foreign
[Music]
how's lunch
okay so we have our next speaker uh cat
Kent so in her road as a digital
literacy program manager at deakin
University
Kate explored Innovative digital
teaching and learning initiatives
The Learning in how Technologies people
and learning wave together has led to
the production of an open educational
resource interactive textbook which we
will hear about today so please welcome
cat
thank you
[Applause]
you found the energy at the end of the
day to do that look like clap so I
appreciate that and even these tired old
eyes can see most of your faces and so
if I trip you out by looking at you too
much it's just because I might have had
a vague moment and it's not you it's
definitely me
so as my lovely chair indicator my name
is Kat Kane I work for deakin University
in the library space and I'm really
focused on learning experience and
Partnerships capacity
so both of those things are a really
beautiful match to open education
Open Access and inclusive education
goals and they're very close to my heart
so today I'm going to share with you a
collaborative open education project
that began in 2021
grew over 2022
and we'll wrap up
this year it will
so as it's already been talked about
it's an open education resource project
and it's sought to really lean
authentically into
Equity into Open Access and we relied
really heavily on digital affordances in
both the creation the design choices and
ultimately for its intended use
but before I really get into it
I have a confession is that I can
sometimes slip into academic jargon I
can go all Ed Tech speak or just
theories in fact when I first submitted
my abstract it got what the heck does
that mean and I had to resubmit it and
there was a reason for that because I
had things like
this
and things like this so while I'm going
to try really hard not to slip into that
kind of Ed speak
sometimes it's going to happen because
this literally comes out of an education
space and it's designed for Education
students and practitioners
so
let's talk about the philosophies the
Frameworks and the pedagogy because it
is unavoidable to talk about them
because it's so impactful in what we did
please interrupt me if I do start to go
on like a neoliberal rant or start to
talk about hermeneutics because nobody
needs to hear that today
but what I'll try and do is put things
in more concrete terms like
that was my second abstract attack
this is what we did and online but
downloadable interactive textbook that
offers a grounding in play-based
learning and shares authentic assessment
Potentials in play
this was a really media Rich resource
and it was designed to guide Educators
in their play-based teaching journey by
linking Theory to practice
so the textbook was really focused on
providing accessible easy to use and
interesting experiences that shared
these knowledges
and it was the design to be an object an
artifact at the end the deliverable
that could be easily read but also
reflectively used and we wanted to
engage both teachers teacher Educators
to be embedded in University and Tafe
courses
um but more than that we really wanted
it to be a resource that went out into
the world into the open spaces so it
could be used by the practitioners
already out there those Educators that
we all know that have been doing it
tough for the last few years
doing the hard yards and we wanted a
guide that they could engage and use
moving forward
so no publisher payables which is a big
thing no University access barriers we
wanted to go open by Design from the
get-go
this is a typical thing that this story
will share and that I would share in a
presentation
it always comes back to the people
and about the place
so we want to meaningfully acknowledge
the grounding of the work in The Who and
the where
because this project is heavily shaped
by this peopling Technology's philosophy
we really do put people at the heart of
our goal and the Heart of our creation
so this framing consciously privileges
people before the actual outfit you know
the artifacts the item
and so with that framing it's really
important that I share the people in
this story in this community the people
who
um were both the people we wanted to
build for and the people who did all of
the work
so as I've already indicated who the
people the community we're aiming to
connect with was but the editorial team
was a bunch of professors
and notably
visual designer and a multimedia sound
specialist as well as myself as a
learning designer
it also had a lot of researchers and
academic content they're the authors
they're the ones who come up with the
research they'll rewrite it but the
other thing that we want to make really
clear is that the actual execution of
the book wouldn't have happened without
people like our developer
and it also wouldn't have happened
without guidance from an oer expert at
deacon
so we really do say thank you to the
networks and Industry bodies Our
divisional areas many Deacon colleagues
for soundboarding and support and for
the Council of Australian libraries for
providing a space in which to publish
now
we've already sort of flagged
these are the three key things that
we're talking about know your people
know who you're designing for and know
who you need at the table to design and
create your people focused outcome and
these three things really did
continually shape the work that we did
and this whether it's a open framework
putting together an open source
legislation Building open data
repositories or creating an oer like
this particular project
we all need these domain experts to come
in they're varied knowledges
and it's also about being super clear
about what you're building and who
you're building the thing for
so
I've put the position of people
front and center but the other thing I
flagged was place
the Australian element
has actually been a key part of the
content development in this project
it brings Australian research in a
particular area play-based learning to
the four
but we would note that the Core Concepts
and practical implementation things have
Global possibilities
and I think all of us in this room can
agree that place impacts creation
whether it's an artwork whether it's
code or wherever it's a book like this
project
and I join you here in nam today
but this book grew and took place at
deakin which sits at the traditional
lands of the water wrong people of the
Geelong region the wurundry and
bondurang people of Greater Melbourne
and then gunship Mara people of the
warnable region
so workshops meetings conversation
design hours upon design hours
inspiration points reflective work
testing that was all grounded in space
across these traditional plans
and this project has links across
Australia and its impact hopefully
extends Beyond those borders
so with that in mind I do want to take a
moment to reflect that context
we acknowledge the traditional
custodians of all the unseated lands
skies and waterways on which Deacon
students and teachers come together
as we learn and teach through virtually
and physically constructed places across
time we pay our deep respect to the
ancestors and Elders of water on country
as the traditional custodians all the
lands on which you might be learning and
teaching where education has taken place
for many thousands of years
we also recognize place in our actual
oer
in both the content and the context
education has a long and Rich history on
this Australian continent
and we hope to have that we've honored
and reflected the ways that the
indigenous peoples have shaped our
learning and knowledge bases in this
country
so we also recognize the profound impact
Global indigenous voices have had in
education learning and human ontologies
now I know I said ontologies but let's
move faster
so
let's Dive In
creating open educational resources is
really an emergent space for deacon at
the moment we are just piloting and
experimenting there's all sorts of new
possibilities
doing more than just making a PDF is
what we're aiming to do
now we arrived at this particular oh
yeah like all good Journeys through a
series of twists and turns
there are a number of catalysts for
creation and a number of supporting
elements
but it began with two previous projects
one was an education course it had to be
digitally transformed
both for
covert reasons but also because of the
particular course model had changed we
also had another project that was a
digital professional learning that we
did with the Department of Education and
Training
so with the course transformation
project
we really had to transform learning
materials that started in that
physically located experience and
redesigned them for a digital classroom
and learning experience
and the core learning from that
particular project was how diverse the
people were at the heart of the project
both the students the intended
recipients of the learning or the
engaging in the learning and the staff
who built it
the other thing that should be noted
from this particular project is that the
cohort was incredibly
diverse and involved people as far away
as the tiwi islands through to Tasmania
and I was also some of them came through
the pathway of nikiri which is an
indigenous Institute at deakin
so the other major project that informed
this one we're talking about today was a
digital learning program as I said
now the
it was like a a really big tender kind
of contract type of project with the
Department of Education and Training
and in fact that's why some IP and
copyright things have become a bit
complex which is why I have not
published this week but it's coming
uh because this was a free online
learning program and it was multifaceted
it had all sorts of webinars modules and
an online community of practice
but the important thing for our project
today is that
we took research from that program and
we took learnings and it gave us
reportable insights from the users
because we did a lot of uh surveying and
user testing
and so all of that came together
to have a kind of pedagogical narrative
and all these theories about digital
learning transition to University
digital Community communities all
informed the work that we did
so principles Frameworks and practices
did emerge from those projects and that
shaped the design and development of
this interactive textbook
so here's where I get any educational
we had a really important framework in
three parts one was a peopling
Technologies philosophy the second was
the importance of pedagogies for digital
experiences and the third one was
evaluation which I won't be talking
about today
so here's my philosophy framework
pedagogy that came out of previous
projects
it's
privileges people and relationships as
you can see because we believe there's
reciprocal relationships in people
Technologies and that it's essential to
privilege the learner or the user
now this is obviously a very education
focused lens that I'm showing you you
know we've got online Learners as a core
area we've got curriculum of course
enhancement staff but our contention is
that this can actually be adapted to for
any work with technology because you can
spot those alignments with
human-centered design and user
experience
now the other bit that was sort of
underpinning the work that we did on
this book was a concept called ICI
and it shapes the way that you design
the learning material to be immediate
collaborative and Interactive
and it's all about weaving
points of Engagement in a scaffolded way
in a way that builds from known supports
to new areas of learning and it also
relies very heavily on feedback and
mechanisms
but
I'm not speaking to a whole big
education group so I don't want to go on
about you know pedagogies and grounding
and stuff like that all day
this is probably the more interesting
stuff for this group
well how do we design develop and build
it
got a couple of main tools that we
worked the boring Old Reliable word now
Microsoft 365 version so that was for
Content development and just general
communication and design elements reason
we went for that is because it was
accessible and and really familiar to
our academic contributors when we try to
use other tools in this space did not
work and even sometimes the online part
of Microsoft Word became complicated
with different people having versions on
their desktop and all those kind of
challenges
we also used a team site really heavily
for communication information
architecture keeping the very complex
documents between
design briefs and
research articles all of that kind of
stuff
and we relied heavily on Zoom or Team
video call because this was during a
time of a pandemic so we couldn't get
together as much as we would like to
actually Workshop in person
the kind of tools that were used in the
book were
video recording and editing Tech same
stuff as sound Adobe suite
h5p which is a HTML5 content and all of
that kind of stuff actually went into
the book
and the book itself sits in a platform
called press books which many of you
will be aware of
now
in a perfect world the key project
member our visual designer Sarah Finley
would be here and she could walk you
through the visual design steps and how
to use figma
but sometimes the non-domain expert has
to rock up and try and do their best so
with that in mind these are the four
stages that the visual design of our
yard went through
pretty obviously scope stage Style style
guide sorry prototype and build
you know scoping is something very
standard everybody does this kind of
work
virus scanning figuring out what our
press books and other tools could do
what was the training needed for our
staff to build and use them
all of that sort of defining and
investigating kind of work the typical
investigation stuff
stage two was the style guide
and that's been built into figma as has
the Prototype and I'm going to go live
to that in a moment and lastly with
stage four the build which is a press
books instance and again I'll go live
all right fingers crossed
see how this tool goes
all right
has anyone in this room worked with
figma before
oh nice
so this is just an invaluable tool
because it visualizes Design Concepts in
a way that non-visual people non-visual
designers can really understand so this
was our visual designer put together a
vision board the inspiration points and
this was able to be shown and walked
through with the authors and the editors
and it made
the concepts that had been just in text
really visible to the editorial and the
authorial community so in brief the
visual designer had outlaid the
inspiration for the color palettes which
was taking inspiration from Australia
Flora that Primary School experience
that many of us have had
there was a definite leaning towards
muted color color and that was for
cognitive load reasons for the text
Heavy content to just have a softening
there was also choices around typography
and press book themes and we went for
stick standard stuff that comes in press
books and the reason for that was to
make it sustainable so we didn't have to
get too much Dev work
and the illustrations and the
iconography as I show you the actual
book you'll see that lines don't meet up
in some parts and that was to reflect
how kids draw because they never quite
finish a line it's all very fluid and
organic
the style guide then stepped into a
prototype stage and I might just go to
chapter one
and so again it's a really crucial step
in the process because as I said the
visual designer could show the authors
and editorial team what the content
would eventually look like in the actual
book and so this is an open practice to
be transparent in the decision points
there's ways to communicate and comment
on the work and to make sure that the
design was going in the track that the
original authors intended
the other interesting thing about this
tool is it just does wonderful stuff to
be able to check accessibility between
desktop tablet and all that kind of
stuff
the other thing that this tool allowed
us to do by prototyping was to see as
learning designers where the content had
gone too long where it had
put too much load on the learner to move
through and where we might need to break
it up or edit so that their digital
experience and learning experience
flowed much better
so now
while I can't give you a link to our
published very nearly published book I'm
going to open it up from my editor View
and
walk you through this now the other
thing I'd note is as we go through there
is some accessible functions that have
been put in that our developer worked on
and if you are working on a press Book
Project and want some of that coding our
developer is very happy to share that
with the community
so
this is what pressbooks looks like and
this is a very important element
was that you can choose to download this
book in different formats now this is
because some of our intended Learners do
live in remote and and Regional areas
and we're talking very remote we're
talking only have access to the internet
in sporadic time sometimes when they
come for the community-based learning at
deakin so they needed ways to be able to
download and experience the content even
when they weren't connected to the net
although the book is an interactive book
and there are elements that require
being
online to access we've made sure to have
accessible content either below or in an
accessible appendix so that they don't
lose that information and that's been
very important
so
let's jump in
don't need to show you the contributors
this is very important too around
opening the learning to people is being
very clear about how to engage with this
kind of learning to
prep the Learners into the reflective
learning model that it uses to let them
know they need to have some sort of way
to keep a digital record or a paper
record that they'll be listening and
viewing and speaking modes that are part
of this guide
this book
and we guide them really clearly in
signpost throughout
so I'm going to show you
have a look
it's a very paired back clean design for
a reason because it is a textbook it's
not here to you know create an immense
visual you know experience it's about a
different way of engaging with learning
but largely text-based
however we did rely heavily on podcasts
or vodcasts in this case because it was
easier to embed them in YouTube into an
online book than other tools
have a look
this is what we were talking about right
when I talked about the h5p the HTML5
and it just allows us to bring to life
elements with a visual and text
connection along with all the research
that is involved in that space But as I
said in case people had to download it
at a site and then you know that was the
only time they could have it we always
had a walk through of what was that
experience what was the interactive are
you doing and what were the things the
key learning outcomes the examples the
narratives that were in there
we even use things that pushed our
Learners to record themselves to make
little files of them reflecting in the
moment and to save them on their laptop
it's a very easy to build in just uses
this h5p you can talk you just go record
and it will start recording me right now
and do anything I talk about will be
taken in and then I go done
and I can either retry or download and
keep that as a resource so it doesn't
stop in the moment there is actually a
tangible takeaway
the interesting thing that we had to
sort of navigate is that while this is
an open education resource can be
accessed and used by anyone in the world
and the text itself can be remixed and
reused as they wish there is a caveat in
that we used images either from a Getty
subscription from a previous project
or were designed by our visual designers
so the images are the only things that
are not in that remix space so we have
to find a way to within the limitations
of the pressbook platform to say hey
yeah take all the texts recreate as you
like but please don't steal the images
because Getty will chase us
and they will
okay let's go back
so
what have we learned so far
apart from the standard kind of project
stuff particularly in the oer OR open
Agenda space you know of that balancing
Project's priorities and time and
capacity for a project that often sits
in your own time and outside of your
allocated work hours that's going to be
a standard across open work
I wish it wasn't but there's no easy way
particularly the university setting to
have Wham allocated or to have hours
allocated for this kind of stuff
the library that I work for is lucky in
that we can budget work time for that
and we've received a small grant for
this project so I could hire a visual
designer
but for the academics it was done for
love and passion
and that's a big barrier to overcome for
other projects
so the other things that we learned were
that
projects differ and
that and what I mean by that is that
what we did in two previous projects
with relatively the same team looked
very different for this one because of
people's roles changing because of
differences in pre-formatting elements
within the Press books versus WordPress
where we built another thing all of that
changed things more than we anticipated
we also learned how we had to be very
sensitive with curation
that because equity and diverse voices
and those different contexts had to be
considered in design
there were things sometimes that
couldn't be shared that researchers
weren't really so release for example or
that weren't applicable to the broader
Early Childhood space it may only be
specific to Victoria so we had to be
very careful with what we curated
we learned that even when you have
templates that you really need to guide
all of your team in the using of
templates it's
it's a thing and related to that is even
when you have got your content what you
think is all wrapped up ticked off so we
can hand it over to the visual designer
and then to the builders
um
sometimes your content developers your
your writers don't understand those
deadlines and are changing things after
we've already stepped through a lot of
those steps so there was a lot of
cycling back to try and fix oh what have
they oh they've changed content there
how do we actually design that
differently then
we also learned that you know user
guides would be very helpful for future
projects to support learning design and
engagement so that people didn't have to
relearn the things that we did so we
think that what we should be working on
next is a supportive guide for deakin
oer space so how do you do this kind of
work together
and
we really talked about the potentials of
the format being whether it's press
books or another open platform for
textbooks
it it allowed not only the Learners to
access content but also people in the
projects were able to see their
contribution uh in a really meaningful
way and by that I mean we flag visual
designers we flag sound designers it's
that kind of work that designers and
developers do is often hidden and a
really important part of this project
and I think for all kind of Open Access
projects is surfacing those people
so finally
work in the earlier course design
project and the department of education
training modules
really did build this sort of philosophy
and pedagogies and Frameworks that have
then shaped this oer
it drew on the data for research and
feedback from those projects and then
this project will do the same moving
forward
and it gave us a way to shape digital
experiences consistently when working in
this space
that effective design is primarily
learner or user focused and relational
that content development needs to be
responsive to and value that user or
learner
that contextual design is only possible
when you have teams of experts working
together
and that open by Design will ground our
future oer work
and the final takeaway would be that
as I said at the start people need to be
positioned at the heart of any
engagement with technology
the pilot oer project has played an
important role for us in enabling us to
further add value to those earlier
projects and to Future digital learning
projects
and it's made knowledge created that
could have sat behind a deacon paywall
or sat with either department of
education training space that will close
in six months it's brought it back out
it's not going to disappear it's going
to be trolled by the the web archive and
it doesn't disappear
so thanks for having me to talk about
something that's a little bit
sidestepping from the kind of other
sessions you've been having feel free to
get in contact and if you had any
questions I'm more than happy to take
them
thank you
so we I think we do have quite some time
for questions
so
I see with some of the h5p content you
had a transcription below how do you
deal with transcribing the YouTube
embeds
so we
um have a closed captioning so if you're
experiencing them digitally that's no
problem because the closed captioning
will come up
but there we could have put the
accessible text below but because some
of the videos are an hour long
it would have been not great experience
so we had to put them in an accessible
appendix
and sometimes for those videos we didn't
put the whole content you know the
speaker one speaker two speaker three
sometimes it was The Core Concepts that
they shared so we translated it into a
what was the key things that they talked
about in that particular video
thank you that was awesome
um you said that you it's not quite
published
um so this might be a bit premature but
what's the plan to kind of promote and
disseminate and and get it out there
kind of thing beyond the
perhaps the usual suspect of the
academic world that it will naturally
find it how are you going to disseminate
it more broadly that's a great question
and there's a couple of things that will
be involved one is my institution has
just been through a few years of
restructuring including the library the
library now has a Library events and
public programs team
and we also have Communications Group so
there is pathways through them that
we'll be talking to but in particular
we know that public libraries have an
amazing connection to the local schools
and local kindergartens so my concept is
that we partner with them
to be able to bring this to them to do
sessions to do workshops with some of
the academics facilitating and that
would be a better way of getting it out
there than just you know here's an
online session about we've just
published so embedded in the community
live
from what you shared with the um the the
figma files it looks gorgeous
um do you have a favorite what was your
favorite part of the project
um for me the favorite part was when we
actually had Workshop days in person
um at a place near my home oops there's
my reminder to move uh at a place called
one ponds
so that's when we could actually come
together and talk through
things on a board throw things out take
photos think about stuff have lunch
maybe some wine these things happen
the that sort of that people-based stuff
was probably the most fun but
I can tell you for my visual designer it
was learning how to use figma because
they'd use XD and other things in the
past but the opportunity to use this
tool
um and pilot it for this project was
really helpful for them to know whether
they should be using that moving forward
as because they're the visual design
lead for our area
and the its functionality just does so
much of what she needs and it's very
clear that she can take that and give
that to the developer and go this is
what I'm trying to achieve this is the
wireframe and the developer can look at
it and go oh I get it I get what you're
trying to do and then they can work on
that and they go back and forth and it's
just been a really invaluable tool to
visualize and communicate between
different languages because you've got
your academic speak you've got your
developer speak you've got your visual
speak and any tool that opens it up for
discussion and makes it transparent is
just so removable
any questions
we can start talking about Piaget and
party if you'd like
yeah actually I do have a question so
you mentioned about the
the catchy images that could not be
licensed under Creative Commons so are
there other you know licensing
challenges that you got
some are easy so for some of the uh part
of the book we use unsplash which is
just a joy isn't it I've got to love on
Splash
and so for something like that
I go in
it's super easy to deal with in terms of
copyright compliance and intellectual
property happiness and all those things
and it's not going to be my friend it's
all right
go that way
Getty we had the um we had purchased the
item the imagery and some short videos
and we could use them in you know pretty
much for the rest of time but
while our use was Unlimited
the sharing with others was not
we knew that that could be a problem
with font choice we have our visual team
is very strong could have designed our
own fonts but then that becomes Deacon
intellectual property and so we just
went for stock standard what came with
the platform and the visual designer
just tweaked it to make it as readable
as possible
the other licensing thing was around the
content because so much of it came from
the original Department of Education and
Training modules
we had to really go through that
contract
um really figure out who owns the
copyright and turns out we own the
copyright to the content uh the
Department of Education and Training
even though they paid us for the project
they have usage rights but not copyright
and part of part of what was built into
the contract which was very clever by
the Project Lead at that time was the
ReUse of this Learning Materials in
other contexts so again that was like
that made it a lot easier
the the thing that becomes complicated
is
referencing like in terms of if because
it's so research heavy
in a university there's we we have
provided all of the references obviously
it's a it's a it's a textbook
the only problem we have and one we have
no way of getting around is that if
someone wants to go further in their
reading and go off and look at those
particular resources
unless they have institutional access in
some way or it's you know available
through Eric or another for free you
know a more open database we can't get
them access to that which is you know
I'd like to tether the whole publishing
industry but
I don't think else of you will let me do
that
that's very good
any other questions
I loved at the start you said it was
very people-centered and you did some
workshops I wonder because it's about
learning through play did you have
workshops with little people playing
no uh not in the actual design of the
project but in the research that informs
the oer yes so the academics and the
professors they go into the classroom to
do teaching like even though they're
teaching at Uni they still go and often
do sessions in kindergartens in early
years they do
testing because a lot of play bases
around space so we're talking you know
going in and having dirt mud baths and
all these kind of things set up and
there's some beautiful images in here of
that sort of thing so there was play at
the start of it but it had to be
filtered through the research
well
yep
so you mentioned elsevier and all the
problems that exist with academic
publishing for your collaborators was it
much of a mind flip to moving to this
sort of open model or whether was that
something that they came to really
easily
so one of the other editors with me
Naomi David I work very heavily with her
and she is an academic and a writer for
her it comes very easily it's too she's
very involved with social justice and
Open Access and opening up different
voices so she works in the Nike
Institute
for a lot of the other
authors and editors these are people who
are prolific researchers and publishers
and it wasn't an easy flip to do what is
the outcome for me for Wham for Prestige
for
yes and so it really relied on
Naomi and myself to do the the bulk of
the work and pull together what they'd
already done
um because they were happy to have done
that work earlier with the debt project
because it was funded it meant that it
relieved them from teaching hours
um but
until oers and Open Access and other
open education pedagogies are supported
by institutions it's going to be you're
going to need Champions who put probably
too much of themselves into projects to
get them done
that's a bummer of a note I've left you
on
I also have a simple question like can
we assess those content now or we have
to wait for the publicity or something
like that to have a look at the yeah
like the first page to download the book
so I did it we did we've been testing
um and module still got to fix up a
reference or two
yeah most boring card of any yeah
because I actually tried to search
Google and it's not there yet no so it's
not a that's a private link that I've
been showing you my editor link okay
um because I can't press publish until
the copyright statement is accurate and
clear and until uh the publishing
platform which is calls and their use of
press books until they give it a tick so
I'm technically not allowed to press
publish or get in trouble yep but it's
but it is it will be in the next couple
of weeks yeah
yep if there's no question I think um
people get five minutes back in their
day they get a bit extra time oh yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah you want to speak
more
okay so if
there's no more question we will
thank you
foreign
[Applause]