Open education has the potential to enhance learning and teaching at all levels in Australia. The challenge, however, is that awareness levels, and understanding, of openness still remains low. The Australian higher education sector faces increasing pressures, and practitioners often need to rely on professional or informal networks for support and learning.
Sponsored by ASCILITE, the Australian Open Educational Practice Special Interest Group (or OEPSIG, for short) is a practitioner-facilitated community designed to bring open educators (primarily those in higher education) together to explore issues of common interest, collaborate on shared projects, undertake research, and to advocate for the place of OEP in national L&T discussions, strategy, and policy. This is really a ‘grass roots’ community, and engagement with OEP varies greatly across the membership – don’t feel as though you need to be an ‘expert’ to join (in fact most of us are quite the opposite).
We encourage open discussion through the Comments sections on the site, support a collaboratively identified agenda for action, and membership is freely and openly offered to anyone seeking to engage with open education.
Meetings started in early 2018, and changes to the site are to be expected as we incorporate feedback from the membership. Please share any news of open projects or initiatives from across the sector (and especially from your institution), to provide learning and partnership opportunities.
We look forward to seeing this group grow, and work toward a higher awareness of open education nationally.
If you have any questions, please do contact either Adrian Stagg, or Carina Bossu.
dge grow from more to more, and thus be human life enriched
