DIY degree? Why universities should make online educational materials free for all

We loved this article from The Conversation, originally published on 29 May 2023.

Richard F. Heller, University of Newcastle

This article is part of our series on big ideas for the Universities Accord. The federal government is calling for ideas to “reshape and reimagine higher education, and set it up for the next decade and beyond”. A review team is due to finish a draft report in June and a final report in December 2023.

Sam Lion/Pexels


As part of the federal government’s bid to overhaul higher education, the Universities Accord discussion paper is seeking to “widen” opportunities for people to access university. It also wants to “grow a culture” of lifelong learning in Australia. As the review team note, most people in Australia who study at university are under 35.

Lifelong learning can help to ensure that workforce skills are up to date and that jobs in high demand can be filled, as well as enabling people to create new job opportunities through innovation.

These issues need to be approached in many ways. And will inevitably include proposals for shorter forms of learning as well as addressing the financial cost of attending university.

My proposal – also outlined in this journal article – is that a proportion of educational resources generated by publicly funded universities should be made public and freely available.

This could radically expand opportunity and flexibility and potentially allow students to design their own degrees, by doing multiple different units from different universities.

This idea is not completely new

There is a precedence for this idea. The international Plan S initiative is led by a group of national research funding organisations. Since 2018, it has been pushing for publicly funded research to be published in open-access journals or platforms.

Australian chief scientist Cathy Foley similarly wants all Australian research to be “open access, domestically and internationally, and for research conducted overseas to be freely available to read in Australia”.

When it comes to university learning, a 2019 UNESCO report encouraged member states to make higher education educational resources developed with public funds free and freely available.

In a March 2023 report, the Productivity Commission recommended the federal government require “all universities to provide all lectures online and for free”. The commission said this would increase transparency in teaching performance and encourage online learning.

But this also has the ability to make to higher education more accessible.

There is already plenty of international experience sharing educational materials online – including the global Open Educational Resources public digital library. This includes resources from early learning through to adult education.

The Productivity Commission says universities would not lose income by making educational resources open access. This is because universities “sell” credentials, not resources. It is also argued overworked academics can save time by using materials created by others.

A mother works on her computer next to her young son.

But there is resistance from institutions and academics, including a perception free resources will be poor quality and take a lot of time to create. There is also a lack of technological tools to adapt resources. This may explain why open education has not yet taken off in Australia.

Making resources free will increase access to higher education in Australia. Shutterstock

How would this work?

My plan would require open online sites to host educational materials produced by academics. These would need to be moderated or curated and published under an open access license.

It would include a peer review system for educational materials like the one already used for research publications. Academics could get credit for publishing, updating or reviewing resources and the publication of education output would be included in the university metrics.

This could also help reverse the current downgrading of teaching in Australian universities in favour of research.

There could be three types of users:

  1. students who access materials through the university that produced them, as per current practice

  2. individual students outside the university that created the materials who access materials for their own learning at whatever stage of life they are relevant to them

  3. other organisations, including other universities, that then contextualise and deliver the materials to their students.

What kind of materials are we talking about?

The Productivity Commission has talked about “lectures” being made available for free. But lectures are not a good way of transmitting information, especially online. For one thing, they do not promote critical thinking.

My plan proposes whole courses or at least sections of courses with assessments, would be provided. This includes text, videos and software and can include course planning materials and evaluation tools.

An indication of the academic level to which the course speaks, and the amount of possible credit, should also be provided.

What about accreditation?

Accreditation of learning should be considered as part of this.

The OERu is an international organisation where partner universities (including Penn State in the US and Curtin University in Australia) offer free access to online courses. Students pay reduced fees if they want to submit assignments, which can earn them microcredits towards a degree offered by one of the partners.

A woman in a wheelchair work on a laptop in a cafe.

A more radical option would be to develop a system where students collect microcredits from whatever source they wish and present them to an accrediting body for an academic award rather than enrolling in a particular degree course.

Students could pay a fee if they want accreditation for their work. Marcus Aurelius/Pexels

Suggested recommendations

As it prepares its draft report, the accord review team should recommend:

  • most university-generated educational material should be public and free

  • as an interim goal, within three years, 10% of all public university courses should be freely available online

  • an organisation should be created to develop the infrastructure needed to do this. This includes, open repositories, a peer review system for open educational materials, and systems for offering microcredits to students and academic credit to academics who take part.

Why is this a good idea?

The Productivity Commission says making this material public will encourage higher quality teaching, empower students and assist in lifelong learning. On top of this, there is the potential for true reform of the educational landscape.

It provides opportunities for collaboration between universities, rather than a competitive business model. And it would make teaching more important, rather than an “inconvenient task” by those seeking academic advancement through research.

Finally, it would genuinely make learning more accessible and more affordable, no matter who you are or where you live.The Conversation

Richard F. Heller, Emeritus Professor, University of Newcastle

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

Is ChatGPT cheating? The complexities of AI use in tertiary education. 

Craig Wattam, Rachael Richardson-Bullock

Te Mātāpuna Library & Learning Services, Auckland University of Technology

“The university is at the stage of reviewing its rules for misconduct because they really don’t apply as much anymore.” 

– Tom, Student Advocate, on the Noisy Librarian Podcast

Cheating in the tertiary education sector is not new. Generative AI technologies, while presenting enormous opportunity, are the latest threat to academic integrity. AI tools like Chat GPT blur the lines between human-generated and machine-generated content. They present a raft of issues, including ambiguous standards for legitimate and illegitimate use, variations in acceptance and usage across discipline contexts, and little or inadequate evidence of their use. A nuanced response is required.

Fostering academic integrity through AI literacy

Academic integrity research argues pervasively that a systematic, multi-stakeholder, networked approach is the best way to foster a culture of academic integrity (Kenny & Eaton, 2022). Fortunately, this is also the way to foster ethical, critical reflective and skilful use of AI tools, in other words, a culture of AI literacy. Ironically, to support integrity, we must shift our attention away from merely preventing cheating to ensuring that students learn how to use these tools responsibly. Thus, we can ensure that our focus is on learning and helping students develop the skills necessary to navigate the digital age ethically and effectively.

Hybrid future 

So, the challenge of AI is an opportunity and an imperative. As we humans continue to interact with technology in high complexity systems, so the way we approach academic work will continue to develop.  Rather than backing away or banning AI technologies from the classroom all together, forging a hybrid future, where AI tools play a role in setting students up for success, will benefit both staff and students.

Information and academic literacy practitioners, and other educators, will need to be dexterous enough to respond to the eclipsing, revision, and constant evolution of some of our most ingrained concepts. Concepts such as authorship, originality, plagiarism, and acknowledgement. 

What do students say? 

This was the topic of discussion in a recent episode of the Noisy Librarian Podcast. Featured guests were an academic and a student – a library Learning Advisor and a Student Advocate. The guests delved into the complexities of academic integrity in today’s digital landscape. Importantly, their discussion underscored the need for organizations to understand and hear from students about how AI is impacting them, how they are using it, and what they might be concerned about. Incorporating the student voice and understanding student perspectives is crucial for developing guidelines and support services that are truly effective and relevant.  

Forget supervillains! 

Both podcast guests emphasised that few cases of student misconduct involve serial offenders or super villains who have made a career out of gaming the system. Rather than intending to cheat, more closely, misconduct is related to a lack of knowledge or skill. Meantime, universities are facing challenges – needing to adapt their misconduct rules and provide clear guidelines on the acceptable use of AI tools. 

Listen to the Noisy Librarian podcast episode Is ChatGPT cheating? The complexities of AI use in tertiary education

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Or find us on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts or I Heart Radio

Reference:

Kenny, N., & Eaton, S. E. (2022). Academic Integrity Through a SoTL Lens and 4M Framework: An Institutional Self-Study. In Academic Integrity in Canada (pp. 573–592). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83255-1_30

Library strategy and Artificial Intelligence

by Dr Andrew M Cox, Senior Lecturer, the Information School, University of Sheffield.

This post was originally published in the National Centre for AI blog, owned by Jisc. It is re-printed with permission from Jisc and the author.

On April 20th 2023 the Information School, University of Sheffield invited five guest speakers from across the library sectors to debate “Artificial Intelligence: Where does it fit into your library strategy?”

The speakers were:

  1. Nick Poole, CEO of CILIP
  2. Neil Fitzgerald, Head of Digital Research, British Library
  3. Sue Lacey-Bryant, Chief Knowledge Officer; Workforce, Training and Education Directorate of NHS England
  4. Sue Attewell, Head of Edtech, JISC
  5. John Cox, University Librarian, University of Galway

A capacity 250 people had signed up online, and there was a healthy audience in the room in Sheffield.

Slides from the event can be downloaded here . These included updated results from the pre-event survey, which had 68 responses.

This blog is a personal response to the event and summary written by Andrew Cox and Catherine Robinson.

Impact of generative AI

Andrew Cox opened the proceedings by setting the discussion in the context of the fascination with AI in our culture from ancient Greece, movies from as early as the start of the C20th, through to current headlines in the Daily Star!

Later on in the event, in his talk John Cox quoted several authors saying AI promised to produce a profound change to professional work. And it seemed to be agreed amongst all the speakers that we had entered a period of accelerating change, especially with Chat GPT and other generative AI.

These technologies offer many benefits. Sue Lacey-Bryant shared some examples of how colleagues were already experimenting with using Chat GPT in multiple ways: to search, organise content, design web pages, draft tweets and write policies. Sue Attewell mentioned JISC sponsored AI pilots to accelerate grading, draft assessment tasks, and analyse open text NSS comments.

And of course wider uses of AI are potentially very powerful. For example Sue Lacey-Bryant shared the example of how many hours of radiologists time AI was saving the NHS. Andrew Cox mentioned how Chat GPT functions would be realised within MS Office as Copilot. Specifically for libraries, from the pre-event survey it seemed that the most developed services currently were library chatbots and Text and Data Mining support; but the emphasis of future plans was “Promoting AI (and data) literacy for users”.

But it did mean uncertainty. Nick Poole compared the situation to the rise of Web2.0 and suggested that many applications of generative AI were emerging and we didn’t know which might be the winners. User behaviour was changing and so there was a need to study this. As behaviour changed there would be side effects which required us to reflect holistically, Sue Attewell pointed out. For example if generative AI can write bullet point notes, how does this impact learning if writing those notes was itself how one learned? She suggested that the new technology cannot be banned. It may also not be detectable. There was no choice but to “embrace” it.

Ethics

The ethics of AI is a key concern. In the pre-event survey, ethics were the most frequently identified key challenge. Nick Poole talked about several of the novel challenges from generative AI, such as what is its implication for intellectual freedom? What should be preserved from generative AI (especially as it answers differently to each iteration of a question)? Nick identified that professional ethics have to be:

  • “Inclusive – adopting an informed approach to counter bias
  • Informed & evidence-based – geared towards helping information users to navigate the hype cycle
  • Critical & reflective – understanding our own biases and their impact
  • Accountable – focused on trust, referencing and replicability
  • Creative – helping information users to maximise the positive benefits of AI augmented services
  • Adaptive – enabling us to refresh our skills and expertise to navigate change”

Competencies

In terms of professional competencies for an AI world, Nick said that there was now wider recognition that critical thinking and empathy were key skills. He pointed out that the CILIP Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB) had been updated to reflect the needs of an AI world for example by including data stewardship and algorithmic literacy. Andrew Cox referred to some evidence that the key skills needed are social and influencing skills not just digital ones. Skills that respondents to the pre-event survey thought that libraries needed were:

  •        General understanding of AI
  •        How to get the best results from AI
  •        Open-mindedness and willingness to learn 
  •        Knowledge of user behaviour and need
  •        Copyright
  •        Professional ethics and having a vision of benefits

Strategy

John Cox pointed to evidence that most academic library strategies were not yet encompassing AI. He thought it was because of anxiety, hesitancy, ethics concerns and inward looking and linear thinking. But Neil explained how the British Library is developing a strategy. The process was challenging, akin to ‘Flying a plane while building it”. Sue Attewell emphasised the need for the whole sector to develop a view. The pre-event survey suggested that the most likely strategic responses were: to upskill existing staff, study sector best practice and collaborate with other libraries.

Andrew Cox suggested that some key issues for the profession were:

  • How do we scope the issue: As about data/AI or a wider digital transformation?
    • How does AI fit into our existing strategies – especially given the context of institutional alignment?
    • What constitutes a strategic response to AI? How does this differ between information sectors?
  • How do we meet the workforce challenge?
    • What new skills do we need to develop in the workforce?
    • How might AI impact equality and diversity in the profession?

Workshop discussions

Following the presentations from the speakers, those attending the event in person were given the opportunity to further discuss in groups the professional competencies needed for AI. Those attending online were asked to put any comments they had regarding this in the chat box. Some of the key discussion points were:

  • The need for professionals to rapidly upskill themselves in AI. This includes understanding what AI is and the concepts and applications of AI in individual settings (e.g. healthcare, HE etc.), along with understanding our role in supporting appropriate use. However, it was believed this should go beyond a general understanding to a knowledge of how AI algorithms work, how to use AI and actively adopting AI in our own professional roles in order to grow confidence in this area.
  • Horizon scanning and continuous learning – AI is a fast-paced area where technology is rapidly evolving. Professionals not only need to stay up-to-date with the latest developments, but also be aware of potential future developments to remain effective and ensure we are proactive, rather than reactive.
  • Upskilling should not just focus on professional staff, but all levels of library staff will require some level of upskilling in the area of AI (e.g. library assistants).
  • Importance of information literacy and critical thinking skills in order to assess the quality and relevance of AI outputs. AI should therefore be built into professional training around these skills.
  • Collaboration skills – As one group stated, this should be more ‘about people, not data’. AI requires collaboration with:
    • Information professionals across the sector to establish a consistent approach; 
    • Users (health professionals, students, researchers, public etc.) to establish how they are using AI and what for;
    • With other professionals (e.g. data scientists).
  • Recruitment problems were also discussed, with it noted that for some there had been a drop in people applying for library roles. This was impacting on the ability to bring in new skillsets to the library (e.g. data scientist), but on the ability to allow existing staff the time to upskill in the area of AI. It was discussed that there was the need to promote lifestyle and wellbeing advantages to working in libraries to applicants.

Other issues that came up in the workshop discussions centered around how AI will impact on the overall library service, with the following points made:

  • There is the need to expand library services around AI, as well as embed it in current services;
  • Need to focus on where the library can add value in the area of AI (i.e. USP);
  • Libraries need to make a clear statement to their institution regarding their position on AI;
  • AI increases the importance of and further incentivises open access, open licencing and digitisation of resources;
  • Questions over whether there is a need to rebrand the library.

The attendees also identified that the following would useful to help prepare the sector for AI:

  • Sharing of job descriptions to learn about what AI means in practice and help with workforce planning. Although, it was noted how the RL (Research Libraries) Position Description Bank contains almost 4000 position descriptions from research libraries primarily from North America, although there are many examples from RLUK members; 
  • A reading list and resource bank to help professionals upskill in AI;
  • Work shadowing;
  • Sharing of workshops delivered by professionals to users around the use of AI;
  • AI mailing lists (e.g. JISCmail);
  • Establishment of a Community of Practice to promote collaboration. Although it was noted that AI would probably change different areas of library practice (such as collecting or information literacy) so was likely to be discussed within the professional communities that already existed in these areas.

Workshop outcome

Following the workshop Andrew Cox and Catherine Robinson worked on a draft Working paper which we invite you to comment on @ Draft for comment: Developing a library strategic response to Artificial Intelligence: Working paper.

Lost in the Open Sea: Practical guidance for finding and creating inclusive OER

Ash Barber, Librarian and OER enthusiast

Do you ever feel kind of lost in the sea of resources out there, trying to figure out how to create or find high quality open educational resources (OER)? Those ones that tick all the boxes for great content and promote equity and inclusion?

Me too.

So I went on this trip.

The beginning

For a few years, I’d been peering curiously at the higher education world of North America, watching as they made leaps and bounds in progress towards creating OER that are steeped in concepts of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility – and wondering how can we make these leaps here in Australia too? So, when the Libraries of the Australian Technology Network (LATN) announced a Fellowship opportunity to explore OER on an international study tour, I grabbed it and ran – well, flew – to that magical mystery land I’d been observing for so long.

The broad theme of the Fellowship project I proposed was the development of some kind of resource that curates other resources (a meta resource, if you will) to help Australian librarians better understand the identifying characteristics of OER which influence greater equity and inclusion in education, and to harness this knowledge to empower others to raise their marginalised voices.

The middle

Galvanised by a deep belief in this idea (and the narcoleptic superpower of dodging jetlag), in September 2022, I finally stepped foot in Los Angeles, ready to fangirl my way through a whirlwind two and half weeks of 21 meetings with 46 people I could. not. wait. to. meet.

I attended and met with a multitude of institutions that are home to many open education thought leaders across Los Angeles, Vancouver and Minneapolis, and held a number of incidental conversations along the way. Institutions included:

I am ever grateful to all the lovely humans who met with me for their generosity of time, wisdom and kindness.

The empowered future

These conversations informed the creation of EmpoweredOER (the promised meta resource), a website which helps practitioners wade through that open sea to find a set of resources, concrete examples, and guides curated to the Australian context. It provides a wider theoretical understanding of equitable education principles then grounds them in practical exemplars of OER that meet these needs. EmpoweredOER aims to help people who feel a bit lost amongst it all to find a solid set of parameters to work within.

The website uses the BranchED Equity Rubric for OER Evaluation as the framework for looking at individual aspects of OER with an equity lens.

Often when we talk about creating OER that are “accessible” we’re thinking about alt-text and screen-readers. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s just one step in the direction of access. It’s not thinking about “accessible” in the broader sense of cultural sustainability and multiple ways of learning. The Equity Rubric for OER Evaluation explores these deeper levels of access, but doesn’t give examples demonstrating concepts. EmpoweredOER builds on the Rubric to provide tangible examples found in the wild which help ground the (often high level) language and explanations.

Why is the site called EmpoweredOER?

I’m glad you asked!

OER empower because OER remove the barriers to publishing. In traditional publishing, you have a “gatekeeper” – the one who decides whose voice will be heard and what they’re saying. This necessarily marginalises some voices and elevates others. However, anyone can publish an OER. Anyone can get their voice out there, can tell their own story and not have their story told by others.

OER also afford the opportunity for students to be involved in the co-creation of new knowledge and to have their own voices represented, to see themselves reflected in the material they’re studying in the classroom. One of the great examples I came across in the US was this program called Open For Antiracism (OFAR) which trains teaching staff in antiracist pedagogical practices, including the use and creation of OER as a tool to this end. One of the problems the program addresses is that materials in the classroom don’t always represent the people in the classroom. An OER can be modified, adapted, become a collaborative piece in which students can see themselves and build a sense of belonging: They’re welcome here. This course is for them. They’re not on the outside looking in.

The call for support

If you’d like to learn more about EmpoweredOER, please tune in to my upcoming webinar Demystifying inclusive OER: Practical guidance for finding and creating equitable OER which I am co-presenting with Tanya Grosz from the Open Education Network. I also gratefully welcome any feedback on the website (its content, structure, usability) and any suggested resources to include.

You can get in touch with me at Ash.Barber@unisa.edu.au or follow me on Twitter @AshTheLibrarian.

Learning and Engagement Librarian secondment: My year of learning

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! 

The Need for Digital Literacy in a Digitally-Connected World

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!

Open knowledge activism for lifelong learning, independent research and knowledge translation

By Clare O’Hanlon, La Trobe University Library

e: c.ohanlon@latrobe.edu.au

Open knowledge activism in libraries is about more than negotiating transformative agreements and making research available in repositories and open access journals. It also involves helping researchers and students give research back to communities in an accessible and meaningful format for their needs and contexts. Academic library worker support for student and academic digital literacies development, particularly information, media, and data literacies; collaboration; community and participation; and digital creation, problem solving and innovation, plays a crucial role in this. Local public library and community archive and museum workers provide extensive digital literacies, local history, STEM, and creative programming in their communities. Together we can do more to support lifelong learning, independent research, and knowledge translation.

Open knowledge activism by night

Volunteering with the Australian Queer Archives (AQuA) by night to preserve and make research and more knowledge available for and with LGBTIQA+ communities within and beyond the academy in multiple formats (from queer history walks and exhibitions to an Honours thesis prize and beyond) has helped me see that research can be a collective, generative, and transformative process. Our collection and work may not be open in traditional academic “Open Access” ways, and it is not safe for our collection to be completely open to all, but we are open in the inclusive sense of the word. In her Open as in dangerous talk, Chris Bourg illustrates the importance of individual privacy and protection from abuse and harassment, and warns that Open Access publishing can perpetuate existing systems of oppression and inequality and that opening up collections can potentially lead to a loss of context that is then extracted and shared in diverse ways. Bourg’s warnings and my work at AQuA by night motivate me to advocate for the collective, generative, and transformative kind of research and openness in the sometimes extractive and competitive academic environment I work in by day.

The Australian Queer Archives reading room
Australian Queer Archives reading room ready for visitors (author supplied).

Other ways that library workers can support open knowledge activism by night might include participating in learning spaces outside of universities, including but not limited to:

Open knowledge activism by day

Below are some ways I have helped and seen others help support lifelong learning, independent research, and knowledge translation through open knowledge activism by day:

Additionally, we could help connect academics and students with local public library, archive and museum-based STEM, local history, literary and creative programming rather than compete with such programs. Some examples of this public library and related programming include:

We must keep in mind the amount of labour involved in opening up research, translating it into practice, and making it accessible to communities and recognise that this is not always adequately acknowledged and supported. With increasing focus on research impact and engagement, this is changing, and I hope this post will encourage academic and public library workers to collaborate with each other and academics and students to open research with and for communities.

Large protest on Flinders Street in Melbourne with a trans flag and placard with the words 'Change the System' written in rainbow-coloured letters and two Aboriginal flags on it.
Protest in Melbourne (author supplied).

The OER Capability Toolkit – Reflection and Learning

by Frank Ponte, Manager, Library Services (Teaching), RMIT University Library

E: frank.ponte@rmit.edu.au or
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francoponte/ and Twitter: @ponte_frank

The OER Capability Toolkit

Cover of the OER Capability Toolkit from RMIT

Read and download the OER Capability Toolkit from:
https://rmit.pressbooks.pub/oercapabilitytoolkit/

Eighteen months ago, I formed a team to investigate how we would address OER awareness, adoption, support and capability for teaching staff. We addressed these needs through the development of an OER Capability Toolkit designed for the RMIT University audience but shared openly for others to adapt.

The authoring and development of this work was conducted remotely in the shared Teams environment. The OER Capability Toolkit was published in July 2022. The published work also spawned a set of four open education self-directed modules via the university HR platform for onboarding of new staff and professional development, an authoring toolkit and a style guide. Collectively, these works are the fundamental building blocks to open education knowledge building and all designed to provide the support structure required for educators to successfully author an open work.

Building the OER Capability Toolkit allowed me to reflect on the process that was undertaken and share the learning from our project.  

Sustainability

Sustainability is key driver in the development of an open publication. Educators are tasked with bringing together large groups of authors, and consequently need to ensure clarity and purpose. Therefore, a strong foundation of support is required. The library has provided this through the aforementioned publications, self-directed modules, and the Pressbooks authoring platform. In addition, the library created an open publishing team to reinforce our commitment to open education, streamline the support the library provides, and assign each open textbook project an open publishing team member to provide advice and guidance for a successful outcome.

A publishing workflow

When we embarked on our project to develop the OER Capability Toolkit our understanding of an open publishing workflow was emergent. In retrospect, it would have been a simpler task if we had a clearer understanding of the fundamental principles, processes and tasks associated with publishing rather than vacillating between authoring and addressing complex problems. The subsequent emergence of the CAUL publishing workflow  now anchors our support with educators and ensures that the seven stages of publishing and associated tasks are addressed at the appropriate time.

Creative Commons licensing

The OER Capability Toolkit is a remix. That is, the publication is a combination of existing creative commons resources and original content. Lessons learned include:

  • Ensuring there is an understanding of the license type you are publishing under from the outset. This will determine what resources you have at your disposal and can use in the adaptation process.
  • Knowing a non-derivative license cannot be used in any adaptation.
  • Maintaining track of what was being used in the adaptation. Doing so, assisted in creating the reference list and acknowledging the original resource.
  • Reflecting on your level of comfort with releasing an open work. That is, are you happy for your newly created work to be adapted, remixed, or monetized.

Formative and summative assessments – H5P activities

H5P is a plugin available in Pressbooks which allows the author to create formative and summative assessment tasks for learners. There is evidence to suggest that this kind of interactivity assists learners to stay focused and engaged with the content.  I wanted to include these activities in the OER Capability Toolkit as learning and engagement was a critical element to building and delivering this work. The toolkit contains a number of H5P activities used as formative assessment and presents a summative assessment called the “open pedagogy plan” in Part 5 as the culmination of this learning.

Open publications that contain formative and summative activities have the capacity to be embedded within the context of a broader course curriculum and provide the flexibilities required for educators to engage with open pedagogical practices.

Referencing

Ensure that attribution and citation are clearly defined and articulated from the beginning.  Even though the terms share characteristics, citations and attributions play different roles and appear in different places. A citation allows authors to provide the source of any quotations, ideas, and information that they include in their own work based on the copyrighted works of other authors. It is used in works for which broad permissions have not been granted.

Attribution on the other hand is used when a resource or text is released with an open licence. This legal requirement states that users must attribute — give credit — to the creator of the work and encompass these critical elements at a minimum:

  • Title of the work
  • Author (creator) of the work
  • Source (link) or where the work can be found
  • License of the work

Peer review, front and back matter

Peer review was an important element to get right. We engaged in three rounds of peer review. Starting by reviewing each other’s chapters within the authoring group. This exercise provided an initial opportunity to assess, grammar, language, the use, or overuse of acronyms, and finesse language and comprehension. The second peer review involved an external cohort of colleagues from other Australian universities who provided a similar overview but from an external perspective. A third peer review was undertaken using a tool called Hypothe.sis. This tool is a plug-in in Pressbooks and allows for social annotation with students. It is also a useful tool to implement as part of a peer review process. All commentary is contextualized within the chapters and responses are received by email and easily edited.


Front and back matter was important to include as part of the publication process. Including the front and back matter provided completeness to the work and offered context to the reader. The front matter introduced the new work and helped the reader understand the evolution of its creation and the back matter included a glossary and appendix.

In conclusion

The open education philosophy seamlessly interconnects with RMIT Library’s ethos of sharing knowledge and supporting learning. RMIT Library is well positioned to work with academic staff to create, produce, and disseminate open works via open platforms for maximum impact, and the library as publisher, can lead and shape the transformation of curriculum pedagogy where every learner is supported and valued.

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

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

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.