Kia ora koutou,
Welcome to Inside Out. The end of term one provides a good opportunity to look back at what I have been doing with my time. It feels like the beginning of a new semester and the Omicron surge have been my entire focus, but I have also managed to fit in a few things outside of those two compelling preoccupations.
Our new Pou Tuarua
It is wonderful to welcome Aurelia back to UC. It is also very exciting to have the AUL role filled again after two years. This means I have now changed my reporting line from Anne to Aurelia and I look forward to further developing our teaching and learning services.
Recruitment of a Pacific Subject Librarian
We are planning to recruit a new subject librarian to work with Caroline to support our Pacific students. As this will be an entirely new role, we are currently consulting with the Pacific Development team to find out where the support is most needed.
Open Educational Resources
Since Fiona moved into her new role as Kaiwhakahaere Taonga Tuku Iho, I have been attempting to keep some momentum going with our advocacy and promotion of open educational resources. Thanks to Fiona’s continued guidance and help, there have been some important developments this year.
At the beginning of the year we joined the CAUL OER Collective – one of 3 New Zealand and 27 Australian University members. As part of the Collective, we are able to publish two open access books on the Pressbooks platform, apply for grants to support our authors and join communities of practice to help develop our skills in this area.
We also have a couple of open texts in process. Kate Pedley in Geology is collaborating with two academics at Otago to adapt an existing text for the New Zealand context. Kate and her co-authors are hoping to use the text for semester two teaching, or if circumstances conspire against them, in 2023.
The other text that is in progress is a text on criminal process in New Zealand. This text is a pilot that will be funded by CONZUL and written by James Mehigan and Mark Wright. Fiona and I are currently on a steep learning curve as we negotiate with the authors and Canterbury University Press to get a publishing agreement in place.
And finally, we have created an application form that academics can use to ask for funding for their open projects. It is linked from the Subject Guide for our Open Educational Resources information here: https://canterbury.libguides.com/opentextbooks. Thanks to Nick Scullin for his excellent work in creating the guide.
If you have any questions, or just want to have a chat about the above, please let me know. I hope everyone has a great break.
Ngā mihi,
Sara