OEGlobal Voices 91: CAUL OER Collective === Intro Music and Highlighted Quotes --- [00:00:04] Ash Barber: But the Collective really is the people in it. And so it's whatever people wanna create and collectively support. From CAUL's perspective, we're just providing the space and the infrastructure, facilitating the conversations, but the conversations really come from the people within it. [00:00:25] Richard White: To have harnessed that collective willingness that has existed, but there hasn't been the framework able to harness that willingness amongst library staffers. The people who are-- I'm actually not a librarian but I'm library adjacent. Getting that passion that brings people on board and has enabled that productive output. [00:00:54] Mais Fatayer: ' We've got the flexibility to contextualize, translate, adapt, in different ways, generate audio version of the content. We want different ways of presentation and open educational resource is actually the way to do that, enhancing the learner experience, 'cause students will start to see themselves in the curriculum, start to feel that speaks to us, that we are part of this, rather than continue to feel as being an outlier in this case study or this example in this book. Podcast Studio and Guest Introductions --- [00:01:26] Alan Levine: Welcome to the OEGlobal Voices podcast studio where for me, I'm talking to tomorrow and I said I wouldn't use that joke, but I did it. It's August 14th, 2025, far across Pacific Ocean, to where my guests are. We're recording a new episode for this podcast we do at Open Education Global. [00:01:46] And each one of these try to bring you really conversation style, so you can get to know 'em, the people, practices and ideas from open educators around the world. [00:01:54] And now-- or in the future, tomorrow, it is an Australia New Zealand region. We're here to hear more about the really successful efforts, of the Council for Australian University Librarians, or CAUL, as the acronym goes, in supporting open education in their part of the world through the OER Collective. [00:02:12] And this project was so well deserving of its recognition, almost a year ago in 2024 with an Open Education Award for excellence in Collaboration. It's timely as the nominations for the 2025 awards closed just a few weeks ago and the review committee is busy going through all the nominations. [00:02:31] We have more than 200 nominations in this year, and these will be the next round of winners that will be announced in October. But while it's happening, it's really great trying to share more detail what the CAUL OER Collective has achieved through inspiring levels of collaboration over great distances. [00:02:49] You can even notice that in the email address of today's guest, which of course you can't see in a podcast, Alan, but we were fortunate to meet many of the CAUL OER collective representatives at the 2024 OEGlobal Conference in Brisbane last November. [00:03:03] But now we get to hear from a few of them in more detail and learn what has happened through the OER Collective. It's been busy time for them in the last 10 months. So I'm your host Alan Levine and offering a warm welcome to our guests in the studio. [00:03:15] Hello, and if I learned correctly from my time in the land of the Turball people, galang nguruindhau. G'Day. Kia Ora, all greetings to everyone here, Mais Ash, and Richard. Welcome to the show. [00:03:29] Mais Fatayer: Thanks. [00:03:29] Richard White: Kia Ora Alan, Thanks for the warm welcome [00:03:30] Ash Barber: Thank you. [00:03:32] Alan Levine: Okay. Personal Backgrounds and School Experiences --- [00:03:38] Alan Levine: And of course, we have to introduce yourselves and so I, I will ask in turn, let us know who you are and then the where you are, which will be a map location probably. But also, because our podcast audience is listening and I just find it interesting to tell us like, what are your physical surroundings? What room are you in, right now? [00:03:54] I'm gonna call first on Mais. And so it's good to see you again, Mais. How are you today? [00:04:00] Mais Fatayer: Doing well. Thank you, Alan. And thank you for, inviting us to this podcast. My name is Mais Fatayer. I would like to say salamu alaikum to everyone. I work at the University of Technology Sydney. I've been working for six years, recently in a position where I'm the learning design experience manager. [00:04:24] I will focus mainly on educational and professional development. So this is who I am, professionally. And, University of Technology Sydney is in the heart of Sydney. It has a large campus, probably 10 locations for buildings. Where I am right now? I'm at home. [00:04:51] Actually, I'm zooming from home, in this little office that I made for myself where after we moved to hybrid working. [00:05:01] Alan Levine: Fantastic. We'll, jump across and I heard it's a long distance, it's about a flight as, Richard told me from Vancouver to Toronto, to get to where he is on the southern island. He is gonna tell me where he is. I'm not gonna take your ,. Richard. Welcome and hello. [00:05:15] Richard White: Thanks Alan. and hi to you two as well. I'm sitting in a, a fairly nondescript office, from a sort of 1960s brutalist architecture ten story building, right in the middle of the campus of Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. That's the University of Otago.  Ōtākou is the name of the region, Otago is how it was anglicized by the English speaking settlers who came in. [00:05:43]  Whakaihu means headland. We're positioned on a peninsula that jumps out into the Pacific Ocean. And if you get in a boat there, you won't stop until the reach Chile. . It's right here smack in the middle of the southern part of the Pacific Ocean. [00:05:59] And as you were hinting there, Alan, a long way from Australia even. I have actually been to UTS, Mais, I've never been to Adelaide, though Ash-- spoiler alert for people before Ash talks about where she's from. And our name  Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. means a place of many firsts as a kind of a figurative expression. [00:06:23] Waka is a canoe or a boat for Maori people. So  Whakaihu Waka is literally the prow of the boat, pushing forward into the ocean. a place of many firsts. Otago University was the first University in New Zealand, in 1869. We are proud of that as a unique thing for us here in New Zealand. [00:06:49] So yeah, that's where I'm. It's winter here, of course. it's 10:14 in the morning as we talk. We are one of the first places to see the sun each day here in New Zealand, near the international dateline. I was saying before we started the podcast, it's been very frosty here, and, my phone is telling me it's 9.8 degrees Celsius, and that's actually reasonably mild. [00:07:12] It's been colder than that, over the last three while. So that's where I am. [00:07:18] Alan Levine: Excellent, excellent. Love, love all the, symbolism and I appreciate the placement. Yeah. The "first" is really interesting. And now please to welcome, as we said, we're zipping over to Adelaide to welcome Ash Barber to the studio. [00:07:31] Ash Barber: Hi. Thank you so much. yeah. So I'm Ash Barber. I'm the senior coordinator for the OER Collective at CAUL and I'm in Adelaide. It's also very cold. I'll beat you on the degrees. It's 7.8 here. My nose is pink. I'm so cold. It's also very early here, it'll warm up a little bit. [00:07:54] I'm in also fairly nondescript room, just in my home office. I work fully remotely. I do have a cute little rainbow light though looking at me just to brighten up the space. And I have a couple of windows nearby as well, so I can watch the world go by. That's where I'm located. [00:08:13] Alan Levine: I'm gonna throw this in. It wasn't in my round of questions, but I just find it really interesting and I'll flip it to ask Ash first, where in the world did you grow up and what did you think of school as a kid? What kind of student were you? [00:08:26] Ash Barber: Yeah. I grew up in Adelaide So I've only really been traveling a little bit, in the last few years. Spent most of my life here. And I love school. I love to learn. I voraciously learn, everything all the time. And so school was fun. I went to several schools growing up. I moved around to multiple primary schools and then stayed at the one high school. [00:08:53] I loved the learning. I thought it was interesting moving to different schools and seeing the different dynamics and how what was cool at one place was no longer cool at the next. and just learning more about the people was the interesting part of school for me. [00:09:09] Alan Levine: That's great. And what about you, Richard?. [00:09:12] Richard White: I'm from here, from this part down in the south of New Zealand. I spent seven years living in Japan though, so, that's a big influence on the way I look at the world. I guess New Zealand is as a whole., I would say have quite an outward way of looking at the world too, because we are right down here, in the corner. [00:09:33] Most of us are from other places, originally. New Zealand was the last major land mass to be settled by human beings. As an interesting fact, that you might enjoy, Alan. Maori people came here maybe around the 1200s or 1300s or something like that. [00:09:53] Lots of unique animals here as well. So I'm from here, but lived overseas. I've traveled quite a bit in Southeast Asia and places like that. Like the opposite of New Zealand, which is quite spacious and green. I really love, the busy tumult of an Asian city, like Tokyo or Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh and places like that, or Kuala Lumpur, places I've visited and really loved. I love to visit maybe, I dunno if I could cope with living in a place like that. 'cause you're used to this space when you're from a place like this. [00:10:27] Alan Levine: And what, kind of, what did you think of school as a kid? Were you an eager student? [00:10:31] Richard White: Ah, school. Yeah, I was a, bit of a nerd, I did play a lot of sport as well. Cricket, of course, is a very popular sport here. I was massively into cricket as a kid. But I've always had a kind of a rebellious streak against authority, I think, as well as being nerdy. So I, yeah, I didn't necessarily always do what my teachers wanted me to do, [00:10:55] I started playing guitar at 16 and that probably changed my attitude. [00:11:00] Alan Levine: So this is great. We get to learn a lot about you. And Mais, where on the globe did you come to be in this world? [00:11:08] Mais Fatayer: Yeah, that's gonna be different. If we can hear it from my accent as well. So I was born in Jordan, in the Middle East. My roots are Palestinian, actually, from Palestine, which is a country that is dominating the headlines nowadays, unfortunately, in not really pleasant news. [00:11:31] But I was born in Jordan. I went to schools in Jordan. I went to a public school, girls only school. And similar to Richard, I loved sport. I was chatting with Ash the other day about playing sport at school, mainly basketball for a while. And I love to draw a lot, and I love math, so a bit of a maths nerd at that time, but not anything else. [00:12:01] School to me was about a lot of things. But I think the main thing that reminds me of school is my teachers. I feel my teachers at that time influenced my thinking a lot, which made me until now have a lot of appreciation to the teaching practice. [00:12:25] Every time I go back and think about how my thinking shaped, I still remember the impact of the teachers and the dedication they put towards what they did and really influenced a lot, not just me, of course, a lot of colleagues, friends in the school. So that was, something I still remember until now. [00:12:51] They had a lot of dedication towards learning-- they wanted you to actually learn, more than pass for an assessment. So that was very important, to the knowledge that we've developed and how we come to, to being and how we really appreciate the foundational knowledge. [00:13:17] Later on in stages in life where I started to explore more about learning design and the learning theory, things started to make more sense to me. So I saw the practice and then I read into the theory. So that was just like school to me really, yeah. [00:13:36] Alan Levine: Thanks for indulging in my question. I'm just really fascinated to hear about people's first impressions of school. [00:13:42] But let's zoom a little bit closer to the now. First Encounters with Open Education --- [00:13:50] Alan Levine: And, if you can continue Mais, like what was your first like awareness, entree, the calling to open education as something now that is central to your work? [00:13:57] Mais Fatayer: My first encounter with open education was actually when I worked in the Open University, and that was in 2008. So I moved from Jordan to Saudi Arabia and I worked there at the Arab Open University. At that time I started learning more about Moodle and started teaching. I taught in the computing program. [00:14:22] One of the things that kind of hit me at that time, we were using a British curriculum at the Open University, and it's still, until this moment. And, I had a group of students in subject operating systems, computer operating systems, and the work that students used to do for each other at that time was mainly trying to explain to each other some of the concepts through what we used to call them, discussion forums, or, I forgot the name. We still use the discussion forums of course right now. But, anyways, those forums students utilize them a lot to share with each other and help each other. [00:15:14] What struck me later on in another subject, oh, database design and development, the curriculum was a British curriculum, and the examples in that book dominantly belonged to a western society, unlike the culture and environment that I lived in and the students there. [00:15:37] At that time, students could not relate much to the content because " I don't really understand what a bicycle store means." All these equipments are just like nothing that I've come across. Me as a teacher, I can't even imagine i'll start to describe how students struggle with that. [00:15:55] So what students did again, is looking into how can we have alternatives and open that knowledge. And then started to help each other and started to, to, build examples that are more contextual to the context. And that was an a kind of starting point really to open education is how the collective, the people who have that generosity and willing to help others, start building content and sharing it openly with each other. [00:16:30] It wasn't actually called open education practice. I didn't really know that term at all, but that could look like nowadays, it's that sharing knowledge. This is really more of student generated open resources, which is another area that I explored, but this could be like my first encounter really with, with open education practices. [00:16:52] Alan Levine: What about you, Richard? Where? Where did open enter your world? [00:16:56] Richard White: I come to it through a copyright lens, so just through a fairly random set of circumstances, including someone retiring and then the copyright officer role at our institution becoming free for someone to fill. I fell into it that way. I didn't really know anything about it, at the time, particularly. [00:17:19] But as I learned more about the copyright side. Obviously then you start learning about open access. So it's almost through that sort of the legal licensing lens that I come to, which will be different from Mais and Ash. Although as a teacher myself, formally, I guess I, jive with some of the things that Mais is talking about there. [00:17:44] So I think, it became clear to me as I learned more and more about the legal and the copyright aspects, that copyright, while it's an important set of rights, in a particular context, particularly in a commercial context, it often acts as a barrier to access to knowledge. [00:18:09] In the non-commercial world of educational institutions like ours, while it clearly has its rightful place in certain contexts, it seemed to be getting in the way. Also touching on some of the things that Mais has mentioned there and I hinted at it earlier myself as well, saying New Zealanders are quite outward looking. You would see people using textbooks that that are US centric or European centric and that sort of thing. So it's that the ability for open education to adapt, to be about us. [00:18:44] Rather than always the teacher having to provide some extra photocopied piece of paper alongside the textbook that explains what's actually true for you right here, the, sort of the, standard picture. But actually you need to think about it. [00:18:59] So, I guess those are the key things for me, that awareness of the barrier of copyright. This was the way to open up discussion and to allow a less one way transaction between knowledge and the learner and make it a freer experience, [00:19:18] Alan Levine: Fabulous. And how about you Ash? [00:19:21] Ash Barber: I actually also fell into it through copyright. I was doing my copyright team rotation as a baby librarian. My very first library role was a graduate library officer and I would rotate through different teams in the library to get experience in all the different areas. [00:19:38] And, I was in the copyright team when a really big thing in copyright happening in our region and so I learned a lot about copyright, open access and all of that at that point in time. [00:19:54] I was initially a little bit resistant to Creative Commons because I have a creative writing background. My undergrad was in creative writing and I still write today. And so from a creator point of view, I was like "but this my work, like I wanna keep all the copyright and I wanna, be able to sell my work" and all of that sort of thing. [00:20:12] It was through that experience that I really understood what the Commons are and why they're good and how it doesn't actually prevent me doing whatever I wanna do with my work. It allows me to do a lot of other things with my work and be more discoverable and all that sort of stuff. [00:20:28] I learned just how good it feels to be open and I guess I just followed that good feeling through and, went from there. [00:20:37] Alan Levine: Certainly embraced it and all three of you, I hear that it came through application and process of doing your work, beyond the general. The OER Collective: Formation and Growth --- [00:20:46] Alan Levine: So let's talk about the OER Collective, That's what we're here to talk about. , Since we're talking to Ash and you work for CAUL what is the Collective and how did it come to be? [00:20:57] Ash Barber: The collective is really a-- it's a big community of institutions who all pull their resources to collectively create some shared infrastructure, some capacity building, and troubleshooting, related to open publishing. [00:21:17] So we provide access to a shared platform, which is Pressbooks. We pool our funds to, create grants to support key texts that are useful for the collective or key projects. So this year we're supporting some slightly sideways projects. One is to create an audiobook version of a text. Another is to create all the ancillary materials for text to support adoption. [00:21:43] It was really formed in a period of time where there was a lot of interest in Open Ed in the region, and there were several institutions who were working in this space. But there was very little actual resourcing, dedicated staffing, all of that. And around 2021 is when the Collective was ideated. [00:22:04] And it really launched in 2022, much more successfully than anticipated. It was only really expected that there would be, I think around seven institutions sign on and straight off the bat, we got 32 and now we're at 40. That's 30 from Australia and all eight core member institutions from Aotearoa New Zealand. [00:22:26] And so it's really grown and thriving, [00:22:29] Richard White: And there's something like 42 universities in total in Australia. That's almost everybody, almost every university. Yeah. [00:22:39] Ash Barber: Yeah, thank you for that. It's become super, super popular, and it's grown substantially through the years. It's continued to provide that shared platform around, $125,000 in grants, so far and, building that community and capacity across the collective. [00:22:58] 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. [00:23:18] 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. [00:23:43] 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. [00:23:59] Alan Levine: The representation of like nearly every institution of higher education, it's remarkable at a multi-country level, because I've seen, in this part of the world, just getting a region to collaborate like that is barely possible. And that's what really stood out, in the nomination for the OER Collective. Collaboration and Success Stories --- [00:24:21] Alan Levine: So what works well? What's the magic for doing that collaboration and getting so many people engaged? What is the magic charm of librarians because, that's where so much of the energy has come from over the last few years. [00:24:37] Richard White: It's definitely having that framework I, think, Alan. Would you agree, Ash? I mean I've been involved in open ed stuff for nearly 20 years. And it's just taken off with being able to join an umbrella that sits across the whole sector. We've published four books here in the three or so years that the Collective's been going. [00:25:01] And we wouldn't have published any probably. 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." [00:25:18] 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 it's more difficult. But once CAUL came in, [it] made a huge difference for us because it provided that, as I say, that framework, the platform and the sort of support networks and all that stuff. It has just made a huge difference. [00:25:45] We put out an OER here in 2014, but we did it as a hackathon in spite of what heads of department or higher up people might have wanted to happen. And we just did it as a code writing hackathon thing over a weekend kind of thing. And, we published it on BCcampus who picked it up 'cause we'd done it actually in WordPress. [00:26:09] They just came across it and they put it up and then half a million people accessed it over the next few years. Rebellious Beginnings and Institutional Challenges --- [00:26:14] Richard White: It's from a weekend's work. It was crazy. But that was almost in spite of the kind of the structures of the institution. [00:26:20] It was a rebellious act almost. That's that rebellious streak coming through again. [00:26:24] I think that just that having that support network has just been absolutely key. The Power of Collective Publishing --- [00:26:29] Richard White: And, Ash, I'll let you say, but how many books has the collective published in, in its time? [00:26:35] Ash Barber: We have 71 so far, and another a hundred in progress. [00:26:38] Richard White: It's incredible. Yeah, that's incredible. [00:26:40] And, to have harnessed that collective willingness that has existed, but there hasn't been the framework that has been able to harness that willingness amongst library staffers as a facilitators. I guess coming back to what you were getting at there, the people who are-- I'm actually not a librarian and I don't work in the library, but I'm library adjacent. [00:27:04] Getting that passion that brings people on board and has enabled that productive output. [00:27:13] Mais Fatayer: There's a little sense of that community in, in the Collective. Since I joined, I've worked with the Collective maybe a year before, but I joined as a UTS representative just recently. Diverse Expertise in the Collective --- [00:27:24] Mais Fatayer: What I can also add to what Richard saying, so building on that lack of awareness, and it's a conversation that is not easy sometimes with senior management, but what we have in the Collective is that diversity of expertise. [00:27:39] There are of course the librarians leading a lot of the work, but there is also project managers, learning analytics specialists, learning design, also specialist there. So it's a conversation that kind of expanded beyond the library boundaries and includes more people-- copyright officer, of course, one of the important people on the Collective committee. [00:28:04] So it's the diversity of expertise that kind of helped bring that conversation about open education practices more easily, more broadly to different faculties, different places in Australian universities. [00:28:19] Alan Levine: There's the platform, Pressbooks and the capability, and then there's the support through the grant projects to generate a hundred new ones coming out. But there's more, it seems like in terms of the ethos and the community. Community Engagement and Support --- [00:28:32] Alan Levine: What means do you do to keep people informed or stay in touch? Because you're talking about a rather distributed, large network of people involved in these efforts. [00:28:45] Ash Barber: We have email, but we have a Teams group, which is quite fun. That's fairly recent that it's pretty lively now. We, meet though regularly, so we'll have community of practice meetings. The timing of everything has varied over the years, but at the moment we're, doing those every second month. [00:29:07] And, we also have training sessions, like workshops. We're doing those at the moment, we're doing them monthly, We make sure that we're continuously having these synchronous sessions where people can drop in and be virtually face to face and have unstructured conversations as well, where it's just a let's talk about whatever's happening at the moment, whatever topic of interest, and just go on a tangent about it, to really make sure that it's a comfortable space where we're building some bonds and connections that way. [00:29:45] And then also those more structured things like the training sessions where we're learning a skill here and we're going to go and apply it. I think that mix is quite useful for building the skills, but also maintaining the bonds. Highlighting the Podcast: Speaking of Open --- [00:29:59] Alan Levine: You didn't mention the podcast! [00:30:02] Ash Barber: So there's a podcast. [00:30:04] Alan Levine: You have to plug the podcast, Speaking of Open, I just listened to your second episode this morning. [00:30:11] Ash Barber: Oh, yes. Speaking of Open is like a side project that Mais and I are doing like a little passion project. It's born of the Open Education Down UndOER text. Progressively at the moment we're interviewing different authors in the text and learning more about their case studies in the book and where they come from with open ed and their work. Then we're appending those episodes to their chapter in the book is almost like an alternative way to take in their case study. [00:30:49] We have two episodes out at the moment. the first one was with Dr. Sarah Steen and it was all about OER and engaging students. And the second one that you've just listened to is with Dr. Julian Pakay and that's all about open education, AI and teacher presence-- all that comes with that. [00:31:09] Mais do you wanna add anything about, Speaking of Open? [00:31:14] Mais Fatayer: Back to the bigger conversation about why Open Education, is as many of my colleagues at UTS states, 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. [00:31:32] 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. [00:32:01] 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. [00:32:33] So this is what we'd like also to bring with that audio element to the textbook. Showcasing Standout OER Projects --- [00:32:37] Alan Levine: I know that you've all read every single OER that's come to the Collective, but can you share a few standouts that either had some kinda "wow" factor for you but also maybe things that do a really credible job of bringing the Australian perspective and really showing what that means for these titles. [00:33:00] You can name a lot. You can name a few, and they can be ones you were part of or just ones that you've seen or heard about now that we're talking audio. [00:33:09] I'll fling it over to Richard first. [00:33:11] Richard White: So you'll probably guess the one I'm going to highlight since we were chatting before the record, about your interest in geology. Fossil Treasures of the Geology Museum is my favorite of the ones we've produced here at Otago. [00:33:29] It was pitched to me as just one of those cases where I happen to attend an event at the department. And so there's a museum there. . It used to be called the School of Mines. That's how old the department is. Have an amazing museum with tens of thousands of fossil specimens. People won't know much about the sort of fossil history here. It's mostly giant penguins, for example, is what we have in the fossil record and big plesiosaurs and stuff like that rather than dinosaurs. [00:34:03] Anyway, they've got an amazing collection there and I just happened to get chatting to a professor there, an emeritus professor actually, in the department. She said, ah, we were trying to talk to our university professor about doing a coffee table style book because the like the thousand albums you need to listen to before you die kind of book where it's got a one page, it's got a picture of the thing, and then the facing page is the quite accessible description of it. [00:34:32] And it fell through. They, didn't pursue that with the publisher. And I said, " Have you heard about this thing called open [textooks]? But this is how all book OERs that I've been involved with have got off the ground. I've just fallen into a conversation with someone and talked to 'em about it. And she was like, "Ah, that sounds amazing." [00:34:48] They've got a museum there and it's an amazing museum, but to be able to enjoy the fossils you have to be able to go to the museum. You have to be here. So their idea was to enable people to be able to experience and learn about the things. So they went with this coffee table style kind of idea. It is reasonably accessible, but still scientifically rigorous. [00:35:08] And they link out to all their papers that they've written about the thing, as well as having high quality photos of everything. So we had the photos, but then even better, they 3D scanned a bunch of the specimens and so there are in Sketchfab embedded in the book, 3D scan, so you can print out your own version, if you have access to a 3D printer, of the objects and actually hold them in your hand, while you are learning about these things. [00:35:37] Lots of schools are interested in this stuff, but don't have the ability to come here. For them, it was about bridging between external communities and the university here, and encouraging that connection as well. [00:35:49] Alan Levine: Do you have any favorite Mais? [00:35:53] Mais Fatayer: I do have one, which is a recent project actually. This one is something you need to read before you actually go to learning design career, not before you die, but before you jump into learning design or while you're in learning design. This one is Designing Learning Experiences for Inclusivity and Diversity. [00:36:15] A lot of advice is for learning designers. The uniqueness about this book and why I really love this work is Because of the group of the authors that we have. I've worked in this book with my wonderful colleague, Keith Heggart, an academic from what we used to call Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. [00:36:39] Now we changed the name of that faculty. But, Keith has been fantastic in learning design for a long time, and probably a lot of people who are listening to the this podcast know Keith very well, but also the diversity of the authors. [00:36:53] What we managed to bring to this work, talking about learning design and learning design practices and the inclusive practices particularly, we had academics participating there. We had inclusive practices specialists. We had learning designers, senior learning designers. We had creative writers, a lot of my colleagues there as well. [00:37:20] But we also had people who have a broader vision. We had the pro Vice Chancellor of Indigenous Education, also one of the authors, Susan Page. So wonderful colleagues there wanna just mention them-- Camille Dickson-Deane, Puvaneswari P Arumugam, Katrina Thorpe. Sorry, Shaun Bell. Susan Page, John Vulic, Nhung Nguyen, Katie Duncan, Rhiannon Hall and Bruna Contro Pretero. [00:37:54] The chapters there focus on different areas of learning design, taking different perspectives. And I think, this is something that I'm really proud of and really hope that it's going to add good practical examples for learning designers. [00:38:10] Alan Levine: Okay. And I'm sure you have a few Ash, right? You, know them all right. [00:38:16] Ash Barber: I, love all of them. They're all so wonderful. [00:38:20] I do have a few that I'd like to point out there. I think He Awa Whiria, which is Braiding the Knowledge Streams in Research, Policy and Practice. That's a really awesome book that came out of University of Canterbury, I believe. [00:38:35] University of Canterbury is Aotearoa New Zealand. And this book is about, as it says, it's braiding, it's braiding Indigenous and Western knowledges and perspectives. It talks about it as a concept and then also gives some case studies of that in practice. It's a very cool book, but it's also an example of where an institution has worked with their university press to create the book as well. [00:39:03] And so they've had it professionally formatted and typeset and everything. And then they've also released it openly, which is just another way of working that is a little bit different, but it, worked really well. And it produced a really beautiful book. It's also an example of a book that has a different kind of CC license as well, where they've really, made use of the range of CC licenses to pick one that suited them, to make sure that they felt comfortable releasing this knowledge. [00:39:35] There's also Burning Issues in Classics, which just has a fantastic cover-- the cover is a classic statue with its hair on fire, and is clearly something they put together in Photoshop. It's quite fun. But it includes a lot of student work. This one, it's like a very multi student collaboration. [00:39:58] And one of the chapters is actually a podcast, instead of. a written text. You watch a walkthrough of like Age of Empires or something like that, while you're hearing the student say their chapter. which is just really fun. [00:40:15] There's also, Introducing Scoping and Systematic Reviews, which has a whole chicken motif go through, just almost inexplicably. And it's hilarious. You learn along with these chickens. [00:40:29] And, I guess it's becoming one of our flagship texts now Legal Research Skills. It's in its third or fourth iteration now. I got a message the other day from one of the librarians working on the text that it was adopted earlier this year by the Supreme Court Library of Queensland to support their work with high school students and then also picked up by the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority to share with their teachers and educators of legal studies across Queensland. [00:41:00] So that is really huge, because if OER can be picked up in those areas, then that's what will start to change curriculum. These texts are really wonderful doing well. [00:41:15] Alan Levine: I wanna ask a question about what's coming next, but I also know Richard's time is limited. So I wanted to get the fun question and then maybe if Ash and Mais are willing to stick around for this. Personal Passions and Hobbies --- [00:41:25] Alan Levine: But, outside of work, Richard, what's an activity that really gives you joy and refreshes you? [00:41:33] Richard White: I'm a dad of three kids aged from 10 to 15. And, so that's my main focus. And my son, who's the middle one of those three, he has a massive interest in fossils and prehistoric life. So that's another reason why I chose that book as my particular favorite that I've been involved with. [00:41:58] As for my own sort of interest, I'm a musician. I have solo stuff I put out and I'm in a band, in a bands for years, since I took up the guitar at 16. And indeed contributed the music that is the theme music that runs underneath the, Speaking of Open podcast. [00:42:16] Alan Levine: Oh, that's you. [00:42:18] Ash Barber: Mr. Mermaid guitar. [00:42:19] Richard White: Yeah, that's actually me. [00:42:20] Alan Levine: Oh, I love that one. [00:42:21] Richard White: That is released on Bandcamp, mermaid guitar.bandcamp.com, under Creative Commons licenses. I practice what I preach in the, music sphere as well. [00:42:35] Alan Levine: Make sure I get the proper links to your music site 'cause I love to share that. [00:42:40] How about you, Mais? When, you're not busy with your education work, what do you like to do? [00:42:47] Mais Fatayer: I am a parent, similar to Richard. I have two children, 11 and 13, which obviously will take a lot of my free time, which is not much. But, I think I don't really have much free time, to be honest. Most of the time if I have really spending it with the family, reading a little bit when I have the opportunity. [00:43:12] When I look back and see what I actually do with my free time is that there's a lot of the things that i'd like to either pursue or upskill or work on a projects, outside my kind of work duties. So I use that time sometimes to read something or do some research or yeah, learn new things. Now, Generative AI is the next thing, so try to upskill in these areas. [00:43:47] Alan Levine: Excellent. And, I think I know-- Ash will tell us her answer, but I have an idea. [00:43:52] Ash Barber: I'm curious what your idea is. I love to write, so I do that a lot. I have my own little writing Instagram account that I like to post to. And I love to row. So those are my two main things. I'll be rowing or writing. [00:44:10] Alan Levine: Yeah, I know it was the row. [00:44:14] Richard White: Ash's writing is amazing, Alan she is really talented. [00:44:17] Alan Levine: We want those links as well if you're willing to share, Future Goals and Aspirations for OER --- [00:44:21] Alan Levine: If we have time to talk about what's on the horizon. Obviously you mentioned many new titles coming out. And, I picked up on the strand of a lot more interest in audio being part of OER. Are there things that, that you're looking at that are new ways of thinking about, either producing or what can be in an OER and what do you see in those next waves of projects that the Collective is gonna be supporting? [00:44:51] Ash Barber: We've got seven grant projects happening at the moment, and they're specifically supporting a lot of collaboration, a lot of non-text based things. [00:45:02] Yeah, so we're specifically supporting lots of collaboration, lots of non-text forms of OER as well. [00:45:11] But the Collective really is the people in it. And so it's whatever people wanna create and collectively support. From CAUL's perspective, we're just providing the space and the infrastructure, facilitating the conversations, but the conversations really come from the people within it. [00:45:30] Alan Levine: That makes sense. I was looking at the the case study, the down OER-- the Down UndOER. I love the title. I love a good play on words. [00:45:40] But, I was intrigued that the addition on the title in Pressbooks that you don't often see, where you have the adoption form, the feedback form and actually some data available. Is that a custom feature that you've developed? It's really interesting to me. [00:45:56] Ash Barber: I think that came from James Cook University, I reckon. Alice Luetchford, she's part of the editorial team for that book. She and Sara Boyle put together those buttons and links for us. Yeah, it's not a part of Pressbooks as a native feature. It's, something where Sara and Alice added in a bit of extra coding behind the scenes to put those buttons there. [00:46:23] They link out to Airtable forms that I look after. And, it's also how we're tracking things. The analytics one links out to our Looker Studio dashboard, which is connected in with Google Analytics. It's a million different things and it's helping us to keep track of the things that are being useful in the book, like the different chapters. We can see which ones are accessed and which ones aren't. We can see if the resources within the book are downloaded because we included a lot of templates and things for people to be able to recreate this type of work. [00:47:01] And, it's also helping us in terms of seeing, what is the impact. People can send through their testimonials, their stories and things, and we use that as a way to gather a lot of testimonials for our Open Education award nomination for the book. [00:47:16] Alan Levine: That's excellent. And it's in the mix there. So thank you for doing that. Anything else you wanna add about what happening with the Collective or your dreams for what'll be coming into 2026 and a brand new year? [00:47:30] Ash Barber: Ideally in the near future, these conversations will be happening at a national level, not just within the Collective, with decision makers higher up in institutions and in the government. We wanna be able to do things like how in the US especially in California, you've got actual state backing of OER and funding for OER. [00:47:57] We would love to have that here. And I think that is the big goal. [00:48:01] Alan Levine: Sounds great. [00:48:03] Mais Fatayer: Yeah, I'll just add, Ash hinted to this earlier. About that we don't really have a lot of positions in Australian universities of OER kind of specialist or Open Education, consultant or, someone whose main role is to help academics adapt, adopt, create open educational resources. [00:48:26] But importantly, I would like to maybe see in the near future more of adaptation of open educational resources. The creation, , I think we've got a lot of that, but adaptation, an area that I feel has a lot of potential, particularly for learning and teaching and enhancing learning, and more contextualized, more diverse content. [00:48:47] Because we've got that flexibility, right? The licenses, we've got the flexibility to contextualize, translate, adapt, in different ways, generate audio version of the content, which to UDL specialists, Universal Design of Learning specialists say, okay, this is what we want to do. We want different ways of presentation and open educational resource is actually the way to do that. [00:49:12] From what I can see, right now is to contribute to enhancing the learner experience, 'cause students will start to see themselves in the curriculum, start to feel that speaks to us, that we are part of this, rather than continue to feel as being an outlier in this case study or this example in this book. [00:49:32] It's just so difficult to relate to or to make sense of. [00:49:38] So open education pathway and adaptation pathways or, really would like to see in the future. And yeah, a more positions in Australian universities for specialists like us, I guess. [00:49:52] Alan Levine: Great. Acknowledging Key Contributors --- [00:49:54] Alan Levine: And, also in your podcast, like I hear that you're friends and that's wonderful. it comes through in your energy. [00:49:59] We've mentioned a lot of people, and I know we wanted to give a shout out to Fiona Salisbury, who's unable to be with us. Say some words about Fiona, maybe anybody else who's important to include in a credits list here? [00:50:13] Ash Barber: So yeah, Fiona Salisbury, she's on the CAUL board of directors. For the longest time, the OER collective was under her purview. She was one of the original ideators of the Collective. And so I would really like to acknowledge that her work there. [00:50:29] The person who was in my position previously, Rani McLennan, she was the OER Collective really for many years. And it was everybody's lifeline, in those early years of figuring out what are we doing. And so her work was really incredible too. [00:50:47] Kate Tickle she was formerly the director of strategy and analytics at CAUL and who led a lot of the work here. And, also Katya Henry who was in that role for a while as well. [00:51:03] There're all really instrumental to the Collective, but, I'd also especially point out that the group of people who formed all of these working groups in those early stages. Most of those people are from the ASCILITE Australasian Open Educational Practice Special Interest Group, which is the longest name in the world, the OEPSIG. [00:51:25] That group of people that includes Mais and I as well, in that broader group. But it includes so many people across, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand. Also a little bit further out as well. We have people in Singapore. And that group really, has been around for so many years and just gives and gives and it's a place that is free to join. [00:51:50] You don't have to be attached to an institution. It's really just if you're interested in Open Ed and you're in our region, you can be part of that group. And that group really established the Collective in the very early days. [00:52:04] Alan Levine: And I think you're pretty humble, but the amount of collaboration over the distance and the separation of institutions is just, it is really astounding and definitely worthy of the award last year. [00:52:16] Ash Barber: Thank you. Conclusion and Final Thoughts --- [00:52:18] Alan Levine: Okay, so it's, time to wrap. I wanna thank you listener out there right now listening to this episode of OEGlobal Voices, this podcast that we do here at Open Education Global. In each episode, I actually pick a different musical track that I try to match to the theme. And I use the Free Music Archive 'cause it's Creative Commons, but now I might have to go and check out Richard's Bandcamp site -- but you already have his theme music which is fantastic. [00:52:42] But I'm really torn between a track that I found called The Collective by an artist named Beat Mekanik. it's Licensed Creative Commons Attribution. There's another one that I found that I like called Collective Genius by an artist named TimTaj also licensed Creative Commons attribution, Non-commercial, No derivatives. So you might have to wait to hear which one I choose. It might be both. [00:53:05] But you'll find this episode on our site, voices.oeglobal.org. And we try to have some follow up conversations in our OEG Connect community or wherever you might bump into us on social media. [00:53:16] If you're listening and wanna share your open education work or really suggest a future guest, I'm always eager to find new people to talk to. Please let us know, via our website or we have an email address, voices@global.org. [00:53:30] And again, just thank you Mais, Ash and Richard, for spending this time with us. [00:53:35] Richard White: But thank you very much for having me on the podcast and enjoyed chatting with you guys as well. [00:53:41] Ash Barber: See you later, Richard. [00:53:42] Richard White: Yeah, I will. Thank you very much. Bye. [00:53:44] Ash Barber: Thank you so much.