Tag Archives: collaboration

All good things must come to an end

Posted on by

After 4 years of blogging, 82 blog posts (including this one), countless writers and contributors, an ever-changing, fun, and knowledgeable blog editorial group, aka the Blog Bunch / Blog Group, we have come to the end of the road. This will be our final blog post, and we have invited current and past blog group members to share their highlights from the blog.

In addition to the group members who have contributed their highlights below, the current blog group would like to thank the following: Ana Shah Hosseani, Christopher Hart, Emily Pyers, Emma Chapman, Emma Nelms, Jasmine Castellano, Lyn Torres, Miranda Francis, and Sarah McQuillen (Photo by opera infinita on Unsplash).

To our valued readers, we have enjoyed and appreciated your support from the very beginning. Thanks for reading and enjoy this last post 🙂

A road of pebbles leading into a sea or lake at sunset

Danielle Degiorgio, Digital & Information Literacy Adviser, Edith Cowan University (previous blog group member):

Working with the Digital Dexterity blog editorial team, or, as we liked to call ourselves, the ‘Blog Bunch’, was an awesome experience, full of laughter and unforgettable moments. Our Teams’ chat was constantly filled with random GIFs that often wouldn’t load and multiple mentions of ‘scosk’ which took on a life of its own with Ruth even writing a mock post about it that I wish we published.  

Thanks to the support and knowledge-sharing of this amazing, talented group of librarians – Simone, Kristy, Emma, Sarah, Marianne, Krista, to name a few – I not only improved my editorial skills but also discovered new ways of thinking about digital learning and engagement. It was truly fun to be a part of such an incredible team, and I’ll always be grateful for the friendships I’ve made within the Digital Dexterity community of practice. A special shout-out to Sara, who was the heart of the ‘Blog Bunch’ and the CoP. Sara, your hard work and organisation kept us all on track and without you we’d have been too distracted to get anything done! Thank you all. 

Emeka Anele, Learning Designer, Deakin University:

As I look back to the beginning of my time with the DigiDex Group, I am overwhelmed by the incredible experiences and growth I’ve witnessed. I was invited by a colleague to attend a meeting, and I just never left. Joining the DigiDex blog group felt like rolling down a hill of digital literacy, only to be warmly welcomed at the bottom. This group picked me up and made me feel part of something special. 

One of the greatest highlights of my time with the DigiDex blog group has been the chance to collaborate with passionate colleagues from different libraries. Everyone approaches the work with such enthusiasm and optimism. This has been an asset to the editorial group as we enter a catch-up with no idea about the next blog post and leave with ten new ideas. 

I’ll always be immensely grateful for the guidance and support I received from other members of the editorial group. The joy and optimism I experienced has left a lasting impact on me. Though this is the end of the blog, the future looks bright. I am confident that our paths will cross again soon, to continue shining a light on digital literacy work in libraries. 

Kasthuri Anandasivam, Digital Curriculum Librarian, University of South Australia:

In my short time as a member of the CAUL DigiDex blog group, I have been amazed by how much I have learned and the inspiring people I have met from the different institutions. The group has been a safe, supportive space where I can ask questions—no matter how basic and know I will not be judged. I have gained insights into many new tools used by different institutions in higher education. Contributing to a post on an emerging and timely topic was incredibly rewarding. I have also been able to share what I have learned with my colleagues, sparking new ideas and conversations within my own institution. It has been a privilege to be part of such a creative, generous, and forward-thinking community.

Kristy Newton, Digital Literacies Coordinator, University of Wollongong (previous blog group member):

I was lucky enough to be a member of the CAUL Digital Dexterity blog team for a number of years and really enjoyed my time as a member. The team is an amazing, hard working group of folks with a genuine passion for digital dexterity. During the tumultuous times of 2020-2022 opportunities for in person collaborations were very limited but the virtual nature of the team made it possible to continue working together and producing a blog we were really proud of. The team kept an actively running chat in the background of our MS Teams site that covered everything from blog tasks and questions about meetings or post details to personal insights, advice, laughs, GIF preferences, and extremes in weather in our respective locations. As the pandemic eased, the blog continued and so did the group chat.  

We witnessed the rise and rise of generative AI and its impact on higher education and libraries and tried our best to cover it in blog form. We dipped our toes into SEO optimisation and the intricacies of the Edublogs platform that hosted the blog. We made lots of great connections with blog post authors and evolved our collaborative approaches as the blog group membership shifted over time. It’s been a fantastic project to be part of and I think everyone involved should be very proud of the contributions we have made to the discourse around digital dexterity in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Krista Yuen, Teaching and Learning Librarian, University of Waikato | Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato:

I joined the DigiDex blog group around the beginning of what we could probably call the GenAI and ChatGPT trend, and it was an exciting time to be involved in a blog that explored and discussed ideas around digital literacy. We had some very enthusiastic Zoom meetings, which I always left feeling very inspired and full of new ideas to explore. This group, from the get-go, has been very warm and welcoming and our meetings have often been a highlight of my month. 

It has been great meeting and working with lots of dedicated librarians from across the Tasman, while also facilitating discussions, sharing ideas, and learning from each other about everything digital dexterity, especially in the world of tertiary libraries. It’s been a wild ride, and I am looking forward to our paths crossing again. 

Marianne Sato, Digital Learning Specialist, University of Queensland (previous blog group member):

I really enjoyed my time working with the Digital Dexterity Blog Group. Getting to know the other blog group members was a highlight for me, and hearing about all the interesting work they were doing at their own institutions. 

I continued to enjoy reading the blog and learning new things that I could apply to my work even after I was no longer a member of the group. 

Ruth Cameron, Open Education and Digital Learning Advisor, University of Newcastle (previous blog group member):

Being part of the DigiDex blog group has been one of my life’s highlights! The group has been so creative, generous, and innovative. We learned how to use Edublogs, schedule posts, analyse usage statistics, and other fun things like complying with all the different permissions for reposting. We learned how to write engaging blog posts that could educate readers about different digital dexterities. And we did all this in addition to our ‘normal’ work as librarians. It was a real wrench when I had to leave the group, and I’m grateful for the chance to have been part of such a wonderful project.

Sara Davidsson, Member Services & Governance Lead, CAVAL:

Starting a blog from scratch with colleagues from across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic was…extremely rewarding and fun! We started in association with our Championing the Digital Dexterity Framework Virtual Festival and have since covered topics such as: advocating for OERs, digital identity, and copyright. Virtual collaboration, building connections, and fostering flexibility have all been integral parts of keeping the blog running and the content fresh. 

In addition to the cross-Tasman Sea collaboration, the connection we made with Mish Boutet (Digital Literacy Librarian at the University of Ottawa in Canada) was a blog highlight for me. Mish joined the Digital Dexterity Champions as a guest and introduced us to Ateliers sur demande | Instant Workshops through both his blog post and presentations. The opportunity to learn from others through the blog in this way has been inspiring!

Simone Tyrell, Learning Designer, Deakin University (previous blog group member):

When we first started the Digital Dexterity Blog, I think it’s fair to say not only did we not know each other but for most of us we’d never run a blog or been a part of a blog editorial team before. We came together as a group of librarians, passionate about digital literacy and lifelong learning. We had a clean slate to start the blog as we wished, we had lots of ideas and between us a variety of skills and knowledge. Whilst running the blog was a learning curve, choosing the platform, scheduling posts, learning about subscriptions, editing posts, and more, what I remember most from my time with the group is the editorial team itself (aka the blog group).   

From the beginning of the blog, the blog group proved to be a safe and welcoming space, a group of people whose skills complemented each other, who collaborated seamlessly to get things done, and, most importantly, who supported each other. I always looked forward to our meetings, we always got work done but we also took the time to breathe and take some space. The blog group is what I missed the most when I changed roles and had to hand the baton over (don’t worry I kept reading the blog).    

So, to my fellow blog groupers, as a former group member and reader, thank you for all your hard work and collegiality. To all our contributing authors and of course our readers, we couldn’t have done it without you, thank you.  

Thanks for having me and bye just for now! 

Two pairs of feet in shoes are visible on a footpath where it says Passion led us here
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

Highlights reel for 2023 

Posted on by

by the members of the Digital Dexterity Blog Group

Emma Chapman, Auckland University of Technology | Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau:

AI has sure been big on the agenda this year. I’ve gone through all stages of excitement and grief with this topic. I think there was a time mid-year when AI-fatigue set in. But, the latest post on prompt engineering really re-ignites interest for me – as does the development of new, improved AI models. Sadly, as most of these are paid, I think an AI-digital divide could be the next thing we see. Meantime, I’ll keep working on trying to craft killer prompts (and keep trying to make GIFs that do not make me seasick). Merry holidays and a peaceful new year to all.  

Kristy Newton, University of Wollongong:

I’m not sure if we can refer to the year that has been 2023 without also saying the phrase “Generative AI”, and libraries (like everyone else) scrambled to understand how we could use these tools, whether we could use them ethically, and what this all meant for critical literacies. It’s been both exciting and fatiguing as others noted, but an absolute game changer. The blog has been a great space to facilitate discussions, share opinions, and learn from each other about this and about all things digital dexterity. 

Krista Yuen, University of Waikato | Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato:

I only joined the DigiDex community and blog group about halfway through 2023, and I honestly think I’m still finding my feet. That said, getting to know the fellow blog group has no doubt been a highlight for me. Coupled with the upward trend of Generative AI and navigating a new world of literacies in libraries and education, it has certainly made for a very interesting time to be involved with DigiDex. It has been a real honour to partake in and witness all the discussions we’ve had around the use of AI and how to best support and embrace these advancements. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what 2024 will bring! 

Sara Davidsson, CAVAL:

The diversity of topics and voices in the blog has been my highlight for 2023. We have been able to deliver posts from our extended DigiDex community, written especially for the blog, as well as showcasing interesting articles from far and near. I am so happy to see that our readers keep returning every month for more posts! 

Danielle Degiorgio, Edith Cowan University:

It’s been an absolutely fascinating year diving into the world of AI. I’m genuinely thrilled by how these technologies are revolutionising the way we work in libraries and education as a whole. I’ve particularly enjoyed exploring how generative AI tools can support and foster creativity and innovative learning. It’s an exciting time to be in the field, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds! 

Also, a big shoutout to our DigiDex blog group for their amazing work this year. They’ve done a stellar job in capturing these advancements and discussions around AI in libraries. It’s been inspiring to see their dedication and creativity in action. Kudos to the team for their exceptional work. 

Marianne Sato, University of Queensland:

I love reading the new Digital Dexterity blog posts each month. And being part of the blog group, I often get a sneak preview! The posts about different aspects of AI, finding and creating inclusive OER, and how websites work have been highlights for me this year. The blog posts always have so many great ideas or innovative solutions that I can apply to my work. AI definitely had a big impact this year and I suspect every year from now on. I look forward to reading more great posts in 2024! 

From all of us, we wish our loyal readers a happy and peaceful holiday season and all the best for 2024! We will return with a new blog post on 29 January.

Decorative image of tree branches laid out in a festive way
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Learning and Engagement Librarian secondment: My year of learning

Posted on by

By Christina Salopek, University of Wollongong (UOW) Library. csalopek@uow.edu.au 

Collaboration. Problem solving. Digital creation. Information literacy. User experience. These words, and more, are topics that inspired and motivated me to apply for a 12-month secondment position in 2021 within the UOW Library’s Learning and Engagement team (L&E) – and, what a team! Never one to shy away from embracing opportunities of new ways of thinking and new ways of learning, I was curious to learn: 

 
(a) How does the Library L&E team iterate, develop and deliver digital learning resources?  
(b) What skills, attributes and priorities are required to be successful in the position?   

 
I was inspired by UOW Library’s Thriving Library Capabilities Framework, which guided me on the capabilities that I would need to apply effectively on a daily basis during my secondment. The capabilities of particular relevance to me were collaboration and communication. 

Collaboration, Communication and Information Literacy

Early in my secondment, it became apparent that Tuesday would be my favourite day of the working week. Why? Tuesday was the day the entire team were in the office to discuss and work collaboratively on, for example, identifying gaps in relation to student information and digital literacy; and work on, or plan, any ongoing and/or future projects to support teaching and learning. 

Screenshot of a teaching and learning support guide highlighting the services provided by the team
Image: How we can help your teaching & learning page from the Library Support for Teaching & Learning library guide.

Ongoing collaboration and communication, integral to the L&E role, were essential capabilities that provided me with a deeper insight and the practical hands-on experience I needed, to understand the tools and techniques the team applied in creating inclusive, pedagogical, online library tutorials for diverse cohorts. Brainstorming, analysing Chat transcripts and LibGuide analytics, liaising with other library team members and connecting and fostering partnerships with library stakeholders, including teaching staff and members from the Faculty of Education Committees; were just some of the capabilities I acquired (and applied) in collaboratively developing creative, online library tutorials.  

Screenshot of the library tutorials section of the teaching and learning support guide
Image: Library Tutorials page from the Library Support for Learning & Teaching library guide. 

For example, an outcome from one of my earliest Tuesday brainstorming sessions was the iteration of an infographic targeting students new to academic research, outlining the benefits and limitations of library databases and non-library databases. For me, Tuesday brainstorming sessions not only highlighted the collaborative aspect of the role and the contribution the team has made towards UOW’s blended learning enhancement initiative. It also provided me with the opportunity to share my insights and experiences from working in various capacities within an academic library, towards actively contributing to and designing an accessible online learning resource. 

Digital creation, problem solving and user experience

I love user experience (UX). I have been a long-time member of the Library UX Community of Practice. As such, user experience and my interest in designing with the user in mind is just one of the (many) reasons I applied for the L&E secondment. The team’s commitment in designing and delivering user-focused, accessible and equitable online learning resources was an opportunity for me to apply the knowledge I acquired as a result of my UX interest.  

For example, I collaborated with my L&E colleague Cate Slater in the re-design of the Library Systematic Literature Review Workbook (H5P). It was my first foray into using the H5P format in which I contributed by creating online content and interactive activities, with the purpose of delivering a sustainable and pedagogical solution based on the user needs and interactions from students and teaching staff. 

Front page of the UOW Library systematic review workbook
Image: Front cover of UOW Library’s Systematic Review Workbook 

Key takeaways

There are so many key takeaways to draw from my secondment in the Learning and Engagement team. However, in a nutshell, I have learnt from my team (Nick Zografos, Susan Jones and Cate Slater) that: 

  • Communication, collaboration and partnerships with academic teaching staff are integral to the role and to understanding the user needs of the wider UOW Learning and Teaching community 
  • Creativity, applying best practice for pedagogical solutions and keeping up to date with learning technologies are important to ensure students develop the digital and information literacy skills required for success in their studies and careers 
  • Tuesday is still my favourite day of the working week! 

Open for Climate Justice: a podcast on open access, citizen science, and science communications

Posted on by

UOW Library has released a new episode of the Light On podcast, focused on this years theme for Open Access Week: Open for Climate Justice.

The podcast is hosted by Sam Hutchinson, produced by (Digidex Blog member) Kristy Newton and features UOW academics Georgia Watson and Distinguished Professor Sharon Robinson, PhD candidate Teaniel Mifsud, and UOW Library’s Clare Job.

In the podcast, you’ll hear about:

  • how citizen science and science communication contribute to the accessibility of research for a wider audience
  • how the current Antarctic Futures exhibition at UOW combines scientific research, art and early learning activities to engage people of all ages with social justice and climate science.
  • how citizen science not only informed UOW research on how people encounter sharks while swimming, surfing or sailing, but also grew into a communication tool and opportunity for sharing knowledge between those involved too
  • how much people engage with the content in Research Online, because it wouldn’t be a UOW Library podcast without some Research Online statistics! (spoiler: already 2 million downloads this year).

If you’d like to discover more about our podcast guests, you can find them on Twitter. Sharon Robinson is @Antarcticmoss, Georgia Watson is @EcoloGee_, Teaniel Mifsud is @teanielmarie, podcast host Sam Hutchinson is @Saminthelibrary and podcast producer Kristy Newton is @librariano.

Click on the image to open the podcast in a new tab

A collaborative approach to student digital skills support: The UOW Digital Skills Hub

Posted on by

By Kristy Newton, Digital Literacies Coordinator (UOW Library)

Digital literacies, digital capabilities, digital dexterity… no matter what you call them, these are an essential and complex set of practical skills, attitudes and contextual understanding that help us navigate and interact with the digital world. They can span everything from learning how to use a new piece of software, to understanding how communication styles differ depending on the channel you are using to communicate, to developing a growth mindset that enables you to engage in a process of continual learning and development. This post outlines the process of developing the UOW Student Digital Skills Hub as a strategy for supporting student digital skill development.

A collaborative approach

At UOW, we recognised that a collaborative approach was essential for supporting student digital literacies and that this collaboration needed to be seamless for students to access. There had been collaborative work on developing an institutional approach to digital literacies for a few years, but the unexpected challenges of COVID19 and the rapid transition to remote learning meant that a lot of that work was paused to allow staff to address the immediate challenges presented by the pandemic. Libraries are often champions of digital literacy development, but the complex interplay of practical skills and digital behaviours means that digital literacy support at an institutional level spans several units with areas of expertise. The IT support units are an obvious match for the development of technical skills, but the development of digital capabilities at University also incorporates clever learning design that means students encounter these development opportunities in ways that are meaningful for their learning, and a future careers perspective that contextualises their skill development in relation to their professional post-University lives. 

Stakeholders from the Pro Vice Chancellor (Students) Unit, Information Management and Technology Services (IMTS) Unit, and Learning Teaching & Curriculum (LTC) Unit are all strategic partners in the creation of the Digital Skills Hub. While the Library has a strong history of supporting digital literacies, as well as supporting the more traditional information literacies, it was important to us, that the site was not recognised solely as a Library site. We felt that this might compromise the value of the site for students who might think it was just about using databases rather than the broader range of digital skills and behaviours that make up their everyday lives.

The Digital Skills Hub

In late 2021, the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic and Student Life) revitalised the institutional conversation about digital literacies as part of a strategy for supporting student success, and identified the Library as a key stakeholder in this initiative.  In response, we created an online Digital Skills Hub – a one-stop shop for students to be able to access all the digital literacy support that they needed. The Hub provides a consistent location for students who don’t know where to find digital literacy support, recognising that they often need to seek support from a variety of different units and departments, but don’t know which unit to approach for help with their specific problem. Having all the content in one place makes this an easier proposition, particularly for students who are less digitally literate. Pragmatically, because we had the support of the DVC (A&SL), we were able to secure support in embedding a link to the Digital Skills Hub in all the subject Moodle sites. This means that it was easily accessible for most students, in a location that they were already accessing for academic purposes.

One of the factors that made the Digital Skills Hub possible, was the acquisition of the JISC Digital Capabilities service. This included the Discovery Tool, a tool which allows students to undertake a self-assessment and receive a personalised report on their digital skills. Alongside the Discovery Tool, the JISC site provided a suite of support resources, and capacity for us to create UOW specific support resources that are embedded in the JISC reports. The JISC interface also provides us with valuable information in the form of an institutional dashboard. This highlights student skills across the different capability areas and provides a heat map of where the strengths and areas for development lie across different student types and different faculties. The data is de-identified, so we can’t see what a particular students progress might look like, but it does give us a good idea of trends, enabling us to target support services where they are needed.

A one stop shop for digital skills information

The front page of the Student Digital Skills Hub

There are three main ways that the Digital Skills Hub supports students:
– It provides them with access to the JISC Discovery Tool, a self evaluation tool that illustrates each student’s personal strengths and weaknesses in relation to digital skills and provides them with a customised report and suggested actions/resources for developing those skills further.

– It explores Digital Capabilities through the lens of the JISC Digital Capabilities Framework, and highlights how those framework areas relate to everyday skills and digital behaviours

– It provides them with easy access to a knowledge base of FAQs on a variety of digital skills topics and gives them the opportunity to chat/ask a question. This knowledge base incorporates existing relevant FAQs as well as newly created FAQs that are specifically designed to support the needs of the Hub.

There is also a rating system for students to rate their satisfaction with the site, as well as a link for them to provide feedback. 

Key points to consider

For institutions interested in doing something similar, the following points are worthy of consideration.

  • It’s important to get the strategic support of the different units that make up the digital literacies support services for students. Creating a site where some support is offered, but students need to go elsewhere for different kinds of tasks, just creates barriers for students.
  • An accessible and well-designed platform is key to the success of the site. You want to make sure that students with lower levels of digital skills can access the site and find it easy to navigate. 
  • Centre the development of the site on the needs of the students who will be using it. We are using an iterative design process, which means that we take on board student feedback and insights from the literature to inform the way the site develops. We see the Digital Skills Hub as a constantly evolving resource that will continue to be shaped and developed by the needs of the people using it.

Six months on from the creation of the site, we are currently engaged in a process of seeking feedback to inform the way that the site develops in the future. This is driven by an iterative, human-centred approach to content development that commits to continuously evaluating whether the site meets user needs, and adapting and evolving the site to ensure it continues to do so.

Introducing Ateliers sur demande | Instant Workshops free, open, and bilingual digital skills microlessons

Posted on by

By Mish Boutet, Digital Literacy Librarian, University of Ottawa (Canada), mboutet@uottawa.ca

Bonjour and hello. I am a Digital Dexterity Guest Champion, Mish Boutet, from the University of Ottawa in Canada. I would like to introduce Ateliers sur demande | Instant Workshops, free and open short lessons on digital skills for higher education in French and English. 

The Instant Workshops home page with its welcome message and three most recent workshops.
Image of the Ateliers sur demande | Instant Workshops home page. The image is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

The Context

The University of Ottawa is bilingual. To serve our community, it is important to have resources in both French and English. It isn’t always easy to find good quality, digital dexterity-building resources available in both languages though. This being the case, I tried to make some. 

Not by myself. I had the gracious help of collaborators from six other Canadian universities. It has been an excellent teamwork experience. 

We got a bit of funding. I mention this not to boast but to explain why I am now copy-pasting the following acknowledgement: Ateliers sur demande | Instant Workshops was made possible with funding by the Government of Ontario and through eCampusOntario’s support of the Virtual Learning Strategy. Check. 

The Concept

We set to work on this for about a year. We had an idea about the kind of resource we wanted to create: the kind we always hope to find when we search for stuff. We wanted a series of ready-to-go video-based microlessons that lone learners could use for self-instruction or instructors could include in their courses. 

On top of this, we wanted all content to be:

  • available in French and English, 
  • free, 
  • accessible, 
  • reusable under a Creative Commons Attribution License, 
  • focused to not waste learners’ time, 
  • flexible to support multiple learning preferences,  
  • humanised to mitigate the distancing effect of instructional videos, and 
  • structured to help creators develop content more easily. 

I believe we did a good job meeting most of these criteria most of the time. 

The Content

We used Jisc’s digital capabilities framework to scope the range of topics from which we could choose. Based on identified needs and on collaborators’ interests, Instant Workshops topics include: 

  • using password managers 
  • using content blockers 
  • introducing infographics 
  • creating bibliographies with ZoteroBib 
  • linking Google Scholar with your library 
  • identifying peer-reviewed content 
  • avoiding plagiarism 
  • adding tables of contents in Word 
  • adding page numbers in Word 
  • saving as PDF/A in Word.

Each workshop follows a consistent structure and includes: 

  1. a French and English version, 
  2. a title, 
  3. a brief description, 
  4. a short video lesson, 
  5. video subtitles, 
  6. video chapters, 
  7. an interactive transcript*, 
  8. written instructions, 
  9. a brief task for learning and review question, and 
  10. a downloadable text-based version of the lesson.

Our hope is that this structure keeps workshops straightforward yet flexible for learners, as well as manageable for workshop creators.  

*Interactive transcripts let you jump to any part of a video by selecting any bit of text in the transcript. We were able to include these thanks to the free, accessible, browser-based media player, Able Player. 

The Continuation

My university’s Teaching and Learning Support Service built the great website that houses our workshops. We launched the project with 12 workshops earlier in 2022. We are proud of what we accomplished, but we realise that our content scarcely begins to cover all that is possible with digital dexterity development. So, we are currently planning Instant Workshops, Season 2. I’m interested in more content around digital creation and digital wellbeing. I’m also interested in identifying new collaborators to bring their expertise to create even more content. 

So, there you are. Please use Instant Workshops if you think it looks useful. And feel free to reach out to let us know what you think of it.

Merci and thank you. 

The Digital Skills GitBook project: creating an open-source online guide for researchers and the broader academic community

Posted on by

By Dr Sara King, Training and Engagement Lead, AARNet (Australia’s Academic & Research Network); and members of the GitBook project group

It is of critical importance that publicly funded institutions create open knowledge that is available to everyone. So we’re embarking on an adventure to create the Digital Skills GitBook. It will be a living, open-source online guide to ‘modern not-quite-technical computer skills’ for researchers, library staff, and academics, ideally written in a way that will be accessible for everyone. In the spirit of Open Science, the contents of the book are being created so that they will be accessible to all levels of an inquiring society; amateur or professional.  

A figurine of an oktokat in the center, in the background a laptop with the main page of the GitHub open.
Photo by Roman Synkevych on Unsplash

CAUL’s Digital Dexterity Champions and their communities have set out to create an online book using static web technology on the GitBook platform. Utilising the connected GitHub notification system, creators and users can submit content, flag issues, and ask questions related to the format and the content via GitHub. The continuing maintenance of the book, to adapt to the ever-changing requirements for updates, is designed to encourage participation as an essential part of the process of creating a truly community-created resource.   

Our progress so far:

  • We submitted a proposal to CAUL with the help of their new Director of Strategy & Analytics, Kate Davis. They approved our project brief and we were launched.  
  • We attended ARDC GitHub training – on Zoom! This was a 3.5-hour workshop where our patient instructors, Matthias and Liz, showed us how to create a repository, how to edit our GitBook ‘from the back end’ in GitHub, and how to make sure that we shared all of our adventures with each other in one space.  
  • We created a test private GitHub repository and GitBook – sharing recipes, recording our steps as we went. This is a place where we could experiment and fail, and help each other.  We learned some important lessons here without damaging our main project! For example – don’t delete branches …  

How we are collaborating:

  • Members from WA all the way to NZ attend fortnightly meetings over Zoom to discuss our progress, barriers, workarounds, and how we can spread the word to our wider communities. 
  • We are making the most of a wide variety of systems and channels to keep track of our progress – Slack, Teams, CloudStor, GitHub issues log, and email.  This is extending our capabilities in digital communication, collaboration and participation – together with stretching our brains! 

Still to come:

  • We have SO MANY new concepts to learn – slugs, merges, pull requests, static web technology… it’s exciting!  
  • We are creating our strategy and content plan, and developing a chapter outline (one idea is to use CAUL’s Digital Dexterity Framework categories as chapter headings to make it relevant for our library communities). 
  • We’re even planning to present at VALA 2022! 
  • We want to extend the project beyond the Digital Dexterity Champions network, to others in our library and university communities. 

This project is part of our own push towards Digital Dexterity and using some of the attributes outlined in the framework, such as agility, collaboration and creativity, in order to produce a useful resource for our broader communities and their own Digital Dexterity. If we get it right, it’ll be a win-win! 

If you are interested in learning more about the Digital Skills GitBook project, please contact sara.king@aarnet.edu.au

Day 4 of Championing the Digital Dexterity Framework Virtual Festival – Using collaboration to understand engagement with OERs

Posted on by

by Susan Vickery, Associate University Librarian, Macquarie University

Day 4 of the CAUL Digital Dexterity Virtual Festival explored the concept of Open Education Resources in Higher Education with Sarah Lambert sharing some of the findings from the research related to Australia Open textbooks as Social Justice, a study funded by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE).

Whilst the affordability benefits and accessibility options are easily identified as incentives for the use of Open Education Resources, Sarah’s presentation explored the opportunity of OER practice to incorporate diverse perspectives and collaboratively create/curate more inclusive range of learning resources. Sarah also reported that the research identified that some Australian academics may be more ready than we realise with frustration over dated content and limited access conditions associated with commercially produced texts. OER offers a solution to deliver current content that can easily be updated to grow with the knowledge of that field.

So how do we translate that understanding back to our own institutions where some of us may already be worried about the feasibility of convincing our administration that whilst using OER makes perfect sense, are they equally supportive of our academics also “giving it away” for free?

The second part of the Day 4 Digital Dexterity program gave us the opportunity to workshop this together. In teams we explored what we could do in reality to help bring our teaching and learning partners along in the understanding of the wider benefits of collaborating in the practice of Open Education. Led enthusiastically by Kristy Newton (Digital Literacies Coordinator, University of Wollongong) the groups employed a design thinking methodology (on speed) to step through the first few phases: Empathise – Define – Ideate – Prototype – Test.  

persona: Melanie Chang (Undergraduate Student) ● Summary of Studies: Melanie worked really hard during her VCE to get a high ATAR in order to study dentistry. Melanie has a family history in dentistry, her father and uncle are both practicing dentists. Before the COVID-19 lockdown, Melanie was only able to buy a couple of her textbooks (in print), as the cost of her textbooks range from $200-$500. During the lockdown Melanie returned home to Melbourne, this meant her study relied on her teachers making sure all necessary resources were available online. Chapters from textbooks were uploaded to the LMS by teachers for students to access. Certain textbooks were not able to be provided online as this breached copyright, this led to students sharing PDF copies of chapters through email. All the PDF scans were in black and white, which made it difficult for students to identify symptoms relating to gum disease, infected teeth, etc. Melanie raised this issue with her teacher and the PDFs were uploaded again in colour, this resulted in a delay in vital information required for Melanie's studies. Melanie’s demanding course schedule means she has no spare time for causal work, thus her parents are supporting her financially. Melanie finds it difficult to ask her parents to buy textbooks on top of paying her rent. Melanie feels it is especially hard to justify the purchase of textbooks that are only going to be used for one semester and as the curriculum is changing next year, there is no option to sell the textbooks to next year’s dentistry students. ● Icon Info: ○ Lives in Bendigo on campus in a single room with shared amenities with 11 other students ○ Basic Digital Skills, can navigate social media really well and use basic Microsoft software. ○ Collaborative Learner – Able and willing to try new things with friends. ○ Spends most of their time studying ○ Likes catching up with friends outside of class, running, yoga, reading books on her Kindle. ● Key Factors(Quotes): ○ “I missed the initial library sessions about how to search to find materials, but have picked up some skills using the pre-recorded content and additional resources added to the help guides. It took me awhile to get the basics and I am sure I am still missing heaps of online resources, but you don’t know what you are missing out on I suppose”. ○ “It is really hard not having all your resources in folders waiting for you to use like we did in high school, it is so time consuming searching through databases and library search for good quality items we can use.”

With the help of personas, each team collaborated to brainstorm and identify the needs of academic and students and then define how OERs might meet those needs. At the end of the two hour session we had collectively developed a range of practical ideas and strategies including potential assessment tasks that facilitated students to co-create lists of OERs to complement assigned readings.  

The beauty of this exercise was a enthusiastic high-energy demonstration that through collaboration – surely one of the lynch pins of Open Education – the groups were able to collectively understand and unpack the pain points and related clients’ needs, and creatively identify possible solutions that might influence engagement and uptake of OERs.    

DigiDex – Championing the CAUL Digital Dexterity Framework – Day 4, Thursday 11 February 2021

open video in new tab