Creative destruction: An ‘Open Textbook’ disrupting personal and institutional praxis

Creative destruction: An ‘Open Textbook’ disrupting personal and institutional praxis

Universities seeking to engage in Open Education practices on a global stage are challenged to balance the drive for innovation, expressed as a co-construction and free-sharing of content and knowledge, and the contradictory imperatives of institutional control and protection of Intellectual Property. Reporting on her experience of managing an Open Textbook project during a one-year Australian university-funded teaching and learning initiative, the author explores the tensions generated by differing axiologies and practices at the levels of the individual educator and the employing institution. As a project facilitator and also as an educator of pre-service teachers in arts and literacies, the author encounters technical and personal challenges as she creates and integrates an Open Textbook for the arts into her courses for pre-service teachers. Using a narrative approach, she critically appraises institutional boundaries and frameworks for innovative practice in Open Education. She illustrates the challenges for lecturers implementing such initiatives within university and government policies and procedures whose intent is to ensure quality curricula, uniform branding and control of Intellectual Property as unanticipated factors impact upon the project. Her experience, that creative destruction and risk are abrasive but essential aspects of Open Education, has implications for institutional support for innovative practice and for policy makers and educators within systems where ‘openness’ is promoted and valued.