays – here’s what you need to know to not fall victim

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by Ashish Nanda, CyberCRC Research Fellow, Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation (CSRI), Deakin University; Jeb Webb, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation (CSRI), Deakin University; Jongkil Jay Jeong, CyberCRC Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation (CSRI), Deakin University; Mohammad Reza Nosouhi, CyberCRC Research Fellow, Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation (CSRI), Deakin University, Deakin University, and Syed Wajid Ali Shah, CSCRC Research Fellow, Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation, Deakin University

We loved this article from The Conversation, originally published on 14 November 2022

Each year, as the festive season arrives, we must also keep an eye out for potential scammers trying to ruin the fun. This is because scammers become more active during the holidays, targeting us while we have our guard down.

So far in 2022, Australians have lost around half a billion dollars to scams, which is already significantly more than had been lost by this time last year. The majority of these losses – around $300 million – have involved investment or cryptocurrency scams.

Researchers from Deakin University’s Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation had a opportunity to interview recent victims of these scams. Here is what we found.

Anyone can fall for a scam

I was shocked and could not accept that this happened to me although I was very careful […] I was numb for a couple of minutes as it was a large amount of money. – (26-year-old female office manager from South Australia)

These scams have become highly sophisticated and criminals have become less discriminating about whom they target. This is reflected in recent victim demographics, showing a wide variety of backgrounds, a more even distribution across several age groups, and an almost even split on gender.

So, how can you spot these scams and where can you get help if you have fallen victim?

If it sounds too good to be true, it might just be a scam

I was dumbfounded, to say that ground shattered under my feet would be an understatement, it will take me a very long time to recover from it, financially and mentally. – (36-year-old female, legal practitioner from Victoria)

Most crypto scams involve getting the victim to buy and send cryptocurrency to the perpetrator’s account for what appears to be a legitimate investment opportunity.

Cryptocurrency is the currency of choice for this type of crime, because it’s unregulated, untraceable and transactions cannot be reversed.

Victims of such scams are targeted using a number of different methods, which include:

Investment scams: scammers pretend to be investment managers claiming high returns on crypto investments. They get the victim to transfer over funds and escape with them.

“Pump and dump”: scammers usually hype up a new cryptocurrency or an NFT project and artificially increase its value. Once enough victims invest, the scammers sell their stake, leaving the victims with worthless cryptocurrency or NFT.

Romance scams: involves scammers using dating platforms, social media or direct messaging to engage with you, gain your trust and pitch an amazing investment opportunity promising high returns, or ask for cryptocurrency to cover medical or travel expenses.

Phishing scams: an old but still effective scam involving malicious emails or messages with links to fake websites promising huge returns on investment or just outright stealing credentials to access users’ digital currency wallets.

Ponzi schemes: a type of investment scam where the scammers use cryptocurrency gathered from multiple victims to repay high interest to some of them; when victims invest more funds, the scammers escape with all the investments.

Mining scams: scammers try and convince victims to buy cryptocurrency to use in mining more of it, while in reality there is no mining happening – the scammers just make transfers that look like returns on the investment. Over time, the victim invests more, and the scammers keep taking it all.

Although methods evolve and change, the telltale signs of a potential scam remain relatively similar:

  • very high returns with promises of little or no risk
  • proprietary or secretive strategies to gain an advantage
  • lack of liquidity, requiring a minimum accumulation amount before funds are released.

Where to seek help if you’ve been scammed

I felt helpless, I didn’t know what to do, who to reach out to, I was too embarrassed and just kept blaming myself. – (72-year-old male, accountant from Victoria)

If you think you have fallen victim to one of these scams, here is what you need to do next:

  • inform the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) here or reach out to relevant authorities as per advice on the ScamWatch website
  • reach out to your friends and family members and inform them of the scam; they can also be a source of help and support during such times
  • as these events can have a psychological impact, it’s recommended you talk to your GP, a health professional, or someone you trust
  • you can also reach out to counselling services such as LifeLine, beyond blue, Sucide Call Back Service, Mens Line, and more for help and support.

If you ever find yourself in a difficult situation, please remember help and support is available.

Finally, to prevent yourself becoming the next statistic over the holiday period, keep in mind the following advice:

  • don’t share your personal details with people online or over a call
  • don’t invest in something you don’t understand
  • if in doubt, talk to an expert or search online for resources yourself (don’t believe any links the scammers send you).

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Need for Digital Literacy in a Digitally-Connected World

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by Darnell Epps and Kurtis Tanaka

We loved this post so much, we have to share it with our readers! Originally published in the Ithaka SR blog on 15 March 2021: https://sr.ithaka.org/blog/post-nchep-reflection/ . This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution/NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

If you have a topic you would like to read about, please drop us a line at digidexbloggroup@lists.caval.edu.au.

We also welcome contributors, so if you want to write a post yourself, please let us know!

Power BI: Data Wrangling and Fish

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Danielle Degiorgio, Digital and Information Literacy Project Adviser, Edith Cowan University Library
Sue Khoo, Librarian (Digital and Information Literacy), Edith Cowan University Library

What is Power BI?

Power BI is a Microsoft data visualisation tool that displays data in an easy-to-read format and allows users to interact and show relationships between different data sets.

Why Power BI?

Our goal was simple, we wanted to connect the mapping of digital and information literacy skills across the course curriculum to the teaching and learning activities we were doing each semester. We just had one problem, we were recording our data and statistics in multiple spreadsheets.

As luck would have it, the 2021 VALA Tech Camp was hosted at Edith Cowan University Library that year and we were introduced to Power BI through a series of workshops. Soon after we decided to use Power BI to help us keep track of student statistics in a more visually appealing way and it let us connect multiple sources of data. This meant we could compare, filter, and visualise relationships between multiple spreadsheets which allowed us, and more importantly our manager, to see our progress across courses.

Power BI: Visualisation of mapped digital and information literacy skills in courses.

Things we got Power BI to do:

  • Connect information from multiple spreadsheets to show how much digital and information literacy skills coverage we have in each course. 
  • Filter and display subsets of data. 
  • Be hosted in Microsoft Teams for ease of access where the report can be shared and displayed as a tab in Teams. 
  • Automatically update data from SharePoint, so having all our sheets hosted on SharePoint / Microsoft Teams mean we can easily add data into the model. Our Power BI reads directly from SharePoint files and updates at 9am every day.

Skills: What magic do you need?

  • Spreadsheet and table management – Power BI relies on external data. You must have the data cleaned and stored in a data source such as Excel (or databases such as Salesforce or Access).
  • Logic and relationship management – Connections can be 1-1 and 1-many but only one model may exist at a time. If there are conflicts Power BI will complain.
  • Ability to play with formulas and data types – If you need a relationship that isn’t expressed in the Power BI map you will need to learn to write the formula for it.
  • How to put together a graph – Knowing what graph suits your needs be it a scatter plot, ribbon chart, pie chart, or fish.
  • Professional Google skills – If something goes wrong, be ready to Google it!

Pitfalls: What to watch out for

  • A lot of trial and error and Googling – No training will prepare you for what you want to do. There may be things you want to do but Power BI only gives you the basic tools. You will have to build what you want from there.
  • Broken or dirty data – Power BI relies on relationships between different tables and inputs to build the model. If a piece of information is missing and if that is the connection in the model, it will skip that line. This has resulted in expectations not meeting what was displayed.
  • Know your data story – Power BI does not do data interpretation. You need to know what you want to tell. This is one of the main issues on the final display of information.
  • Permissions – Our shared spreadsheets and the dashboard were stored in places where we didn’t have full access to use. Arrange the files so each input has the right permissions to do SharePoint integration.

How do you get started?

But what about the fish?

The most important thing to remember is to be creative and have fun with your data!  

Power BI: Number of students seen per School using the Enlighten Aquarium visual. Enlighten Aquarium won a people’s choice award for the ‘Power BI Best Visual’ contest in 2016.

A new direction: Our journey creating a chatbot

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By Bryony Hawthorn, Information Services Manager, University of Waikato Library, bryony.hawthorn@waikato.ac.nz

Background
The University of Waikato Library has been using a live chat service successfully for more than 14 years. This is a very popular service with students – and that was even before the pandemic flipped our lives upside down!

In 2019 library staff numbers were reduced, and we realised we may not always be able to staff the live chat as we have done in the past. This led to the idea of a chatbot.

Chatbot box. University of Waikato Library.

Meet our chatbot, Libby
We chose to build our chatbot using the LibraryH3lp platform as we already use this for our live chat service. So bonus = no extra costs! We named our chatbot Libby.

Libby’s interface is similar to live chat so it creates a consistent experience for users. The only difference is the colour: green for live chat and orange for the chatbot.

We create the responses that Libby sends. The chatbot administration back end has been set up to be simple to use and this means library staff creating responses don’t need to be tech experts. We’ve chosen to focus primarily on library-related topics.

Bumpy beginnings
Libby was very basic when we started. We struggled to get her to reply to keywords (the user had to type the EXACT word or phrase we had in our response bank) and she couldn’t return multiple responses to a single question. Because of this, Libby’s most common response was, “Sorry, I could not process your request. Please try a different word or phrase”. Let’s just say it was a bumpy beginning and a frustrating experience for our early users.

Stepping up
The road became a lot smoother when we introduced a natural language toolkit. This included:
● Text filtering – keywords can appear anywhere in a user’s question so no need to type an exact phrase anymore.
● Removing stop words (e.g. a, at, the, not, and, etc).
● Tokenizing – isolates words so they are compared separately.
● Stemming – allows for different endings for keywords.
● Synonyms – increase the range of words that trigger a response.

We also improved the way Libby greets users and made it clear how to receive help from a person. Most recently we added a module to assist with spelling errors.

One of our biggest successes has been introducing a prompt to encourage users to type their email address if they want a follow up from a librarian. Prior to Libby’s introduction, if the chat service was offline, users were told to email the library for assistance. This didn’t happen very often. But now users find it easy to add their email address and thus allow us to contact them. This has markedly increased the number of users receiving further help.

Example chat with chatbot. University of Waikato Library.

What we learned along the way
● Don’t do it alone. Use those around you with the right technical experience.
● Simple fixes can make a big difference.
● Make it clear to your users they are chatting with a bot who won’t be able to answer everything.
● Make it easy for users to request a follow up from a librarian.

Libby is still a work in progress and our journey is ongoing. Who knows where the road will lead. There are other ways to build a chatbot and some are simpler than what we have done. If you are interested in creating something similar, do look around for options to find something that will suit your needs.

If you’d like to learn more about our journey so far, you can watch our presentation from the LearnFest2021 conference.

Building a digital skill set with Aus GLAM Blogs

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By Hugh Rundle, Manager, Digital Innovation, La Trobe University Library

Several years ago I created an aggregator service for blogs by Australasian GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) workers. Initially this was a simple Twitter bot, but later I built a web application that eventually allowed blog authors to register their blog, and readers to search by keyword, browse by tag, or subscribe to new posts via RSS or directly into their Pocket list, including the ability to filter out content they may be less interested in. If you’re interested in what Australian librarians are thinking and talking about, this is now a useful place to look.

One of the obvious questions for people wanting to start independently learning computer programming skills is where to start. The best advice I was ever given was to start by working on a real project you want to see exist, or contributing to an existing project you like. Aus GLAM Blogs was one my first “real” coding projects. I had unsuccessfully tried to teach myself some kind of computer programming for a couple of years, but it didn’t “stick” until I had something tangible to work on. Having a real life project to work on – especially one that was operating in public – really helped provide an incentive and focus to develop and practice the skills I needed to complete the job. The first version was quite rudimentary – a simple text file of manually-entered RSS feed URLs, some JavaScript loops, and a Twitter account back in the days when Twitter API keys were very easy to obtain within a couple of minutes. It barely worked at all, but it was something I thought would be helpful to bridge the gap between library bloggers looking for an audience and Library Twitter looking for good local content.

Last year I wrote about re-building Aus GLAM Blogs from scratch when I had developed more knowledge and skills. Developing the app in incremental stages meant that it wasn’t completely overwhelming. This sort of project-based learning approach can be used in many contexts, but is particularly useful when building your digital skills. Creating a web application meant I needed to host it somewhere, which led to learning about Linux server management. Gradually increasing the scope of the application led to developing an understanding of how databases and software applications interact. Re-writing the entire thing led me to consider problems of data normalisation and to what extent it is useful and acceptable.

Scaffolding my own learning like this has enabled me to slowly build a technical skillset around computer programming and server management, and think more deeply about the sort of data management questions colleagues working with library metadata have to deal with every day. I will never consider myself an “expert” in coding or server administration, but through a personal project I’ve been able to build my knowledge over time. For a while this was simply to amuse myself, but I now find myself in a library job where these skills are really useful and help me to look at problems in a different way.

Your own interests may be different. Perhaps you want to be able to make animated videos, or build your own computer from parts, or fancy being the in-house Excel macro expert. If you’ve been telling yourself that you’re “just not a technical person” or you will “never be able to do it”, I don’t believe you. The trick is to find some small projects – ideally personal ones where there are few consequences of failure – and work on them because you’re interested in the actual thing you are making. It’s surprising how much you can learn “accidentally” just by focussing on what you want to create rather than on the skills themselves. Then, simply increase your ambition for the next project, and the next one, and the next one.

Oh, and don’t forget to share it in a blog post so the rest of the library world can share your learning journey!

Enabling high-quality, scalable and consistent design: supporting library staff through a library design system

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By Sarah Fennelly, Digital Designer, Deakin University Library

Our problem

Deakin University Library’s Digital Experience (DX) team is charged with delivering high-quality, consistent and scalable digital solutions across a range of library platforms and channels. However, we found ourselves with multiple challenges in delivering good on this:

  • There wasn’t a library-specific design reference for our developers, designers and digital content managers to help them manage consistency of look, feel and functionality across our digital library ecosystem, and to maintain accessibility, brand and design standards.
  • We often ‘reinvented the wheel’ when it came to digital design; library staff presented with differing design requests and needs, and the DX team often ended up creating bespoke designs to accommodate this.
  • At other times, librarians created their own design elements with little or no input from the DX team, and with limited understanding of design best practice, accessibility and brand requirements.

Our Solution

Our solution was to create the Library Design System (LDS), a website that provides the source of truth for library-specific design elements used across our digital ecosystem. The LDS references and extends upon existing university-wide design guidelines and tool kits to provide targeted and more library-focussed design direction.

The LDS is divided into two main areas:

  • Referencing guide for the library’s professional designers, developers and content managers to use across web interfaces and systems.
  • Design assets and templates created to specifically help librarians and library staff without professional design expertise.

Referencing guide

The sections used predominantly by the professional design, developers and content managers are:

  • Components: These are a selection of interface elements that can be reused across the library’s digital ecosystem. These elements include buttons, colour, forms, grids, headers and footers, logos, navigation, tables and typography.
  • Interface inventory: A table that identifies library systems, platforms, products and applications with a student and/or researcher interface.

Design assets and templates

The sections used to help librarians and library staff without professional design expertise are:

Deakin Library page showing example of characters and graphics that can be used. character posing in different postions, with both professional and student attire and with different versions of character.
  • Characters: A suit of characters developed to represent our Deakin cohort.Graphics: Multiple sets of library and faculty specific graphics.
  • Graphics: Multiple sets of library and faculty specific graphics.
screenshot of various graphics available to be used from the learning design team.
  • Iconography: Currently 189 icons in branded accessible colours in both SVG and PNG formats.
  • Templates: D2L banners, photographs and the advanced search graphic.   
  • Print: Deakin printer details.
example of scenes with 4 steps. Step 1 adding background step 2 add second layer image (information desk) step 3 add third layer image (bookshelf) step 4 add fourth layer image (couch)
  • Scenes: A series of PNG graphics that staff can use to build their own images or scenes, by layering the graphics in provided H5P, PowerPoint or Adobe Illustrator templates.
  • Video and audio: Deakin branded top and tail videos, videos created by the DX team, in conjunction with the library Learning and Teaching team and the library communications manager.

The future

The LDS is not a ‘set and forget’ resource; it will continue to adapt as a design resource to support all library staff. We will continue to maintain, update and grow the LDS to reflect changing university and library brand needs and changes in the library’s complex digital ecosystem.

Good design is imperative in our complex digital ecosystem. Design that reduces cognitive load through visual and functional consistency, allows our students to focus on learning and understanding the course content we deliver.

By Sarah Fennelly, Digital Designer, Deakin University Library, s.mccormick@deakin.edu.au

Not another 23 Things!

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By Dr Karen Miller, Coordinator, Learning Success, Curtin University

There’s no doubt that 2020 was a rollercoaster year, as we zoomed up and down steep, pandemic-shaped learning curves, one after the other.  For myself and my colleagues at Curtin University Library, implementing a new student program added to the wild ride.

’23 Things’ is Curtin Library’s online digital dexterity program that was essentially created by students, for students. It is an open, shareable resource that can be easily re-used and adapted. In this post, I’ll tell you a bit about it, and how it came about. 

What is 23 Things?

 I’m sure many of you are familiar with the 23 Things model for online learning. The first 23 Things was created in 2006 as a professional development activity for library staff. Regular blog posts introduced participants to a different digital technology each week, and invited them to try it out and to share their thoughts. Since then, hundreds of 23 Things programs have been developed and adapted to suit a variety of audiences and contexts.

Curtin’s version of 23 Things 

After consultations and environmental scans to ascertain the best approach to help our students develop digital competency, Curtin Library decided to adopt the 23 Things model. We initially intended to simply re-use and adapt the excellent (and open) version from Edinburgh University. 

However, when some HEPPP funding became available, the project became incorporated into the Library’s ‘students as partners’ program. We employed a diverse group of students to create new content including interactive activities, videos and infographics. Bringing student voices to the forefront and fostering a peer to peer learning approach brought unique perspectives to the program and helped make the content relatable and accessible as our student partners shared their knowledge and experience.  

We then collaborated with the Library Makerspace to build engagement with participants. Our student partners developed and delivered face-to-face workshops with hands-on activities to complement the 23 Things topics, and during the pandemic lockdown worked hard to translate them into the virtual realm (not an easy task). We also encouraged participants to share in the Curtin Makers Facebook Group with our weekly Creative Challenges.   

As if that wasn’t enough, we decided to experiment with “transmedia storytelling”, a communication method which involves developing a story using multiple digital platforms. We felt this would be a good way to bolster conceptual learning and illustrate how digital skills could be applied in a workplace context. Using the fictional characters and narrative developed in Curtin Library’s online referencing game Certitude, we used weekly blogs, comics and tweets to weave the ‘things’ into a story, replete with office dramas such as copyright violations, accounts being hacked and computer meltdowns. 

Reflections and next steps   

While we had a lot of fun creating the content and engaging with participants, the 23 Things program (2020 version) wasn’t perfect. With the many different elements involved, we didn’t achieve the ideal of a seamless, integrated learning experience.  However, our approach was intentionally experimental, testing different ideas to see how they landed. We gathered a lot of data and feedback that we are now using to improve the program for its second iteration in 2021.

This year, 23 Things is part of Curtin Extra, the University’s extra-curricular credentials program, while also remaining open to anyone in the community who would like to participate.  We’re interested in finding out how best to keep participants actively engaged and how best to assess and demonstrate learning and impact. 

23 Things can be re-used and adapted

Our 23 Things program has been licensed under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA).  Each module or ‘thing’ has been created as a single H5P file, and thus is very easy to download, re-use and modify.  The resource is available from the Digital Dexterity Educators Group on OER Commons, and I hope to add some supporting resources in the near future, including a document that maps each module to the CAUL Digital Dexterity framework.  If anyone would like to find out more or have a chat about the program, please feel free to contact me at karen.miller@curtin.edu.au or on Twitter @infoliterati .    

Day 5 of Championing the Digital Dexterity Framework Virtual Festival – Gaming together to digitally connect

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By Sarah Howard, Associate Director, Library, Queensland University of Technology, Kat Cain, Manager Digital Literacy Programs, Deakin University Library and Nica Tsakmakis, Senior Librarian, Library Academic and Research Services, Australian Catholic University

Friday often brings with it work fatigue and dimming of enthusiasm. We have been staring at our computer screens for countless hours all week. Sure we need to, but we also have to balance that with digital wellbeing. Luckily the final day of the CAUL Digital Dexterity virtual festival landed and boy did it revive us! 

via GIPHY

What’s more – it clearly responded to the Digital Identity and Wellness area within our CAUL Digital Dexterity Framework.  

The session kickstarted with a fun presentation by Deakin Library’s Jane Miller. Jane shared real practice examples of games or other activities that have facilitated Library team building and group development. Fantastically, Jane’s tips and tricks had broad applicability despite the diversity of participant contexts. It’s amazing how a children’s game when used with adults builds negotiation, cooperation, imagination and having fun.

The opportunity to explore together online games Deakin Library has used was invaluable. These included Mentimeter, online jigsaw puzzles, and 9truths. Jane even demonstrated how to host a trivia game without the use of a program. At the end of the session participants shared their own favourite games through mentimeter poll. The collated list of games will be published soon, but it was clear that board game arena was a favourite.

Throughout the day we discovered so many benefits of workplace gaming. What stood out was the growing need for virtual socialising in our post-Covid work world. Games and activities help strengthen all types of teams, including the high performing teams who have those online awkward silences.

If you missed the session watch the recording below. Do take some time out of your day and take a peek at what was shared. You won’t regret it!

DigiDex – Championing the CAUL Digital Dexterity Framework – Day 5, Friday 12 February 2021

open video in new tab

Can OERs address Teaching and Learning challenges in Higher Education?

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By Frank Ponte AALIA (CP) Academic/Research, Manager, Library Services (Teaching), RMIT University Library, frank.ponte@rmit.edu.au 


Open Educational Resources (OERs) are teaching, learning and research materials that are published under creative common licenses. These licenses specify how materials can be used.  OERs can include textbooks, curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and software.

Driven by a reduction in international student arrivals, the sharp pivot to emergency online learning and a prolonged period of reduced revenue, universities are now pondering a new normal and envisaging a hybrid learning future. OERs have intersected and underscored many of the teaching and learning challenges faced by higher education institutions and advocates are now considering the efficacy of OERs to address these challenges.

Some of the Teaching and Learning concerns that OERs can address are outlined below:   

  • Student Affordability - Every student begins the semester with the same learning materials and has free digital access. Check these platforms and begin your search.  
  • Ongoing access and accessibility – Free access to learning resources in perpetuity. Access to resources in multiple formats. (select download this book to uncover the formats available.) 
  • Equity - Studies have found that using OER resources in coursework can increase grades for all students, but more so for low socio-economic students and ethnically diverse students.  
  • Retention - Studies suggest that students using OER textbooks were more likely to complete their course than those using commercial texts. 
  • Deeper Learning using Open Educational Practices – Studies suggest that OERs provide academic staff with the flexibility to customize the curriculum altering the student learning experience to achieve deeper engagement.  
  • Cultural diversity: OER’s can be used to reflect the diverse student voice. They can include gender neutral language, reflect the diverse names of students who make-up the classroom and include first nations representation and recognition.

Higher education has been challenged by many social justice issues in 2020, accelerated and reinforced by COVID.  The concepts above are some of the emerging issues that are being examined in higher education. Studies are now suggesting that OERs have a larger part to play in stemming the social justice disparities to create an even playing field for all students. Libraries are at the forefront of this fight demonstrated by this open letter in the United Kingdom signed by over 3000 Librarians, academics, and students to investigate the academic Ebook market and its practices. 

In the next post I will explore the ways to promote and advocate for OER use at your home institution.