CRIG Seminar 2020: Access, equity & inclusion

OER resources and open pedagogy

Dr Rajiv Jhangiani @thatpsychprof

Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani is the Acting Vice Provost, Teaching & Learning and Associate Vice Provost, Open Education at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia. The architect of Canada’s first Zero Textbook Cost degrees, Rajiv is an internationally known advocate for open education whose research and practice focuses on open educational resources, student-centered pedagogies, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. He is a recipient of the Robert E. Knox Master Teacher Award from the University of British Columbia, the Dean of Arts Teaching Excellence award at KPU, and the award for Excellence in Open Education from BCcampus. Rajiv is a co-founder of the Open Pedagogy Notebook and serves on the BC Open Education Advisory Committee. A co-author of three open textbooks in Psychology, his most recent book is Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science (2017). You can find him online @thatpsychprof or thatpsychprof.com.

Dr Sarah Lambert @SarahLambertOz

Dr Sarah Lambert is currently an Honorary Research Fellow with the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) and leads Australia’s National OER textbook scoping study, a national research project investigating the use of OER textbooks from an equity perspective.

Facilitator: Frank Ponte @ponte_frank

Frank Ponte is Manager Library Services (Teaching) at RMIT University and works within the Teaching and Research unit of the Library and manages the associated activities relating to Teaching support. This includes driving the uptake of open educational resources, the curation of online resources to support teaching, the development and delivery of microcredentials, and the introduction of reading lists software within Canvas course shells.

Access and inclusion

Nikki Andersen @AndersenNikki

Nikki Andersen is the Open Education Content Librarian at the University of Southern Queensland. With experience in librarianship and diversity and inclusion, Nikki is passionate about creating educational experiences that are accessible and inclusive.

Sarah Fennelly

Sarah Fennelly is a Digital Designer for Deakin University Library who brings a wealth of expertise to visual and user interface design for the Library’s digital ecosystem. A focus of Sarah’s work is creating or collaborating with others on the design of high-quality, consistent, scalable and user-centred digital artefacts and applications. As a Digital Designer Sarah has been instrumental in shaping the form of design elements, interfaces and experiences for Library materials. Sarah’s work requires her to flexibly move across Library speciality areas in order to support the development of artefacts such as video creations, digital displays or signage, Library Guides, websites, and learning and teaching materials. Sarah also maintains, develops and advises upon the Library’s global design principles and the use of the Library design elements by the library community.

Bec Muir @Yeoldebook

Bec is currently Manager, Libraries West at Victoria University. Bec came to VU from Deakin University where she worked as the Warrnambool Campus and Liaison Librarian. Bec is currently a fifth year part time PhD candidate with Charles Sturt University, researching on accessibility in public libraries for people with invisible disabilities.

Facilitator: Hugh Rundle

Hugh Rundle is Manager Digital Innovation at La Trobe University, where he had just enough time to work out which café has the best coffee and finish his induction before being plunged into COVID life. Hugh and his team are responsible for library discovery, eLearning, websites and applications, and looking for large and small opportunities for improvements to the library’s  technology and online user experience. Hugh co-founded newCardigan and is currently the Treasurer of VALA. He has previously worked at CAVAL and in the public library sector.

Access and connections

Adele Walsh

Adele Walsh has devoted over a decade to being an advocate for youth literature. Well known as the Program Coordinator for the Centre for Youth Literature, Adele crafted and implemented learning and literacy programs for young people. She now designs professional development and event programs in her role as Senior Coordinator, Community Outreach & Engagement at the La Trobe University Library. Outside of her day-to-day role, Adele is an in-demand moderator, presenter, and teacher, an ongoing outspoken advocate for youth readers, host of the YA professional Facebook group The Knack, and founding co-host of the Unladylike and What Would Danbury Do? podcasts. 

Jane Cowell @janecowell8

Jane Cowell is a known innovator and speaker on trends in the Public Library industry with over 25 years of experience working in Public Libraries across Australia. Jane is passionate about public libraries as creative community spaces and their role in connecting communities with technology trends and sees many opportunities for libraries presented by the rapidly changing digital, social and economic environment. Currently Jane is the CEO of Yarra Plenty Regional Library which serves the communities in the northeast of Melbourne. In her previous roles she has introduced a Business Incubator space in the State Library of Queensland partnering with local entrepreneurs, developed a Council wide Learning Community collaborating with the local University, TAFE campuses, Community Organisations and the business community and delivered significant research projects to support library advocacy efforts such as The Impact of Libraries as Creative Spaces (2016) and was instrumental in the development of a fully funded ($20 million) early literacy programme for every Queensland public library, First Five Forever, now in its 6th year of delivery. Jane is currently a member of the International Library Federation Association Public Library Section and enjoys this global collaboration to advance Public Libraries across the world. She blogs at Medium and you can follow Jane on Twitter @janecowell8.

Jessamyn West @jessamyn

Jessamyn West is a library technologist from Randolph Vermont. She is a nationally known speaker, writer, and educator on the issues facing today's libraries. Her blog focusing on libraries and politics, Librarian.net, is one of the earliest and longest running librarian websites. She writes a column for Computers in Libraries magazine and is the author of the book Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide. She has taught "Tools for Community Advocacy" for the University of Hawaii's Library School and was on the Advisory Board to the Wikimedia Foundation. As a librarian without a library, for the past fifteen years she has spent most of her time working with her local community as a hands-on technology educator.

Facilitator: Damian Lodge

Damian Lodge is currently Dean, Academic at Massey University in New Zealand. Damian has been a University Librarian, Library educator, former ALIA president and this year led Massey University’s teaching and learning response to Covid.  Damian has over 25 years experience in various professional and academic roles in both Australia and New Zealand, thus bringing his own experience of the importance of access and connections to this facilitator role.