In 2022 the University of Newcastle Library joined CAUL’s OER Collective as a member institution. Members of our team participated in the OER Foundations training. We were ready to support our academic staff create open textbooks!
While we had some interested academic staff, their content was either non-existent, or needed a lot of work which they had no resources to supply. Institutional workload and IP policies were also barriers. We were stuck.
Our solution grew from activities already being undertaken within the Academic Engagement Team, and aligned with our Library Indigenous Strategic Plan. We would forge ahead and create our own open guide to Indigenising Teaching, Learning and the Student Experience. We knew that content existed or was being written. That content would align perfectly with the values of open educational resources – social justice, equity, continuous sharing of knowledge.
We found that creators from across the university were keen to contribute. One aspect they really appreciated was that they didn’t have to contribute an entire chapter. We asked for case studies and examples of the use of Indigenous pedagogies within classes and courses. We also asked students to describe their experiences engaging with Western and Indigenous pedagogies.
Library staff supported academic authors and created content about the work the library has done to implement yarning circles within an international student program, the creation of a guide to the Voice Referendum in 2023, Indigenised spaces (digital and physical) within the library, introducing services such as yarning kits for loan, and more.
Contributors were excited to learn about the OER Collective’s use of Pressbooks, an open platform which protects their authorship but allows redistribution, remixing and reuse of content. They wanted their content to be published, not just to share but to adapt and contextualise to specific situations while protected by Creative Commons licensing. By thinking beyond the traditional idea of a textbook, we were able to gather high-quality content to fulfill our commitment to publish six chapters of the guide. As with all open textbooks, the guide is open to feedback and evaluation. As far as the project team is aware, this is the first Australian guide to Indigenising teaching, learning and the student experience in higher education.
The contributors and project team hope that this guide will inform the Indigenisation of curricula across higher education in Australia providing a template for introducing different pedagogical methods to improve engagement and retention of a larger, more diverse cohort of students, while improving the cultural capability of institutions for their students and staff.
We are also using the guide as a pilot to demonstrate the value and impact of open textbooks, to encourage our teaching community to develop their own.
Included in
[Session 2A]: Open Publishing (Workshop and lightning talks)Author KeywordsFirst Nations perspectives, Inclusion diversity equity and access, Local Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing, Open textbooks
