University of Southern Queensland 2015 IAP

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Contact information

Name of OERu partner University of Southern Queensland
Contact person for this IAP Ken Udas
eMail for IAP contact person Ken.udas@usq.edu.au
Name of primary OERu contact Ken Udas
eMail of primary OERu contact Ken.Udas@usq.edu.au

Executive Summary

USQ’s focus this year is to build a broader dialogue and resource activities in “openness,” with OERu serving as one of our cultural touchstones and commitments. As indicated below, we are working on a second course as well as developing “micro-courses” for the rest of “Regional Relations.” We also intend on closely aligning technical contributions to OERu with a more progressive direction at USQ.


There are a number of activities that we believe we can align with OERu, which do not appear formally in this document as commitments:

  • Asking teachers who are awarded funding to produce “open textbooks” if they would be willing to host a mixed (USQ/OERu) course.
  • Engaging much more actively in Openness professional development.
  • Potentially co-funding an OERF developer.
  • Involving additional USQ (Academic Division) staff on committees and perhaps special projects aligned with OERu mission and annual goals


In short, our focus is on building capacity for a culture (normal, patterns, and artefacts) of openness in which participation in OERu; other openness activities; and insistence on open processes, practices, and governance is a natural impulse and commitment.


2015 Objectives

  • Deliver micro-course in International Relations
  • Develop 3 micro-courses in International Relations
  • Develop 1 micro-course in Indigenous (topic name) in partnership with 3 other OERu institutions resulting in 1 full-course.
  • Demonstrate the potential of distributed virtual OER course development. (perhaps as a Topic in 23 Things About Openness)
  • Continued support for technology development.
  • Continued participation in the following OERu working groups: Strategic Planning; Technology; Course Approval and Quality; General Education 1st Year of Study.

2015 FTE contribution for OERu course nominations

Name of staff member or Department Name of existing and new course development nominations Total FTE days
Marcus Harmes * Regional Relations in Asia and the Pacific 


15 days
Tim McCallum * Regional Relations in Asia and the Pacific 


15 days
Jim Taylor * Regional Relations in Asia and the Pacific 


10 days
David Bull Australian Indigenous Studies (possible micro course in association with College for Indigenous Studies, Education and Research (CISER) and Learning & Teaching Support (LTS)) 5 days
Megan Cooper Australian Indigenous Studies (possible micro-course in association with College for Indigenous Studies, Education and Research (CISER) and Learning & Teaching Support (LTS)) TBA

Participation in OERu working groups

Name of staff member email address Assigned OERu working group(s) Total FTE days
Jim Taylor taylorj@usq.edu.au Strategic planning 40 days
Tim McCallum timothy.mccallum@usq.edu.au Planning/Technology working group 10 days
David Bull david.bull@usq.edu.au General education, first year of study 10 days
Marcus Harmes marcus.harmes@usq.edu.au Course approval and quality 5 days

OERu community source and technology innovation

0.2 Contribution to shared Open Source Technologist Postion


Other contributions in kind

  • Automated course creator (template). Python software which, runs natively on Linux operating systems, creates mobile-first, responsive-design web site (course) and takes parameters from an Excel spreadsheet (course-code, course-name, logo, and URLs). Demonstration videos and further information can be found on the wikieducator.org site < http://wikieducator.org/OERu/Planning/Technology_working_group/2014-07-11 >
  • Contributing to the installation and testing of software, systems, and in-house OERu software development as required, using MediaWiki, Wordpress, Amazon EC2, HTML/CSS Bootstrap, Javascript, PHP, MySQL, Python.