The Open Educational Resources Collective, a Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) initiative, has demonstrated exceptional commitment to fostering collaborative open practices within the academic community of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Beginning as a successful two-year pilot from 2022-2023, the CAUL OER Collective evolved into a vital service under the CAUL Open Educational Resources Strategic Enabling Program through to 2025.
With a membership of almost 90% of CAUL member Australian universities and 100% of New Zealand universities, the Collective has succeeded in publishing 37 open textbooks with over 80 in progress.
The Collective’s primary mission is to build infrastructure and capacity to advance the OER agenda nationally and beyond. It facilitates the collaborative authoring and publishing of open textbooks, prioritising disciplines where local and indigenous content can enrich learning materials. By providing a shared publishing platform, CAUL Member institutions not only publish their own textbooks but also engage in cross-institutional collaborations, thereby fostering a robust community of practice centred on open textbook development.
Five multi-institutional collaborative open textbooks were completed during the pilot period and have been viewed a total of 25,410 times, downloaded 3,889 times and appear in catalogues globally. Legal Research Skills: An Australian Law Guide (2023 edition) is the most popular of these titles, regularly topping the charts as most viewed on the CAUL OER Collective catalogue. An additional 11+ multi-institutional and multinational collaborative open textbook student-centred projects are currently in progress.
The Collective’s inclusive approach accommodates institutions at varying stages of OER adoption, ensuring that each member can contribute and benefit from shared resources and expertise. This initiative exemplifies the spirit of open collaboration by leveraging CAUL’s network to promote knowledge sharing and joint project ventures across diverse academic backgrounds and cultures. Through technologically mediated platforms and supportive frameworks, the CAUL OER Collective creates an environment where innovation thrives, and collective goals are achieved collaboratively.
One Collective member stated, “I’d really like to say thank you to CAUL and to the university library partners for making these open educational resources opportunities available to us and to colleagues and learners of all kinds all over the world. The opportunity to maintain a social justice-oriented platform and system that is truly global, truly available to everyone is actually becoming increasingly rare even though we are promoting open access as heavily as we can.”
To accelerate the progress of the initiative, the Collective has awarded $92,500 in grant funding to 33 projects motivating the community. Additionally, themed monthly webinars provide regular opportunities to unite members and develop a community of practice where they showcase their work, learn and connect with like-minded professionals.
Receiving this award would advance the OER agenda nationally by lending international credibility to the Collective and allow us to celebrate its dedication to open practices and fostering a more inclusive academic landscape.
Award NominatorThe CAUL Open Educational Resources Collective has very quickly grown into an effective, prestigious, and welcoming community of practice. Its founders and leaders have created significant change in the open education landscape in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. They leverage their community resources to highlight the ability of OER to be tailored to local contexts. This is an excellent example of collaboration with elements that may be relevant in other regions.
Award Reviewer
Explore more about this awardee…
- Seven projects across five categories were funded for the 2025-26 OER Collective Grant Round.
- See also all of the projects supported by the OER Collective.
Podcasts from Open Education Global
Our continuing conversations with winners of the Open Education Awards for Excellence took us down under to Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand to hear from representatives from the Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL) OER Collective. Recognized in 2024 with an OEAward for Open Collaboration, the OER Collective demonstrates an outstanding example of collaboration across great distances that includes nearly every university from Australia and New Zealand.
We sat down back in August for a conversation with Mais Fatayer (University of Technology Sydney), Ash Barber (CAUL), and Richard White (University of Otago). You will hear insight into how the Collective has advanced open education in the region, providing accessible, high-quality Open Educational Resources (OER) that are created to be relevant to this part of the world. More than the wealth of resources, with the support of CAUL, open education has grown to be a thriving and dynamic community “down under” and beyond.
Join CAUL on December 12 for a live online celebration and showcase for the OER Collective’s activity in 2025.
at Descript.com
In This Episode
FYI: For the sake of experimentation and the spirit of transparency, this set of show notes alone was generated by the AI “Underlord” in the Descript editor we use to produce OEGlobal Voices.
Celebrating the Success of the OER Collective with CAUL Representatives
Join host Alan Levine in the OEGlobal Voices podcast as he welcomes Mais Fatayer, Richard White, and Ash Barber to discuss the achievements of the Council for Australian University Librarians (CAUL) OER Collective. This episode delves into the role of libraries in driving open educational resources (OER) and the significance of collaboration across Australian and New Zealand universities. The guests share their personal journeys into open education, highlight notable OER publications, and discuss the future of open education in the region. Episode recorded on August 14, 2025.
- 00:00 Intro Music and Highlighted Quotes
- 01:26 Podcast Studio and Guest Introductions
- 03:33 Personal Backgrounds and School Experiences
- 13:45 First Encounters with Open Education
- 20:46 The OER Collective: Formation and Growth
- 24:21 Collaboration and Success Stories
- 26:14 Rebellious Beginnings and Institutional Challenges
- 26:29 The Power of Collective Publishing
- 27:24 Diverse Expertise in the Collective
- 28:32 Community Engagement and Support
- 29:59 Highlighting the Podcast: Speaking of Open
- 32:37 Showcasing Standout OER Projects
- 41:25 Personal Passions and Hobbies
- 44:21 Future Goals and Aspirations for OER
- 49:53 Acknowledging Key Contributors
- 52:18 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
(end of AI generated show notes)
Additional Links and Quotes for Episode 91
Our institutions are at various stages of OER development and their exploration of OER in general and OEP, the practices too. But I think the aims of the collective really do allow institutions with different goals and at different levels to benefit from the collective and from each other.
There’s a really wonderful thing that I’m observing lately is that your institutions who are more experienced are like the older sibling to some of the other institutions who are a bit newer. And I say that like older sibling ’cause there’s a real warmth about it where these institutions are wanting to take the other ones under their wing, guide them along, and really share their knowledge.
There isn’t a feeling of, “Oh, we know what we’re doing and we’re the best, and we were first, and we’re number one” is none of that. It’s very much, “Oh, we’ve done this before. We’ve made a mistake before. Let’s help you not make that mistake” and it’s really quite wonderful.
Ash Barber on the OER Collective
- Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL)
- CAUL Open Educational Resources Collective 2024 Open Collaboration Award Winner (OE Global)
- University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
- UTS Open
- UTS published OER (OER Collective)
- University of Otago (Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka)
- Open Otago
- Open textbooks at Otago
- Media Studies 101 (2014 published by BCcampus)
- Otaga published OER (OER Collective)
I think what a lot of institutions find it’s quite hard getting that buy-in from senior management. They don’t quite get the concept of an open book. “What is this weird thing that you wanted to get this away or what? I don’t really understand.”
Whereas libraries can grasp that much more readily. Speaking for my own institution, the library’s ability to get buy in on something like this at its senior level is difficult. But once CAUL came in, [it] made a huge difference for us because it provided that framework, the platform and the sort of support networks and all that stuff. It has just made a huge difference.
Richard White on libraries and CAUL
- Recommended OER Collective Titles
- Richard
- Mais
- Ash
- Speaking of Open Podcast (Mais and Ash)
- Australasian Open Educational Practice Special Interest Group (ASCILITE)
- Looker Studio (analytics from Google)
- Mermaid Guitar (Richard’s band)
- Tomorrow (theme music for Speaking of Open podcast)
- Jude S Rupert (Ash’s poetic meanderings)
Back to the bigger conversation about why Open Education, is as many of my colleagues at UTS state, it’s the future. Because Open Education allows the work to continue to sustain the work in that flexibility where you can build on top of the work.
One of the things that we tried to do with the podcast is to bring that voice, or as I’d like to call it, the teaching presence from some of the case studies or the human presence and give the opportunity to the reader of the book or that case study to listen to the voice of the academic. Because there’s so much in the passion, the tone, the language and how academics present their case studies.
There’s a lot of examples around different themes in the book. So there’s adaptation, implementation, but there’s also a lot of case studies about the teaching and how academics teach using open pedagogies. We wanna bring the teaching voice closer and say, this is not just to create knowledge and share it with everyone, this is to enhance the learning experience. This is to see open education actually create impact on the student’s learning experience.
Mais Fatayer on the Speaking Open Podcast and Open Education Down UndOER case studies
Listen to more from our episodes recorded with Open Education Awards for Excellence winners.
Our open licensed music for this episode is a track called Collective Genius by TimTaj that is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. We almost chose The Collectiveby Beat Mekanik. Like most of our podcast music, it was found at the Free Music Archive (see our full FMA playlist).
