Our continuing conversations with winners of the Open Education Awards for Excellence took us down under to Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand to hear from representatives from the Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL) OER Collective. Recognized in 2024 with an OEAward for Open Collaboration, the OER Collective demonstrates an outstanding example of collaboration across great distances that includes nearly every university from Australia and New Zealand.

We sat down back in August for a conversation with Mais Fatayer (University of Technology Sydney), Ash Barber (CAUL), and Richard White (University of Otago). You will hear insight into how the Collective has advanced open education in the region, providing accessible, high-quality Open Educational Resources (OER) that are created to be relevant to this part of the world. More than the wealth of resources, with the support of CAUL, open education has grown to be a thriving and dynamic community “down under” and beyond.

Join CAUL on December 12 for a live online celebration and showcase for the OER Collective’s activity in 2025.

In the OEGlobal Voices podcast studio with (clockwise from top left), Mais Fatayer, Ash Barber, Alan Levine, and Richard White.

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In This Episode

FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.

Celebrating the Success of the OER Collective with CAUL Representatives

Join host Alan Levine in the OEGlobal Voices podcast as he welcomes Mais Fatayer, Richard White, and Ash Barber to discuss the achievements of the Council for Australian University Librarians (CAUL) OER Collective. This episode delves into the role of libraries in driving open educational resources (OER) and the significance of collaboration across Australian and New Zealand universities. The guests share their personal journeys into open education, highlight notable OER publications, and discuss the future of open education in the region. Episode recorded on August 14, 2025.

  • 00:00 Intro Music and Highlighted Quotes
  • 01:26 Podcast Studio and Guest Introductions
  • 03:33 Personal Backgrounds and School Experiences
  • 13:45 First Encounters with Open Education
  • 20:46 The OER Collective: Formation and Growth
  • 24:21 Collaboration and Success Stories
  • 26:14 Rebellious Beginnings and Institutional Challenges
  • 26:29 The Power of Collective Publishing
  • 27:24 Diverse Expertise in the Collective
  • 28:32 Community Engagement and Support
  • 29:59 Highlighting the Podcast: Speaking of Open
  • 32:37 Showcasing Standout OER Projects
  • 41:25 Personal Passions and Hobbies
  • 44:21 Future Goals and Aspirations for OER
  • 49:53 Acknowledging Key Contributors
  • 52:18 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

(end of AI generated show notes)

Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 91

Our institutions are at various stages of OER development and their exploration of OER in general and OEP, the practices too. But I think the aims of the collective really do allow institutions with different goals and at different levels to benefit from the collective and from each other.

There’s a really wonderful thing that I’m observing lately is that your institutions who are more experienced are like the older sibling to some of the other institutions who are a bit newer. And I say that like older sibling ’cause there’s a real warmth about it where these institutions are wanting to take the other ones under their wing, guide them along, and really share their knowledge.

There isn’t a feeling of, “Oh, we know what we’re doing and we’re the best, and we were first, and we’re number one” is none of that. It’s very much, “Oh, we’ve done this before. We’ve made a mistake before. Let’s help you not make that mistake” and it’s really quite wonderful.

Ash Barber on the OER Collective

I think what a lot of institutions find it’s quite hard getting that buy-in from senior management. They don’t quite get the concept of an open book. “What is this weird thing that you wanted to get this away or what? I don’t really understand.”

Whereas libraries can grasp that much more readily. Speaking for my own institution, the library’s ability to get buy in on something like this at its senior level is difficult. But once CAUL came in, [it] made a huge difference for us because it provided that framework, the platform and the sort of support networks and all that stuff. It has just made a huge difference.

Richard White on libraries and CAUL

Back to the bigger conversation about why Open Education, is as many of my colleagues at UTS state, it’s the future. Because Open Education allows the work to continue to sustain the work in that flexibility where you can build on top of the work.

One of the things that we tried to do with the podcast is to bring that voice, or as I’d like to call it, the teaching presence from some of the case studies or the human presence and give the opportunity to the reader of the book or that case study to listen to the voice of the academic. Because there’s so much in the passion, the tone, the language and how academics present their case studies.

There’s a lot of examples around different themes in the book. So there’s adaptation, implementation, but there’s also a lot of case studies about the teaching and how academics teach using open pedagogies. We wanna bring the teaching voice closer and say, this is not just to create knowledge and share it with everyone, this is to enhance the learning experience. This is to see open education actually create impact on the student’s learning experience.

Mais Fatayer on the Speaking Open Podcast and Open Education Down UndOER case studies

Listen to more from our episodes recorded with Open Education Awards for Excellence winners.

Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called  Collective Genius by TimTaj that is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. We almost chose The Collective by Beat Mekanik. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).