How do we make Open everyone’s business even before gaining formal institutional support or resourcing, such as a dedicated open education team or role? How do we conduct open education activities on a shoestring?
We ask our friends, we try things, we take notes, and we learn.
And, crucially, we share.
Sharing back into the Open ecosystem has enabled the University of South Australia (UniSA) to continue learning from our colleagues to build an Open culture of our own, where open education is embedded in our everyday workflows, becoming a natural part of everyone’s business.
In this session, Ash and Sarah discuss: the evolution of Open at UniSA and our involvement in the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) OER Collective; our Textbook Minimisation project and subsequent Open Education Down UndOER case study; and the sustainable advocacy strategies we use that have led to OER adoption and creation, supporting inclusive and equitable access to education.
Throughout the discussion, we present specific examples of tools and techniques we’ve learned and successfully implemented from the Open ecosystem which have helped us embed open education into our business as usual everyday practices. Some of these include: -Post-oppositional approach to OER advocacy: an approach we’ve known by many names from various Open practitioners; however, this phrase we learned from the extraordinary Jasmine Roberts-Crews who crystalised the idea in an unforgettable keynote speech about the alignment of open education and antiracist pedagogy. -Check for Textbook Availability form: a workflow game-changer adapted from Cheryl Casey’s University of Arizona Library Check for eBook Availability form which endeavours to capture and replace potentially problematic textbooks before they’ve been prescribed to a course. -Airtable open education project tracker: a free project management and reporting tool all rolled into one, very generously shared and demonstrated by Gabrielle Hernandez from University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. -Open Pipeline: a concept visualised as kanban and shared by Ross McKerlich from BCcampus as a method for tracking and advancing how far along individuals and entities are on the Open spectrum, from non-Open to fully Open, recognising OER adoption numbers do not give the full story. -Open Education Maturity Model: a tool from Pressbooks to measure the current state of open education in an institution as well as understand the key steps to grow to the next level.
We share these examples to assist other Open practitioners operating on a shoestring to quickly identify some tools worth trying, rather than wading unguided through the ocean of available resources.
After discussing our own experiences of sharing and reusing Open practitioner tools and strategies for sustainable practice, we invite participants to engage with us through a collaborative online document, sharing their own tips and resources they have either created or reused which may help other practitioners with low resourcing to undertake everyday open education activities. This living document will be openly licensed, empowering participants to immediately make use of the content and continue to add and reuse the ideas, celebrating and sustaining the Open ecosystem.
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[Session 7B]: OE Practice in the GLAM sectorAuthor KeywordsOpen educational resources (OER), Open education, Advocacy, Sustainable practices
