 So good morning everyone and welcome to everyone who's here with us today. I'm Tirumini and I'm going to introduce our speaker today, Dr. Sarah Lombard, just from Deakin University and you're actually going to find her presentation very interesting, especially how she addresses the need for OER and textbook in higher education. One of her co-presenters is not able to join us but I'll just leave the way now to Sarah to present her research project on textbook and also she'll be having some questions in between for the audience and you'll be able to participate in the session. And we're going to have the last five minutes for Q&As and I'll join back then. Hi there everyone it's great to be here and before I start to talk about the Australian Open Textbook project I'd really like to know who's in the room and whether you've had a chance to teach or even write an open textbook. So if you can chuck some comments in where you're from and if you have used an open textbook what's the topic or the title of the book would be a proxy for that so let's get that going while I fire up my slideshow and get this party started. All right now so I think I'm just going to do it a little bit differently and just share my screen without going full screen because I've only got the one screen and I don't want to lose the comments just yet so let's see how we go. All right can I here I am so yeah open to diversity inclusive design insights from the Australian OER textbook project and I want to give a shout out for my research assistant the fabulous Habiba Fidel who couldn't be with us today but has been a huge part of making this project and so yeah so we're going to definitely see who's in the chat and what your your textbook experience is. So let's just get started and see how we go. So what is this project about? Well we wanted to find out to what extent do OER techs have the potential to act as social justice initiatives in Australian higher education as they do overseas and so to answer that question we had a 12 month project and so we did 64 interviews. 19 students we interviewed at two different unis and that was a mix of both masters and undergraduate local and international sort of 50-50 which is great and they were 45 minute in-depth interviews and similarly we interviewed 45 staff this time at five different Australian universities and that covered not only staff institutional support staff in libraries e-learning and also leadership and policy but OER adopters and authors and there was a national online survey of teaching staff as well so yes let's go here we go so this isn't this is continuing with some really interesting research it's part of a global conversation about widening access and success for historically underrepresented learners in higher education and my working life has been a lot of working in regional big regional teaching and research institutions where they have a real mixture a real diverse student population regional local and mature age online blended and international so so with this particular funding approach it was a social justice focus piece of research and that approach evaluates the impact of initiatives in terms of the way that learners who by circumstance have less are able to be provided with more resources certainly but also more recognition or more representation and those latter two components of the social justice spectrum ended up being quite interesting and important for this study and so in terms of research that we're building on I want to give a shout out to this particular episode episodes the TV the TV theme is seeped in here but it's a special collection of Jime devoted to open education and social justice a great episode there launched in May last year international contributions lots of good stuff there and so yes so the representation piece of diversity and social justice was important for this study and also the recognition piece and so we ended up talking with students and staff about how if it's important to diversify the contents inside the textbook to make it more representative of the student population and also you know what that looked like and who was doing that kind of activity and so this graphic is something we developed to try and express this idea of open textbooks being not just about the free component which is which is important for sure but also you know why is there nobody like me in the whole textbook and that being something we wanted to to look at and indeed from the very first student interview this turned out to be something that students were caring about different degrees and different levels of awareness but this is a quote from the first student interview was towards the end we're talking about representation a lot and who's represented and why that's important and they said it's just important to represent people because you're not just in a gated community of white straight people which I thought was absolutely amazing and a quote of not in you know not just a gated community of white straight people is something that sat with me all through the project and so this is a student who didn't feel that they were particularly included in some some things yes in some things and not in others and that sense of belonging is something that equity research is increasingly interested in there's quite a lot of work on the importance of student sense of belonging on campus with classes and and there's some evidence to show that a lack of belonging impedes study and increases anxiety and depression and that was a fairly recent major study here in Australia so that that sense of mental health belonging study ability to study so but what about inclusion in terms of in the curriculum and in the readings and that's something that we're interested in with this so extending the sense of belonging to curriculum and readings seeing yourself in the materials is that is important for belonging and reducing the feelings of not belonging experience by first-gen students this was a study actually by Amy Nussbaum in the GIME special edition that I mentioned previously so we're trying to extend and build on this type of of work and from those interviews when we were talking and asking the students who's missing from their texts here's some quotes let's just go through them well barely women are mentioned it's all about the men even the textbook for retail management which is a female dominated workforce did not have women visible in it business texts said another generally have men men and men again and another I don't know black people or different religious people are for example missing in business communication and I think the significant person that that textbook needs is Nelson Mandela so he's a student being very particular about who was notably absent from a book in business communications and many people talked about the lack of indigenous people and indigenous communities in texts and also the lack of gay people and this was sort of couched in terms of being all but I wasn't expecting that and I found that really I reflected on that a lot there was a sense of that wasn't you know they were used to being excluded and so why would a textbook be different and I thought that was just very sad and it's really sat with me as well and I think that we can and many of the academics we spoke to were really alive to those issues and wanted to do better but similarly you know who's speaking who's writing who's authoring who is seen as an expert in the textbooks I noticed the men's names always seem to come first and they always look very Anglo the names so no they're not very multicultural so there isn't a lot of diversity in the authors and one student said in the sociology one as well it's all old white guys from 100 years ago which is a bit priceless isn't it so the students were alive to these kinds of issues of representation and getting a sense that it wasn't it wasn't very representative I suppose and so sometimes though the students weren't as comfortable talking about complete were framing what they saw in the textbooks is about undervaluing different contributions so this student said that I do feel that business is kind of male field especially the finance field so I do feel like there have been examples that have been you know they don't want to exclude females but they do not recognize them as well kind of like that and that was really interesting to see the nuances that students could sense that it was that they had ticked a box they had put some women in the books but they weren't really giving them their due recognition in the same way as they did to the men who they were presenting there and of course there were examples of really good texts of inclusive texts but those were framed both by students and staff as exceptions to the rule and they gave normally just a single example one author who had had a go at writing a more inclusive text for a particular discipline said that was you know the way they had done that was quite unusual but there was I think a lot of time in the project where our interviews is we're talking about reading lists not just textbooks and in Australia reading lists where there's a curated list of things is really quite common and in some disciplines it is absolutely the norm and that sense of an inclusive reading list was just discussed quite a lot and I think there's definitely the case that academics are compiling these things pulling things from here and there and part of the reason is to get some diversity in and so I want to I want to stop sharing my whole screen and just ask for some feedback at this point from the participants have you tried auditing your reading lists or your textbooks for diversity for gender or racial representation for example or any other kind of diversity now I'm coming back to I'm coming back to the presentation here and I'm hoping I can I can see in the comments what's happening ah so wow we've got some people in the comments here and um yeah wow okay in music theory wow that's interesting ah okay so Luisa she has but it was a bit of a shock I wonder I wonder what she found that was missing there that's really interesting how are we going is is there anyone who who had to go and then made a change perhaps oh a challenge very good someone's going to have a craic that's great yes I have a new someone in nutrition intentionally adapting a textbook for this reason great okay fantastic so for some a challenge and some definitely um on there which is which is exciting that's great all right well let let's um yeah ah prospectus lots of young men with beards they're normally lolling on lot lawns with laptops I find as well aren't they even if that's not what happens in campus as much anymore never mind all right let me come back and share my screen again all right let's go so um and so uh ah here we go so yeah I found we found in this study that um Australian staff were definitely active and interested in diversification of the content of their readings or their texts lots of good examples curation of more diverse and inclusive reading lists some intentionally curating those as fully open access um adoption of OER as bringing the text up to date and authoring of more inclusive textbooks both OER and commercial as being um something that staff were actively doing and our survey data suggested which was from a broader population of people um recruited very widely um suggested that you know two-thirds and above were really interesting in adapting open texts not only for the Australian context but also for diversifying that content which was higher than we had anticipated um here's an example of someone who does this as part of their pre pre semester prep I'm careful to select images and examples in the content I produce that represents different people with different cultural religious and gender sexual identities where possible I also make sure the readings I curate for a subject are written by diverse groups of people not all white men I actively exclude learning materials if they're not appropriately representative of differences in the population I tend to rely on scholarship written by indigenous experts as readings when it's required and I've also drawn on multimedia resources where indigenous people speak about an issue relevant to them and I think um there was a lot of conversation about indigenous recognition of in and knowledges in the interviews but a growing sense that there was increasingly more material that you could put forward so we could um just rely on actual indigenous people speaking about their experience rather than trying to speak for them and that was politically and ethically very important but one of these key findings is that many academics interviewed were motivated to adopt OER as a way of getting a more up to date text and for some of those academics having better indigenous multicultural and gender representation was part of what made the text up to date so this sounds like a no-brainer in retrospect but the connection between OER up to datedness and diversification of the content was not something that we immediately connected at the start of the research and so as a quote from a colleague who was really motivated to to get to get into OER because his area is fast moving the unit I was interested in drawing on an open access textbook was using a commercial text published in 2012 it's out of date it lacks a number of elements including indigenous education it lacks focus on the curriculum there is a great opportunity with OER text to pick up a resource that grows with the knowledge of the field and also it was screen reader friendly which was super important for Ben who uses um screen readers um all the time and so there was also a connection between diversifying the text improving the graduate outcomes from staff and from students so staff felt that those texts or reading lists that portrayed a wider variety of perspectives and knowledges would better prepare students for the workplace and some students interviewed who had experienced both the traditional unit versus one with a diverse reading list inclusive of indigenous black and female authors um those classes modeled and practiced those how those points of view contrasted and supplemented the kinds of knowledges coming from more traditional and indeed often older sources and students preferred that and they said that the points of view presented would assist them to be better teachers nurses and counselors which is super important and so last question then how is diversity linked to up-to-datedness in your field let's um let me stop sharing and come back to the comments there and uh let me see what you think about up-to-datedness and diversity in the field that you're into Catherine yes once you see the lack of diversity it's impossible not to see it it's so true it's it's um it's something you just can't um can't can't unsee you know it's it starts to grow is there anyone who is um thinking about the discipline they work in is having a conversation about this up-to-datedness factor we we actually now approaching um the um start of like we in the Q&A so if you would like to ask some questions we've got Mark who's asking how do we use the open textbook movement to help reframe what would define us texts student as authors rather than audience is one a venue for development um how do you how you explore this in this video and if I may have one more question from you Sarah is what do you think would be the next step now to prove not to prove but also to take your data and show to all these decision makers that yes we need to go more and more for all your textbook especially given the pandemic what it showed us and the widening gap of poverty and all so if you could take Mark's question and then your thoughts online I will take some more questions yeah um so definitely we very quickly had to scope the research to include um reading lists that was absolutely clear because there are just um uh from the very first consultation at Deakin University um we found originally that it was more likely that the academics were going to drop a textbook completely than convert to an OER textbook but that wasn't born out by the time we finished the study I think it just happened to be who we spoke to in the early days um so there was a mixture of people who were dropping uh texts all together for a fully online experience um versus I think predominantly lots of reading lists that use still book chapters and book sections um and some adopting of OER open access reading lists and full um open platforms so the NOBA platform for psychology and so on so there was definitely some shifts in the notion of what uh the role was of readings um and some disciplines were still hanging on to texts and uh a particularly foundational texts so definitely that is um that is that is the case and um you know Gil's talking Gil's talking about um some possibilities for this being tokenistic and how to avoid that and the report which will be forthcoming from this project digs into that very much so both students and staff are talking about how important it was to to not just um ameliorate things um but to change systems and and to transform systems and so um there was a lot of talk about the commercial publishing model and the problems with that more generally in the whole cycle between research going lockdown and they're not being able to use that in teaching and and there was a lot of um uh conversations about needing to go from diversity as the pictures to whose knowledge is represented and so on so there is definitely um depths and layers and ways of doing things um meaningfully and ways to do it checking boxes and there's some language and terms in the report I think to to help people pick between that yeah thanks for that Sarah um a couple of questions that seem to be repeated is whether some of your matters are actually other labels and I know myself that from tutor a couple of people have asked for that as well if you'll be making for example your presentation widely um accessible uh or if there is a website that you could provide on this report and we can disseminate uh wider or even if the project has a has a website because I think it's not just the Australian higher education that would benefit but worldwide um yeah there was also a comment from Paula who said that um they are working on developing checklists to support some approaches with uh uh copyright license moves uh hoping this will also raise awareness and probably putting together all these materials uh would help um we are kind of running short of time but the conversation will be continuing on twitter and discord and um if there is no further questions um there is something another comment from Jill which is uh they've had some conversation about how we represent diversity without being too connected particularly in resource targeting and very much what you've said really Sarah and I think it's just a start the beginning of a big work and your work your the process project has come at a very good time where we are reflecting on the whole um the next step and the next uh how we are next in uh education the next 2050 years coming ahead so absolutely I will publish um thank you so much the websites on the screen uh we will be publishing the report there will be lots of appendices people are asking for the questions and the survey questions I we are working to to get those out um as part of that but it has to go through the funder for checking first so we will get there um people can ping me privately if they have an urgent need for that because of what they're prepping at the moment um but we will certainly be um sharing plenty of examples as well in the appendices of people who have had a crack at this and um and and hope that it inspires others to just um think deeply about not only the freedom of their texts in terms of the money which is super important but but what it is that we're providing free access to exactly because if it's more racist and sexist views I don't think that's a benefit anyone anyone wants to is talking about so um yeah we can definitely uh just um move the the the sort of lever over on that one I think yeah thank you so much everyone for your comments thank you very much Sarah um you actually I know you've joined us it's a meaning for you right now and thank you everyone who has been posting comments and suggestions and we'll take the conversation further I'm just called and twitter and wider uh even while you're emailing everything else thank you very much and bye thanks