About NTLSN · Our story

Built from the edges — for the whole sector.

National Teaching & Learning Sector Network — the open home for connecting university teaching in Australia. Free, independent, open-source. NTLSN, everywhere you work.

Independent · owned by no one · nothing stored, shared or sold.

Our story

NTLSN didn't come from a grant, a committee or a strategic plan. It came from lived experience — the early-career years of finding your way without a map, and wishing someone would reach back and pull you up. NTLSN is that reach-back, at sector scale.

It is built and led by culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) academics. People of colour remain a small minority in academic leadership — and we're not waiting for permission to change that.

Everything here is free, for everyone — for now and for good. No funding paid for it. No grant, no award, no institution owns it. It was made on nights and weekends, on my own time and my own computer.

That's the 2 a.m. reason this exists. If it helps one educator feel less alone in their teaching, it has done its job.

The founder

Associate Professor Seb Dianati
Associate Professor Seb Dianati
Founder & Chair, NTLSN
Academic developer · Scholarship of Teaching & Learning researcher
Founder of NTLSN and maker of its free tools — the crash courses, induction kits, recognition and Fellowship supports, and the 30+ in-browser toolkits any academic developer can drop into their LMS. Built so that every educator, wherever they work, has what they need.
BSc(MedChem) · BIE(S&T) · GDIBA · MBA · EdD · SFHEA
SFHEAEdDAuthorCentre for Australian Democracy

Positionality & motive

I build this as a critical scholar of education. My work has traced how open learning — OER, then MOOCs, then microcredentials — and even partnership itself were steadily enclosed and monetised. NTLSN is my attempt at the opposite: to keep the sector's knowledge a free, open commons, and to put what I learned critiquing that system to work repairing it. The paid services exist only to sustain the commons — never to gate it.

— Seb

Author of The Commercialisation of MOOCs; researcher in students-as-partners and Indigenous curriculum; elected (volunteer) board member of the Centre for Australian Democracy. NTLSN grew from that work — a critique of commercialised education, made constructive.

“Learning is as much emotive, kinaesthetic and in-presence as it is cognitive — arguably more. It happens where you feel heard, seen and felt. That conviction runs through everything NTLSN builds.”

— Seb. And it’s why this exists: decades of sector funding flowed to consultants and restructures while programs flattened and the people who hold learning together were let go. NTLSN is the counter-investment — putting the sector’s knowledge back in the sector’s hands.

The research behind the network

NTLSN wasn’t built on a hunch. It grew out of a decade of published scholarship — on student partnership, Indigenising the curriculum, the flipped and digital classroom, and a book-length critique of what happens when open education is commercialised. Filter by thread:

46
published works
235
citations
6
h-index
107
citations, most-cited paper

Selected from 46 works · counts per Google Scholar, July 2026 (citation counts change over time) · also convenor/chair, ICCE sub-conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (2023, 2024). Citation of published work does not imply any co-author endorses NTLSN.

The evidence — what the data shows

1,431
Works in the commons
30+
Free in-browser tools
$0
Cost to students & staff
0
Data points stored

Every number here is verifiable in the open: the whole commons is browsable now, nothing is behind a login, and nothing you do is stored, shared or sold.

Steering committee

Dr Kashmira Davé
Co-Chair · CALD lead
University of New England
Youcef Sai
Steering Committee
La Trobe University
Zablon Pingo
Steering Committee
Charles Darwin University
Grant Andrews
Steering Committee
Central Queensland University

A steering committee of colleagues who chose to build this together. Seb Dianati is the founder; the committee guides and grows the commons.

What NTLSN is

A free commons
Every event, resource, framework and recognition pathway across the sector — free, no logins, no paywalls.
We hold nothing
No data is stored, shared or sold. Public information is read in your browser and never leaves it.
Independent & open
Open-source, vendor-neutral and unaffiliated. Owned by no university and no company.
Built by the sector
Made by the people it serves — educators, for educators, across all Australian universities.

Acknowledgement of Country

Acknowledgement of Country

NTLSN acknowledges the Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia, and their enduring connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Sovereignty was never ceded — always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Only a Traditional Owner can give a Welcome to Country; anyone can — and should — give an Acknowledgement of Country. First Nations crisis support: 13YARN — 13 92 76.

← Back to NTLSN
Independent & unfunded. No funds, no grants, no awards. Affiliations are listed for identification only and do not imply institutional endorsement or sponsorship. NTLSN is independent of all institutions and vendors.  ·  Dianati, S., & Davé, K. (2026). National Teaching & Learning Sector Network (NTLSN) [Independent open educational resource]. https://ntlsn.com  ·  Licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.