Curated by Ash Barber, Jennifer Hurley, Nikki Andersen, Alice Luetchford, Angie Williamson, members of the Australasian OEPSIG, and selected content from SPARC’s OEP Digest. This digest is sponsored by ASCILITE.
Welcome to the June edition of the Australasian OEP Digest for 2023.
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Australasian news
- Engaging with open educational practices: Mapping the landscape in Australian higher education – Congratulations to our Co-convenor Adrian Stagg et al. on this article in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET).
- Empowered OER: Congratulations to our Co-convenor Ash Barber who has published Empowered OER –a living curation of inclusive OER. Ash also presented at the last ASCILITE SIG webinar with Tanya Grosz and the recording and slides are out now.
- Wikimedia Australia Partners: Wikimedia Australia is excited to announce 2023 partner organisations whose projects will develop content, skills and increase the visibility of traditionally under-represented groups on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia platforms. The four successful organisations identified opportunities to increase staff and community knowledge and engagement, through adding content to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata:
- ACMI will engage a Wikipedian in Residence to expand Wikipedia content and to integrate Wikidata content within the ACMI website.
- Queensland University of Technology will run a digitisation project to upload and describe historic photographic material pertaining to rural Queensland.
- Paroo Shire Council will train a group of editors including First Nations people to contribute both regional data and local Indigenous knowledge, which can then serve as a model for other regional councils.
- University of Divinity will host a Wikipedian in Residence to add content to Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikisource for the Australian Women in Religion project.
- CAUL OER Collective Open Textbooks:
- Congratulations to the huge team behind Legal Research Skills: An Australian Law Guide.
- Congratulations to La Trobe University, Monash University and Swinburne University for the publication of Threshold Concepts in Biochemistry.
- Accessibility in Action Awards: Congratulations to Deakin University who was awarded a highly commended in the Accessibility in Action Awards for ‘An Integrated Approach to Embedding Open Education Resources in a Large First Year Unit’
- ALIA Accord Submission: Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) has recently provided a submission to the Australian Universities Accord Discussion Paper, with national support for OER and open scholarship as one of it’s recommendations.
International news
- Open Education Global Awards: are now open for nominations across a range of categories. Applications close 30 June. Please nominate your Australasian colleagues who are doing great work in open education!
- Canadian National Advocacy Framework for OER: The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) is proud to announce the release of a comprehensive document, A National Advocacy Framework for Open Educational Resources in Canada, aimed at advancing the adoption and support of open educational resources (OER) across the country.
- United Nations Calls for Open Access: An United Nations online discussion this month focused on recommendations for expanding access to scientific knowledge in service of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) – including the need for a Global Science Commons. The UN’s 2030 Agenda calls for mechanisms to advance science and technology through knowledge-sharing in open access, online platforms. Read more via SPARC here.
Professional development opportunities
Professional Development
- Professional Program in Open Education: Registrations are open for the Kwantlen Polytechnic University Professional Program in Open Education (PPOE) – an online program designed to develop expertise and proficiency across a broad spectrum of open educational practices. Aimed at administrators, educators, librarians, leaders, policymakers, technologists, and/or anyone interested in learning about open education.
Readings
- Evidence and values-based approaches in OER By Emilia Bell, Nikki Andersen, & Adrian Stagg
- Making Ripples: A Guidebook to Challenge Status Quo in OER Creation by Kaitlin Schilling
- Open Praxis: the latest issue is out.
- A User-Friendly Dashboard for Tracking Global Open Access Performance by Diprose et al.
New open texts by discipline
Arts and humanities
- Sense it!: Insights into Multisensory Design by Lois Frankel (Canada)
- Español down under: Spanish for Australia and New Zealand – Part 2 released by Ramon Lopez Castellano, Israel Holas and Fanny Rios Rodriguez (Aus)
- Marhaba! An Introduction to Modern Standard Arabic by France Meyer, Leila Kouatly, Daishi Adams (Aus)
- Introduction to the Social Sciences by Zoe Staines; Gerhard Hoffstaedter; and Ned Binnie (Aus)
Business and management
- Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy by Guillermo C. Jimenez and Elizabeth Pulos (US)
Education
- Supporting Secondary Teachers’ Critical Disciplinary Literacies by Jeanne Dyches (US)
- Introduction to Library and Information Science Edited by Leanne Stevens (US)
Health and medicine
- Nursing Advanced Skills by Open RN (US)
Law and Politics
- Legal Research Skills: An Australian Law Guide by The University of Queensland Library; James Cook University Library; University of Southern Queensland Library; Charles Darwin University Library; Southern Cross University Library; Queensland University of Technology Library; and Deakin University Library (Aus)
- ‘Order, Order!’ A Biographical Dictionary of Speakers, Deputy Speakers and Clerks of the Australian House of Representatives Edited by Stephen Wilks
Psychology and Social Work
- Introduction to Social Work: a look across the profession by Langford et al. (US)
Sciences
- Introduction to Climate Science by Andreas Schmittner (US)
- Threshold Concepts in Biochemistry by Pakay et al. (Aus)
Have a story to share?
Email Ash Barber (Ash.Barber@unisa.edu.au) with the details and we’ll ensure you’re credited in the Digest.
This digest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence: CC BY 2.0 AU.
Australasian Open Educational Practice Special Interest Group 