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Stories of Openness

Stories of Openness is a limited series podcast created by the Open Education team at Deakin University Library. Each episode is a conversation with a Deakin academic who has created an open textbook or other Open Educational Resource (OER). Listen as authors share their stories about creating more accessible learning materials and what it has meant for their students, their teaching practice, and beyond. This podcast is for anyone who is curious about OER or just loves hearing interesting people tell their stories.

Episodes

Host

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Stories of Openness is hosted by Lauren Halcomb-Smith, Lecturer of Open Education at Deakin University Library. Lauren is a third-space academic, a co-founder of a disruptive grassroots open-access journal, a lover of unconventional research methodologies, and teacher at heart. Lauren came to podcasting as a researcher looking for a methodology was reciprocal, accessible, and allowed for open data sharing. Lauren imagines a future where open is the default choice for course readings and resources and sees libraries, research, and storytelling as key to this future.

Production credits

  • Hosted by Lauren Halcomb-Smith (Lecturer, Open Education, Deakin Library)
  • Produced by Eddie Pavuna (Scholarly Services Librarian, Deakin Library)
  • Artwork by Sarah Fennelly (Visual Design Lead, Deakin Library)
  • Web design by Rachael Wilson (Lead, Digital Content and User Experience, Deakin Library) and Matthew Lyons (Senior Officer, Digital Content, Deakin Library)
  • Music by Scott Holmes Music, shared under a CC-BY-NC License

Podcasting a research method

Stories of Openness is part of an ongoing research project that uses podcasting as a research method. The primary aim of our research is to explore the impact that Library-funded OER are having on learning and teaching at Deakin from the perspective of Deakin OER creators.

Podcasting as a research method is an emerging and innovative storytelling-based approach to qualitative research that flips the traditional closed-room interview into an openly shareable artefact, whilst still generating rich qualitative data for analysis and open data sharing. For this project, we are interviewing Deakin academics who have created an OER. The interview recording is then produced and shared as a podcast episode. In this way, both the interview recording and the transcript are shared as open data.

This research has received Deakin University ethics approval: 2025/HE001281. The project is internally funded by the university, with all researchers contributing as part of their normal roles as Library staff.

Research team

  • Lauren Halcomb-Smith (Lecturer, Open Education) - Principal Investigator
  • Angie Williamson (Librarian, Open Education) - Associate Investigator
  • Danielle Johnson (Director, Library Services, Outreach & Scholarly Services) - Associate Investigator
  • Eddie Pavuna (Scholarly Services Librarian) - Research & Production Assistant

Activity and outputs

  • Halcomb-Smith, L., Williamson, A., & Johnson, D. (in press). OER research by podcast: A conceptual study design. The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. Author-accepted manuscript: https://doi.org/10.26187/deakin.32329224
  • Halcomb-Smith, L., Williamson, A., & Johnson, D. (2026). Open stories, open evidence: Podcasting as a research methodology for OER impact [Conference presentation]. ALIA National 2026 Conference, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
  • Halcomb-Smith, L., Williams, A., & Johnson, D. (2026). Podcasting as open science: Exploring the impact of open textbooks on teaching and learning [Conference presentation]. Pint of Science Festival, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.

Tools and licencing

We use openly available tools as much as possible, including Audacity for episode recording and editing, the OpenVINO Whisper Transcription plugin for transcription, and Castopod by Ad Aures for show hosting and distribution.

Stories of Openness by Deakin University is licensed under a CC BY NC 4.0 license.

Acknowledgements

Our sincere appreciation goes to these colleagues, whose support was essential to making this project happen:

  • Lisa Grbin (Deakin Library), whose original idea to explore podcasting as a research method inspired the direction of this study;
  • Christine Gibb (University of Ottawa) for advice and insights about podcasting as a research methodology;
  • Olivia Millard (Deakin School of Communication and Creative Arts), Cassandra Atheron (Deakin School of Communication and Creative Arts) and Pat Crock (Digital Content Producer, Deakin Brand & Marketing Comms) for practical guidance on podcast recording equipment;
  • Podcast creators Ash Barber and Mais Fatayer (Speaking of Open), Puva Arumugam (LI Chronicles), and Joan Sutherland (Tales 4 Teaching) for advice on podcast production and feedback on the feasibility of our idea;
  • the Deakin Copyright Office for advice on open licencing;
  • and, the OER creators and research participants, for both their generosity to this project and their commitment to accessible, equitable learning experiences.

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