The OER Collective Communities of Practice are a key element of the OER Collective model. They are designed to support community and capability building related to open textbook publishing across CAUL Member institutions.
There are two Collective Communities of Practice.
| Community name | Intended for | Focus | Who can join | How to join |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Library Staff Community of Practice | All library staff at participating CAUL Member institutions | Developing library staff capacity to collaborate with and support authors who are writing open textbooks | Any library staff member at participating CAUL Member institutions | Sign up for the email list |
| Academic Authors Community of Practice | Authors at participating CAUL Member institutions who are writing textbooks for the Collective Pressbooks platform, or who are actively involved in developing open textbooks for publication on a participating institution's own local Pressbooks instance | Supporting authors to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to produce an open textbook | Any author contributing to an open textbook at a participating CAUL Member institution | View the procedures |
Each Community of Practice is convened by the OER Collective Project Officer and Collective Champions, with support from the Pilot Project Advisor and CAUL's Director, Strategy & Analytics, Kate Davis.
In 2023, the themes will be flexible to adapt to calls from Communities of Practice members for topics as they are needed.
Themes will be facilitated by the OER Collective Project Officer, Collective Champions and special guests.
Each Community of Practice will meet six times this year, approximately every 5 to 6 weeks. Each meeting will have a topic related to the theme and may include a short presentation or training in addition to open discussion related to the topic. The first five meetings for each group will be separate, with a final combined meeting.
Meetings are listed on the CAUL events listing. The topic for each meeting and a link to register is provided for each meeting.
Community of Practice members should register to attend the meetings. For planning purposes, members are encouraged to register only if they plan to attend.
The training or presentation component of each meeting will be recorded and the recordings will be distributed via the relevant Community of Practice email list. To encourage participation and open sharing, the discussion component of the meetings will not be recorded.
See the list of past recordings and upcoming sessions below:
| Title & Date | Summary | Presenters | Link to Recording |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Academic Authors 2022/1 12 April 2022 'Getting Started' |
Aim of academic authors community of practice; |
Tahnee Pearse |
|
|
Academic Authors 2022/2 24 May 2022 'Copyright and Licensing' |
Where to go for copyright support; Copyright & IP considerations at a local institutional level; Creative Commons licensing & how it works; Finding openly licensed material for your textbook; Copyright & licensing features in Pressbooks; Q&A | Chloe Czerwiec, Richard Levy | Recording |
|
Academic Authors 2022/3 5 July 2022 'Accessibility & Inclusion' |
Where to go for accessibility & inclusion support; What is digital accessibility and why it’s important; 8 things we can do to make our content accessible; Helpful tools; What is inclusion?; Diversity v Equity v Inclusion; What does inclusion look like in open textbooks?; Universal Design |
Frank Ponte, Anna du Chesne, Annette Goodwin | Recording |
|
Academic Authors 2022/4 23 August 2022 'Writing Your Open Textbook' |
Choosing & applying style guides and style sheets; structuring your open textbook; writing & revising content; writing the first draft; creating and curating figures, images and multimedia; creating interactive learning objects; choosing & applying a Pressbooks template; creating a book cover | Samara Rowling | Recording |
|
Academic Authors 2022/5 11 October 'Quality Assurance' |
Copyediting; Proofreading; Accessibility standards; Copyright standards | Craig Patterson | Recording |
|
Academic Authors 2023/1 14 March 2023 'Orientation' |
Aim of academic author community of practice; Orientation; Getting familiar with Open Education Resources; OER benefits; Tips for authors; Q&A. | CAUL | Recording |
|
Academic Authors 2023/2 9 May 2023 'Writing Your Open Textbook' |
Writing Your Open Textbook with Nikki Anderson; Copyright Considerations; Peer Review; Book structure Considerations; Tips when writing your open textbook; Other Tips | Nikki Anderson | Recording |
|
Title & Date |
Summary |
Presenters | Link to Recording |
|
Library Staff 2022/1 10 May 2022 'Helping academics get started with open textbook publishing' |
Equip Yourself: grow your network; build your skills; open textbook pitch; look out for opportunities; Engaging Academics: academics view of content; guage academics’ point of view & motivation; encourage exploration & build skills; quality & peer review; managing expectations | Tahnee Pearse | Recording |
|
Library Staff 2022/2 21 June 2022 'Copyright & Licensing' |
Where to go for copyright support; Copyright & IP considerations at a local institutional level; Creative Commons licensing & how it works; Finding openly licensed material for your textbook; Copyright & licensing features in Pressbooks; Q&A | Chloe Czerwiec, Richard Levy | Recording |
|
Library Staff 2022/3 9 August 2022 'Accessibility & Inclusion' |
Where to go for accessibility & inclusion support; What is digital accessibility and why it’s important; 8 things we can do to make our content accessible; Helpful tools; What is inclusion?; Diversity v Equity v Inclusion; What does inclusion look like in open textbooks?; Universal Design |
Frank Ponte, Anna du Chesne, Annette Goodwin | Recording |
|
Library Staff 2022/4 27 September 2022 'Open textbook advocacy' |
What is advocacy?; The OER Advocacy Toolkit; Practical approaches that support advocacy | Adrian Stagg | Recording |
|
Library Staff 2022/5 8 November 2022 'Peer review' |
Supporting authors with peer review; Peer review models; Designing a peer review process, including open review & use of rubrics; Post-publication peer review | Fiona Tyson | Recording |
|
Library Staff 2023/1 14 February 2023 'Orientation' |
Participating institutions 2023; Grant timeline; (Re)orientation; Structure; Roles & responsibilities; Managing collaborative projects; Working with author teams; Q&A. | CAUL | Recording |
|
Library Staff 2023/2 4 April 2023 |
Local vs Collective users; Choosing open textbook projects; Recruiting authors; Open Educational Resources Advocacy Toolkit; OERC catalogue. | CAUL | Recording |
|
Title & Date |
Summary |
Presenters | Link to Recording |
|
Community Day 31 March 2022 |
Download the full program. | Multiple | Recording |
|
Pressbooks Training 'Getting started with Pressbooks' 12 May 2022 |
How to get started on a Pressbooks project. Creating, exporting or cloning a book and using the Pressbooks Directory. | Thomas Weideman, PressbooksEDU | Recording |
|
Pressbooks Training 'Advanced' 26 May 2022 |
More detail on cloning openly licensed books and other features covered in the ‘Getting Started’ session. Also covers interactive features such as H5P activities, hypothesis annotations, mathematical notation, and accessibility best practices. | Thomas Weideman, PressbooksEDU | Recording |
|
Academic Authors & Library Staff 2022/6 7 December 2022 'Celebrating our Successes' |
OER Collective Pilot Project objectives; Books that have launched Panel discussion: panelists discuss OER Collective activities at their institutions, their motivations to become involved, how they found the experience, and what they have learnt. |
Tahnee Pearse, Steven Chang, Richard Levy, Angie Williamson, Phillip Worthington | Recording |
|
Community Day 1 March 2023 |
Download the program | Multiple | Recording |
In addition to the Community of Practice meetings, discussions will all take place via the email lists and in Slack. Emails and Slack posts related to the current theme will be made by the theme facilitator to help promote discussion in these spaces.
Community members are also welcome to post on any topic related to open textbooks at any stage.
Each Community of Practice operates according to a charter. The charters will be reviewed by the Governance Group and uploaded to this site.
