Charles Darwin University is an institutional member of the Council of Australian UnIversity Library's (CAUL) OER Collective group in 2023.
As such CDU academics and students are eligible to apply for CAUL OER grant funding.
The grant funding process and related documents can be found below.
As part of the Open Educational Resources Collective DIY Open Textbook Grants in 2023, three groups of CDU researchers submitted applications to publish open access textbooks, with two winning grants. Run by the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) and the Open Educational Resources Collective (OERC), the program is designed to incentivise development of open textbooks by academic authors at participating institutions.
According to Fiona Salisbury, Open Educational Resources Program Director for CAUL, “Australian students are under increasing financial pressure and the increase in textbook costs further compounds the issue. By creating textbooks with an open licence, not locked down by publishers in the traditional publishing model, everyone benefits”.
While they may be free for students to access, open textbooks are not free to create. Aside from the investment of academic time in writing an open textbook, there are production costs including platform fees, the cost of a professional editor, library staff time in providing copyright and licensing advice, and overheads associated with running a peer review process. Read the full list of winners here.
Open Educational Resources Collective
Small Cohort Winner - ‘A Yolŋu Philosophy Reader’
Dr Waymamba Gaykamaŋu (Charles Darwin University)
Yasunori Hayashi (Charles Darwin University)
Over twenty-five years, senior Yolŋu knowledge authorities, elders, and researchers have been sharing traditional concepts in their collaborative work of teaching, research, and monitoring & evaluation in various Indigenous-led initiatives at Charles Darwin University – including through the Yolŋu Studies program and more recently the First Nations Sovereignty and Diplomacy Centre. Now for the first time a selection of the most important of these philosophical statements will be collected into a single volume and made available to students of Indigenous languages and cultures through Australia and New Zealand and the world. The volume will also be of particular interest to Government and Non Government organisations and policy developers.
Cat Kutay (Charles Darwin University)
Jennifer Campbell (Griffith University)
Grant Maher (Jabin)
Susi Bertei (Charles Darwin University)
Timothy Boye (University of Technology, Sydney)
Sai Rupa Dev (Engineers Without Borders Australia)
Matthew Hughes (University of Canterbury)
Elyssebeth Leigh (University of Technology, Sydney)
Our First Year Engineering students and some of our older students and alumni are studying engineering concepts from First Nations practices. These are a valued new perspective on many issues covered in our degrees such as sustainability and a holistic approach to design. However, our students lack resources for researching these topics. The textbook is to be used in the University courses that link to Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Challenge at Charles Darwin and Griffith Universities and University of Technology Sydney. The book contains case studies, scenarios and exercises that we hope will immerse you in the culture and practice of our First Peoples.
The submission by Sarah Mills, Penelope Sweeting, and Minakshi Murphy for ‘Medication Management at the Bedside- a Quick Reference Guide for Nurses and Midwives’, which was a strong application and a useful textbook, was unfortunately unsuccessful in this round of grants.
Congratulations to everyone involved and thank you for helping to enable a modern curriculum through Open Educational Resources.