Tom Keel's OER Story: The Business Case for Sustainability (BCFS) in Property Development (PD) Projects

(upbeat music)

LAUREN: Hello and welcome to Stories of Openness,

a limited series podcast created by the Open Education team

at Deakin University Library.

My name is Lauren Halcomb-Smith, and I'm your host.

I'm a lecturer of Open Education at Deakin,

and I'm on a mission to learn about the impact

that open educational resources, or OER,

are having on learning and teaching at Deakin.

OER are free textbooks and other learning materials

that anyone can use, adapt, and share,

which is unlike traditional textbooks

that can be expensive and limited by copyright

and licensing restrictions.

In this series, I'm talking with Deakin academics

as they share their stories of creating

and using open resources.

This podcast is part of a research project

that uses podcasting as a research methodology.

So this conversation is both a podcast

and open research data.

I'm coming to today from the beautiful

and unseated lands of the Wurundjeri people.

I gratefully acknowledge them as the traditional custodians

of these lands, seas, and skies,

and recognise that this has been a place of learning,

teaching, and rich conversation for millennia.

My guest today is Tom Keel from the Department of Finance

in the Deakin Business School.

Tom's area of expertise is property and real estate,

and he has a particular interest in urban development,

sustainable construction, and city livability.

Tom is also an OER creator of one of our most recently

published OER, the business case for sustainability

in property development.

And this OER is particularly unique

because it is not an e-book,

but rather an incredibly detailed database

of business cases.

Each business case in the database

presents the financial returns of sustainability investments

in a real estate project.

It's very cool, and I have been looking

forward to this conversation to learn more.

Welcome Tom.

TOM: Thank you.

Thank you for having me, Lauren.

LAUREN: Thanks for coming on the show today.

My first question.

Can you please tell me the whole story

of how you came to create this OER?

TOM: Excellent.

The OER for the Business Case for Sustainability

in Property Development came about through a frustration

we were experiencing in our teachings.

And that was a constant barrier to people

getting past the preconception or the misconception

that you couldn't make money as a property developer

and also be sustainable in what you were doing.

In other words, they were building thinking that

to get their sales and that as up as they could

and to maximise their margins, they needed to skip

sustainable initiatives and features in their properties

and really just always focus on lowering cost, cost of build.

We knew that wasn't the case, but we struggled a lot

to convince the general person, particularly our students,

who had adopted that line of thinking

from their parents or from the media

or from wherever they happened to get it.

We did ask them in their assignments, our students,

to do this, to try and override their misconceptions

and prove it to themselves, but they really struggled

because they couldn't understand the math

when it came into focus and they still just couldn't

get past their own prejudice.

So when the OER came along, it came as an email

and it was like a nice, happy surprise on the day

because it said, "Here's an opportunity to consolidate

something you're working on into a format

which will go out to the whole sector,

the property sector will end beyond."

And of course, there was money involved as well,

which was nice because whilst we were busy,

we thought that gives us a chance to get a research

assistant in as well.

So a very appealing email.

And it helped to consolidate our thoughts

that we were having at the time about

how are we going to break through this barrier

and get the students to understand this concept

and hopefully take it into the workplace

when they leave university and start to convince their colleagues,

yes, you can be green and make money at the same time.

LAUREN: - How did you go about creating the database?

TOM: - Well, the database came about.

It was created because we understand

that the property development market,

they're not that much into academic theory.

Their hard, you know, formed ideas come from the reality

of doing projects and looking at how much money they made.

And they weren't that interested in hearing about the theory

because in many of their minds,

they thought the sustainable part of their market

where people were doing sustainable things

was either the very high end, the exclusive end

as we see on some TV shows,

which promote individual unique architectural design.

Well, they just didn't believe it.

And then, so we thought we need to present them case studies

and say, look what the guy down the road did, basically.

And so he made money, therefore you can make money.

So the way to do that was to start investigating

what had been published before and then compile case studies.

They proved extremely difficult to find

because developers either weren't doing case studies

or they were doing them successfully

and using it as a competitive advantage over their competitors.

I say, well, why would I tell my competing, you know,

develop it down the road, how to make more money?

So they were holding onto it

and we really had to dig deep and search why

just to start building this case of evidence.

And as we found one, then it would have a reference

in it often and then we would click on that reference

and that would take us to another one.

And so we started to find our way through.

We also got connected to a lot of interesting groups

along the way, groups of developers who joined

like as a collective and said, let's teach each other.

So they were very helpful.

The councils themselves have something

they call BESS, which is a collective

where they've got together and said, let's teach each other

and let's talk to the developers

at planning application time.

So bit by bit, we're able to harness information

and it fed nicely into the whole OER concept

of being open, being an educational resource.

And we thought, not only can we now put our findings out there,

but we can also provide a template to the developers

and say, if you've got a case, please let us know.

And once we're published, we hopefully

get a lot of those cases coming in as well.

LAUREN: What does it actually look like?

How many cases do you have?

What's the sort of experience that students are having

when they go into the database?

TOM: Well, interestingly, we started off with the students' own work.

So we went through the previous years

where we'd been talking to the students about this.

Did our search selection for all the high distinction students

work and then took their case studies, verified them

with their own math and formula,

and then actually started with theirs

and say, he's 10 students who did retrofits on their homes,

not new builds, but retrofits of their existing homes.

How could they make them more sustainable?

And it was to do with similar things that developers do

with particularly solar panels and batteries

was the easy starting point.

And it became design materials, different things.

And we started with theirs, gave us a bit of a starting point.

I suppose, of saying, what are people showing interest in?

And then we just evolved from there.

And then the earlier that we ended up creating

was primarily an Excel document,

which comes with a PowerPoint that says this is the history,

this is what it does, this is how to use it,

and a video, which is the same saying, how to use it.

The resource itself is an Excel document.

And it's just got the different sheets in it

where we've done an all-over sustainable grouping.

And then we've done individual-like energy efficiency,

design, procurement, different aspects

that a developer could narrow down their focus on.

When we have all that data, it then goes into just one formula,

very simple formula, which is, on the cover page, it says,

and it's a live document, so developers can also use it.

It says, how much extra do you spend for your green initiative?

And then how much did you gain from your green initiative?

And we're trying to give them examples.

We say, if you follow the National Construction Code guideline

for windows, your new development,

and you just do the minimum, you're put in single glazing,

and it would cost you this amount of dollars.

So if you then say, I would like to be greener, more sustainable,

and you choose double glazing,

you would look at the difference that you spent on windows,

not the cost of the window, but the difference between double

and single glazing, so I spent as a developer this much more.

And then you say, and how much more did I gain from doing that?

So what you would then do, for example, is say,

if you're a developer in a housing estate of display homes,

someone who's a buyer would walk through 10 display homes

that would guarantee yours, yours is the most comfortable,

because of the double glazing, they say, this feels nice.

Then you would also say to them, by the way,

you're not going to have energy bills,

like you’re used to, they’re going to be much less,

the buyer would then pay more for that housing from your competitors.

And you just do the math thing, I spent this much more

and I got this much more.

And that's the essence of it, so it's quite a simple formula.

And we just turn that into an ROI figure, return on investment.

So we then went through all the categories,

put it all into one formula, and we got AI to scan the whole lot

and do a lot of the math for us as well,

because it's something that AI is particularly good at, yeah.

So it came up and said 18%, I thought, okay, 18%,

it's a very nice return on investment for anybody.

So then we spent a few days with AI taking out the outliers,

you know, the extremely positive or negative results,

whatever was not close to the norm,

and it gave weightings as well, it said, okay,

that's a really nice initiative

and it gave a great return, but people aren't likely to do that.

And so I put more weight on the ones that developers

in Australia, very likely to do the common industry ones.

And I thought, I think that after it averaged them out,

it weighted them, it took out the outliers,

the figure was really quite accurate.

So we were then confident to go to the developers and say,

here's a percentage figure, I'm sure you'll find it a surprise,

'cause anything over 5% in this world is already good

and the figure above 10% it's amazing.

So we thought that would be skeptical,

but we just said here's a figure, it's based on this.

You're welcome to challenge it, please challenge it.

You know, anything you tell us about it would be very then,

and we've left it at that.

So if I know one's challenged it,

we're hoping that the world will spread like wildfire

through the industry and they'll all jump on and do it.

One of the things to notice,

some of the case studies we collected came from

the very largest and most successful builder,

developers of housing.

And that also gave us great confidence in the data,

because if you're a smaller developer

and you're working in isolation,

doing what you do, you don't have that many contacts,

'cause you work with a few people, not 100 people.

It's nice to look out and see this very, very large,

successful developer has done case studies

that have been very successful

and that I think gives great validation to it.

And it breaks down that original thought

that they have to be a bespoke,

architecturally led green-y type of thing to get it.

If you look at the top-top ones

for both apartments and housing in Australia,

they're the ones that have been trailing it

and they're the ones that have been publishing their results,

'cause they're public companies in their interest to do so.

So we think that's been very helpful.

LAUREN: Let's talk a little bit about the learners.

in the unit that this database is being used for.

What is the program, what's the level?

TOM: So where we've implemented it is in third year

of our property and real estate degree

and it's in the unit called Advanced Property Development.

So it's very applicable.

So in first year, the students are introduced

to the concept of sustainability and housing

and they learn things like buildings

are the biggest contributor of harmful emissions

of all industries, so they know that.

And then in the second year,

they do a unit called Sustainable Property Construction

and they learn how to build typical Australian homes

in a more sustainable way.

And that's via a better design, material choices

and focus on energy efficiency.

So then when they get to third year,

they're familiar with why we have to be green,

they know how to do it and then they need to crunch the maths,

'cause when they're going to the workplace

and they say to someone, let's do a sustainable thing,

invariably someone will say, no, it's too expensive

or we can't do it.

So they'll be able to then say, actually, you're wrong.

At least it does make you more money and he's the evidence for it.

So the third-year students still struggled with it

because some of the concepts are quite difficult

to put into figures.

For example, if you orientate a house

towards the northern sun and you make a decision

to put the living room of all your homes facing the north,

so they get the winter sun and warm and light the house for free.

How do you cost that?

That's very where it's quite difficult.

How do you put a figure on what the orientation costs?

I mean, it's often at zero.

You're just facing the house a certain way

and how do you put a figure on the upbringing?

So the students would stall at that

and then just go, I'm just going to do solar panels.

And they'd always just err on the solar panel side

'cause it was easy, buy it for this much

and the energy boom goes down that much.

So it was a challenge to them

and they often struggled overall with math

because I just, for some reason,

the grounding in math by year three

hadn't wasn't as strong as it could have been.

And they always just tried to guess

rather than really find a data like they'd miss a part

of the formula that either make assumptions

or just not follow through.

We had started saying them, you know,

pick five things and do the business case.

And of course, that was way too hard.

So then we narrowed it down and said,

let's just do one case really well.

Pick one initiative and make sure you get it absolutely right.

So we've had to sort of fine tune them along the way

to help them have a level of success at the end.

So rather than do five and then be told by the marker,

oh, you missed some numbers or you could have done,

you know, better than, you know,

they do one really well and they say,

well done, you've actually proven the point

and your project now has been more successful

as a result of that.

So that's where we're at with the learners

and we've only got there in the last year or two

with the narrowed focus, the more correct focus.

So we're interested to see this year how they proceed with it again.

LAUREN: Have they been using the database at all

in the last period of time?

TOM: The database has only been available to them this year

for the first time because with the open education resource

we're able to get the research assistant

to really put into a usable format.

And so yeah, this year is actually the first time

they won't have to start just from a lecture class.

No, they'll actually be able to log in

and say he's a full resource,

scan through, see what the initiatives are,

match their initiative that they're trying to do

to what they've found and that will give them a really good step up.

Like if, for example, if they're doing apartments,

they can go in and see what the big apartment people didn't.

So I'll do that initiative.

I can see what they got.

I'll just try and now compare my figures to those.

LAUREN: And are you noticing a discernible difference

between the students who have access to this new database

and those who didn't?

TOM: Yes, it's been very interesting because it was week two

of the unit where we said, and by the way,

this is the unit where you do this business case.

And there was quite a lot of enquiries

about when can we have the link to the resource.

So they've actually that heard a description of it

and they were keen to go and find it.

So it meant for the first time they had a resource

and they could actually delve straight into it

when they needed it at the start of their assignment.

And I think they'll be very helpful for them.

LAUREN: So they're still at the time of this interview.

The students are still working through

that first cohort of students with access to the resource

are still in the middle of doing their assignments.

There's enthusiasm for the resource,

but you haven't yet seen sort of the difference

in assessment outcomes.

TOM: That's right, because as it happens,

week two is when we told them about it.

We're in week four now, and in week six,

they're assignment’s due.

So we're just a few weeks away from seeing

how well they adapt to it and have utilised it.

LAUREN: It sounds like one of the really beneficial aspects

of the resource is that a lot of this information

was already out there, just sort of scattered to the wind.

And you sort of collected it up so that your students

and you don't have to do quite as much administrative work

to go out and find examples to work from in the assignment.

Was that sort of part of your thinking in the design?

TOM: Absolutely, because that's exactly the right word, scattered.

It was all across journals, industry publications, websites,

old interviews, just everywhere,

but never two things in the same place.

It was just a real scattering of information

and part information, which they needed to be pieced together.

So it's been a good resource for drawing it all

into that one document.

And the document itself categorises all by what year

was it done, which state does it apply to?

Well, was the initiative financials?

And it even has columns like is this data verifiable?

Like has someone else checked it?

And we've really made sure that we brought it together,

but also confirmed it and categorized it as well.

LAUREN: Are you hearing any stories from the students so far?

They're in week four that just got access to the database.

Any sort of feedback or stories coming from them?

TOM: There hasn't been a lot as yet,

because I think we're still a few weeks away from the due date.

But they are anecdotally in class talking about the fact

that they're not worried about that part of the assessment anymore.

Whereas in this time of the trimester in the past,

there was a lot of ‘how on earth are we supposed to do this?’

because it had math in it.

They were really unsure of what they were looking for.

Like what's the answer?

Is it a number?

Is it a description?

And now they can see that, yes, when you do it

and you get an ROI figure, then you've done it correctly.

LAUREN: So I can imagine that this is also freeing up

more time for you instead of answering basic questions

about the assignment.

You have more time in class or in your online discussion,

Q and A forum to focus on other things.

Is that something you're observing yet?

TOM: Yeah, it is because they, because the resource is categorized

into different ideas of issues that they could do.

They're able to go much further without having to check back with me.

Whereas before, when we said do a sustainable initiative

and work out if it's financially rewarding,

they really didn't know what does it mean initially

if they was even struggling with that concept.

But now they're directed right down the path

to the final figure in the haven't been having too many troubles getting started.

LAUREN: It's very cool.

It's actually what we've heard across all of these interviews

is OER creators having a lot less of an academic sort of administrative burden

because the way that the resources streamline the experience for themselves

and the students.

That's a good thing.

TOM: Yeah.

LAUREN: How many students would you say will be using this resource

over the course of a given year?

This trimester, 160.

LAUREN: And it's offered once per year?

TOM: Once per year, yeah.

LAUREN: Let's shift here a little bit and talk about how the OER project

has informed or impacted your own teaching.

TOM: It was wonderful because it solved one of the big problems for me

because I'm very passionate about this topic.

This is my focus.

And I just constantly was seeing the struggles around it

and it worried me for a long time how on earth to finally find a way

where people can embrace this, do it successfully

because in the past few years it was quite sad

for this part of the assignment to constantly give fails or poor marks.

It's helped me with the main part of what I like about this whole topic,

the sustainability and the improvement of housing in Australia to make them more sustainable.

It's enabled me to tick that box for myself personally.

Right now I know they want to go to work

and I'm trying to overcome this preconception of you know, you can't be green

because it's too, I can actually go to work now and say I'm very happy with this

because now the students are able to do this and take that knowledge into the workplace.

So it's been wonderful in the teaching.

It's turned a frustration into a positive instead which is a big flip

and made the whole unit make more sense for me because I know I'm getting in

and a positive outcome with regard to the students.

It's also with the students, you know, the time-saving element of it

of giving them the path but it's also opening up other discussions

because overall we're doing a feasibility study in the unit

and a feasibility study with this part not working wasn't really that great

of feasibility study for an entire project.

So now we can say for example we're teaching them about the money side of this

but now we're also saying okay you've got that sorted and now how are you going to market that?

And so now when you're doing your marketing for your project you're able to say

this is a sustainability aspect and that means I will go more green as a developer

and therefore I'll put that into my marketing and build my marketing campaign

Around you know ‘buy this, be comfortable, save money’, that type of thing

and they can put some of those initiatives into their project because they're happy now

to include them knowing that it's a positive for them.

So with the teaching it's just taken something where we'd go through the

and get stuck in mud, you know, where we're stepping over the mud now and looking at

other options because of the support we get from doing this part correctly.

LAUREN: That's really cool. I love it when students can go through

learning experience and each assignment builds upon the previous one.

TOM: Yes, yes.

LAUREN: Which is a very sort of project-based and it sounds like it's also

given you a lot of professional satisfaction.

TOM: Yes, definitely because when you're passionate about something you can't quite teach it.

It's a little bit frustrating and you think what am I doing wrong?

Why is a message not getting through?

I can't convince them how they're going to convince other people.

So we just have to find that path and we've been able to do it through this resource.

LAUREN: Were you already sort of a big OER advocate?

Did you know about OER before you went through the OER program?

TOM: Yes, we have been using it because sustainability has changed so quickly over the last 10 years.

With every year there's a new law, a new regulation, new invention,

a new thinking that the textbooks just weren't keeping up.

So we had to look for, we had to reduce our reliance on textbooks

which would go out of date quite quickly and we had to find more current up-to-date

and and resources that were being updated.

So we had been looking and finding published things from other academics

and people in the industry that were not textbook focused but were sort of like live evolving

pieces of work and that's what we've been using.

It's just simply because we had to, I mean we had to be relevant and we had to keep up with all of the changes.

LAUREN: So you were already pretty familiar with sort of the open landscape.

It wasn't a… it was a pretty low barrier to entry for you to be convinced to produce an OER.

TOM: Yeah, definitely because some of our colleagues at other universities working this space

have put out really good work and we saw how comfortably it's sat with our

teaching units, like their work sat with our teaching units. We thought if they can do

something that helps our unit, why can’t we do something that helps our unit?

LAUREN: I can imagine there's a fair bit of alignment in the values of sustainability

and the values of open education.

TOM: Absolutely, yeah.

LAUREN: Did you have a lot to learn going through the OER program in terms of copyright

or open publishing? Like what was that experience like?

TOM: Copyright, yes. Well, I struggle with copyright because it always seems to come when you don't

expect it and there was a lot of reviewing of my work and that to make quite a few changes

because just for, you know, it's all makes sense now and but it was at, you know,

frustrating at the time we think I'm nearly done and then someone says I've just reviewed your

document you need to make 60 changes. But we've got them all done and they were great, you know,

the people that were in charge were very supportive and helped get through it and said, you know,

try doing this instead of that and make sure you put a note there and take out that image because

that's not, you know, your image. Put another one in and we did all that and it made the resource

better. So it was a challenge. We had another challenge to where we got interest from The Conversation.

Just as we're sort of in the middle of wrapping it up but still going through the copyright

thing and they said, "Hurry, hurry, we need to write about this and we want to publish it on Tuesday."

And we go, "Oh my god, Tuesday. How are we going to get it all done by then?" So I was a mad rush

at the end to finalise it. We had to redo the video because in the back of the video there was

a few logos that had snuck in from the PowerPoint and everything had to be redone very quickly but

it was worth it because it was so nice that they showed interest in what we were doing and wanted to

run the story so that got us through to speed it all up at the end a bit but the process is fine

with copyrights and learning how to present it. It's just following the instructions that you're given

it all comes together very nicely and then you're assured that you're not going to get any calls

later on. You shouldn't have done that or whatever. Or so because everything's been, you know, thoroughly

reviewed, assessed and approved. LAUREN: So you were published, an interview of yours was published in

The Conversation. TOM: Yeah, it was fabulous. Yeah, we're very excited about that. We wrote an article

and they put it up and it led to also the local Geelong Advertiser picking it up and they're going

to run an article this week about it as well and we love that connection with Geelong because we've

done grants with the City of Geelong Sustainable Building Design before so it's just nice to keep

that all those connections and keep building that body of knowledge where a lot of housing is being

built down in the Geelong area. LAUREN: What other impact have you sort of observed outside of Deakin?

TOM: It's been good with connecting us with our other school at Deakin. They're on a different campus,

the construction school, but through LinkedIn and talking to them, we've met them at different

functions. We brought our two schools closer together. So in the past, you know, we're sort of like

friendly rivals, but now we're realising that we're all trying to do the same thing, build better

quality and sustainable homes. So it's really brought in a good linkage with them and we've done

some joint grant applications with them as a result because we realise we're got a common

idea and goal. So that's been wonderful. As for other external things, it's just nice. It's been a

wonderful thing for LinkedIn as well. You know, connecting with our alumni who are out in the workforce

and then the follow-on effect of that and you check, you know, the comments and the views and just

see that it is nice that word spreading, but it's also nice. No one's come back and debunked it.

You know, so it holds up. No one said that's rubbish. You shouldn't be

publishing that. They've all said yeah, that's great. So it's been nice to see that validation from

our alumni and other people on LinkedIn because they're adding the field already. LAUREN: Oh, that's lovely.

So the OER is also giving you something to talk about on LinkedIn, which is making you feel more

connected to your graduates and alumni. TOM: Absolutely, because once we've got that simple number,

like an ROI number, it makes a great LinkedIn approach. You don't have to say here's 30 paragraphs

on the business case and explain it all. You just put a graph and it says here's the four sectors

that developer can look at energy efficiency, procurement, etc. There's the ROI for all of them and

the average is 18 percent and boom, it just becomes a nice simple visual for everyone to see and

helps to spread the word that way. LAUREN: Yeah, fabulous. Are there any other stories you'd like to share?

TOM: There are a few other stories from doing the business case for sustainability. Well, one is

how good the results were because when we, you know, if you go back 10 years and you look at the

housing market then, it's been a very rapid change. And one of the reasons, for example, is

the search engines on real estate sites like realestate.com and those ones. It was only quite recently,

a few years ago, where they put in a little button, where you could click that says, "Eco”,

like if you were searching your bedrooms, you want to pool whatever it is. And now, and then a button

appeared, "Hey, looking for eco features." They didn't choose the word sustainable, they chose

eco. But basically, by putting that in, they're now able to publish a lot of data and say,

this many percentage of people are looking for eco features and energy efficient figures. So,

we've been able to extract a phenomenal amount of data now because once they selected,

if you then match it to the house prices, they're now able to say, "There's a premium being paid

for homes with these features because they can compare the non and the ones with eco." And then,

they're starting to publish data. And that's really pushed the whole awareness along as well. So,

for us, we've come from before that time, where there was none of this data and discussion,

for suddenly it's there. And we were sort of in our mind, still back a few years saying,

"Please be a positive RRI. Please, you know, don't be negative and destroy it." So, we were thinking,

"If we get two or three percent RRI, I will be thrilled." And when it came out as high as it did,

then we were just thrilled and we thought, "Well, what a win, you know, because it's even better

than we thought, and that will make it harder for people to ignore." And the other interesting story

about this was, of course, AI's come along. And AI has been an interesting exercise, too, because

to look at a huge Excel document and try and extract averages is quite difficult for the average

person. But it's not at all for AI. And what it was able to do was, because we fed in a lot of cases

and asked it to extrapolate the data. It had a master huge amount of knowledge. So, a lot of the reports

we were reading were from large groups, and that were 200 page reports, like one from United Nations,

because we went international as well just to get some context on what's happening. And AI started

to give us a commentary as well. And it was saying things like, it's interesting to note it would say

that this is how you would summarise the feeling in the market over the last 15 years. And it would

go back 15 years and say, "Not interested in Sustainable," then it would say, "Seeing Sustainable

as a positive add-on for the top end." And, and eventually it said, it’s really proven the

business case in a way because its own discussion of everything was that the business case came in more

recently, where people were wanting to - the AI was saying this - were wanting to be more

comfortable in their homes and save money on bills. But then it's now read enough that it's saying

out the developers of the ones pushing this point, saying that we're the ones who are benefiting as well

as a homeowner, so it's starting to see that real change industry come through where it's,

it's being developed a lead rather than simply by a demand. And the whole watching AI talk to us

about it's been really quite interesting, because it's, and we've read books about how to use AI,

just to make sure we're doing it properly. And it's been, you know, you say, thanks for that study on

it, we still say thanks to AI, we don't need to, but we still do. Here's another case, can you reread

this and try and extrapolate a particular type of business case, whatever. And it would often come

back and say there, I read the 200 pages, there is no business case in there, but I did learn this,

and it would give us a new insight in something as well, like the effect on regulations towards,

you know, its effect on house prices and different things like that. So it's been a surprise,

was the whole, it just happened to come along at the right time, AI, and we've been able to really

enjoy using that, because we'll feel a little bit unsure about doing math on such a big scale,

and AI does it in a blink. LAUREN: So what's interesting is because your resources openly licensed, you have

ethical and legal permission to feed it into AI. TOM: Yes. LAUREN: And likewise your students could as well.

There's tons of potential for students to use openly licensed resources with AI for equity or

other sort of accessible learning benefits. TOM: It's been wonderful. I don't want to talk it up too much,

because I have my reservations about its effect overall on humanity, but in terms of reading a

250 page document and extracting little bits of information that's been a blessing. Yeah, we're

parsing a massive database. Yeah, that's right. Just pulling stuff out for you. Yeah, because it reads

the footnotes and everything, right? It's, make sure it does a thorough job. Yeah, that's really cool.

LAUREN: Do you have a favourite case study in your OER? TOM: I do. It's one where you, and the reason why it's

my favourite is because it, and we do have a category in our OER called key cases and we tick the key

cases, just to help AI target in on them as a, as a waiting, but also for students to find. And the

reason why it's our favourite is it was recent. It was done by one of the very large builder developer

groups. They started their project and decided to document it and case study it all as they went

along. So they kept all of the records. And trust that was like, you know, the perfect case study,

they also went gas-free and gas-free is interesting because they still look quite a bit of resistance

in the trade because there's a lot of people making money out of gas. So they still, you know, they'll

fight it and lobby when the government tries to remove gas. So they said we're going to do, we're going

to do an all-electric apartment building. It was about 200 apartments and they came up with an exact

figure and said it costs us exactly this much and they gave it to the dollar of how much it cost

them more to do all-electric. And then they did comparative sales on the sales of their apartment

and they came up with what they say their apartment so-for compared with competing local other

apartments with gas in them. And the figures were it was way above 18%. It was like 400%. So they said -

really - They said we spent, I can give you the figures. They said basically we spent

6,857 dollars per apartment to make them all-electric and they say we sold $25,000 premium on their

comparative sales. So they say we spent six and a bit and we got 25. LAUREN: Wow. TOM: And that's that's why it's my

favourite one because you can't argue with it. They started the whole process at the beginning and

did it all. LAUREN: Super cool. TOM: And it means that anyone that comes on says you can't do a apartment with

that gas. You say yes you can because there it is and that's why it's so wonderful to just point

to it and go there's the ROI. LAUREN: Amazing. TOM: Yeah. LAUREN: So you've just been through this whole experience of

publishing an OER. You identified a gap. You identified a problem in your teaching context.

This grant came along. You applied for it. You won the grant. You wrote your OER. You published the OER

and now you're teaching with it. What do you think your experiences can tell us about OER in general?

TOM: I think it's great because it then gives you like a path that says you've got to get your thoughts

together to apply for the grant and then you get the grant so you get to do more work and then there's

a timeline so you have to have it ready by this day after name but you have to just basically pull

it all the bits together of what you've been thinking because you constantly have to explain to

some of why you're doing that or what you're including and rather than just sort of being an add-on

to it to teaching and so I wouldn't have time while doing this. It puts up your priority list

and it forces you to get it done to a high standard and that brings a nice confidence and assurance

to it because if anyone starts the question and maybe you can say no it's been rigorously

tested by this and it's been thought through and it's been approved and had articles/ And you just

feel really confident in the whole thing because it's gone down a, well, you know, like a

peer reviewed path. You know, the peers are sometimes copyright people they're sometimes

learning academics and it just means that everything's done quicker and it's done better.

LAUREN: So do you think that we are having an impact on teaching and learning?

TOM: I think so, yeah for that the reason I just mentioned there and just generally because we also know

students are looking for everything to be a little bit updated and you that don't want to go and buy

you know expensive textbook online. They prefer to know everything's currently easily available

verified and the whole open education thing to them fixing with their learning mentality these days

where you know you don't they don't go oh that textbook's now seven years old or something they sort

of look at and go it's online it's accurate it's proved and it's it's in with what we're trying to do.

LAUREN: Do you tell them this is an open education resource and what do they?

TOM: I send them to the directory via the link yeah. LAUREN: And what do they say about open education resource?

Do they know what those are? TOM: To them it's just a new normal. They don't seem to have to think that

it's not a textbook, I should comment on the fact that it's not a textbook. They just go that's

what I wanted, that's where it is, let's go, if that makes sense. Do you know what I mean? Like some

of us are like, textbooks justify it or why is it not a textbook why isn't it to them it's just

what they want. LAUREN: Are they excited about it being openly licensed or does that sort of not

matter to them it's just as long as they have access and it's free and it's there and it meets their

needs. TOM: I've told them if I do a good job on their assignment will be added to it. A few of them

gave me a surprised look, like “really? my stuff going into that?” That was a bit of a you

know you saw their eyebrows go up. LAUREN: Like surprise skeptical or surprised excited? TOM: I think surprise

nervous. that was the impression I got. But you know there's some that when they hear that they’re

keen to be part of it because I know that in the past, not with the whole group but even at the early

Stages, the ones who came to the online tutes, so I was talking to them about it's saying this is what

I'm doing you know if you do it. And from that very small samples that was just tested

and last year they'd made sure they did a good job because they wanted to be included so now I've

Opened it up to the whole lot so we'll see how many of them respond. LAUREN: So there were students from last year

whose work was included in the database? TOM: Yes there is if you're going to one of the pages you can see

it says ‘student’ and then I had to verify it by checking all their maths for them. But there's

about I think 15 students in the database at the moment. LAUREN: What was it like for those students to have

their work included? TOM: Well they know until later when I wrote to them and said

‘by the way you did such a great job on your assignment, I've put it in here’ and they go ‘oh that's

nice so thank you for that, for you know, showing confidence in everything.’ So that was quite funny. LAUREN: Have you

heard from them since the resources been published? TOM: No because you know they're all third-years when, that was

last year, so they're all sort of left now so and this has all happened recently quite quickly so I

haven't heard yet but when I do my next post on LinkedIn about it, because we keep updating it, I'm sure

hear from some of them then because I know they will follow. LAUREN: Yeah but I think that's really cool and

from the conversations that I've had with other academics who've included student work or they've

included students as collaborators in their OER they impact tends to be really quite profound for

students who are you know their work is seen as valid and it's enough to be included in a published

resource like there's just been some really amazing stories so I can only imagine how those

students would feel to know that their work is included. TOM: And there's something even better because

some of them are mature age students and they've actually gone and done what they said to their house

because some of them have done a business case why put solar panels and things

on my house and they've actually gone and done it and then told me to proceed. LAUREN: Oh that's so cool.

TOM: That's very nice. LAUREN: Look at that, real world application of the work that you're doing. Tom is there

anything else that you'd like to share about your OER before we wrap up? TOM: The only other thing is I'm

thinking of doing another one. So because I had another idea and I thought you know to get it

through to fruition this could be the best way to do it so. LAUREN: What's the new idea? TOM: It's about green

leases. Of course a green lease. A green lease is again overcoming some of the obstacles in the

property market so if you look statistically the least sustainable homes and the most energy

efficient are often the rental properties because if someone's got their own home they might

incentivise to say I'm going to put this in and be more comfortable with me and then I'll save

money but there's a disconnect where a landlord says why would I do all those things when I don't

live in the house? Why do I spend the money they get the warmth from the energy bills. And so in the

commercial space green leases are very popular where you've got you know someone running a large

business talking to someone who owns many properties you know worth hundreds of millions don't you

got a business person talking to a business person saying let's get together when we redo the

lease you do all these upgrades and I'll pay you a bit more and everyone will be happy. So the

landlord gets more rent the tenant gets better energy efficiency and very productive happy staff

who's in a beautiful office building. It's a different conversation in residential because you've

got millions of individual landlords lots of different renters everybody's moving and changing

and it's not a connection path of a common discussion where you could drop in something but a green

lease would be brilliant for all rental properties where the landlords they show I put on solar panels

and a battery cost me this much I put the rent up this much you get comfortable and lower bills

my house is worth more because it's got these things and you play me a bit more and it just comes

about through a piece of paper. So yeah so an open education resource will be to do research to

interview landlords and find out what percentage of them are likely. Some of them wouldn't be, they’d

go ‘my tenants move all the time all I do it then a new tenant comes’ and they don't want to pay the

higher amount. So there'd be a barrier but um you know there's a forget the term for it but there's

this thing that happens and if we think if we could maybe link in the councils and say you know

can you email all the people on your rates list who are developers and say here's a green lease

template please talk to your tenant about it you get a certain percentage and a nice percentage

to do it will be fantastic for everyone so that's our next idea. LAUREN: I love that you wrote an OER and you

loved the experience so much that you want to do another one it's a very good sign. I'm going to

bring us to a close with some credits. Stories of Openness is a limited series from the Open Education

team at Deakin University Library. It's part of a research by podcast project led by me Lauren

Halcomb-Smith with Angie Williamson, DannI Johnson, and Eddie Pavuna. We choose open wherever possible

including Audacity for editing, Castopod for hosting, and music by Scott Holmes music. This podcast

by Deakin University is licensed under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 license. For more information and full

Acknowledgements, please see our show notes. Thank you so much for listening thank you, Tom.

TOM: thank you Lauren.