Foreword

‘Human nature’, and ‘instinct’ are often uncritically used to rationalise or explain baser behaviours, yet rarely acknowledged as positive forces motivating compassion, empathy, and community. When establishing a motive for both the best and worst actions of humanity, individuals often provide the same answer ‘I had no choice’. The desire to demonstrate understanding, welcome into community, care for, and nurture each other is the lesser recognised instinct – yet without it, civilisation, the sharing of knowledge, and the advancement of society are left poorer. To use Hobbes’ phrase, when speaking about the absence of an organising force on humanity, life would be ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’ (1651, XIII).

Our ancestors were capable of community-building and care for the individual; activities easily recognisable by their modern counterparts. The anthropologist Dr Margaret Mead asserted the first piece of evidence to civilisation – in her mind – was a broken femur than had healed (Byock, 2012). Evidence of early medicine and wound care meant that rather than abandon the injured companion, someone stayed and helped – nursing them back to health. That act of compassion – she asserts – was the true beginning of a civilisation. Cave paintings in France evidence art lessons for children, coupled with children’s art in places they could have only reached with an adult lifting them up. More recently, excavations of early human remains show the presence of Downs Syndrome in early humans – with many of the skeletons estimated to have received care from the community (Bowler, 2024). Inclusivity and care were hard-coded into communities, and nurturing appears – at the risk of romanticising the findings – to have been a social norm.

Collating knowledge is the act of connecting with previous generations and respecting the wealth of intellectual, creative, and emotional work; curating and adding to that knowledge creates a ‘common wealth’ for future generations. The Library of Alexandria was architecturally designed to open toward the docks, allowing cataloguers to descend upon arriving vessels and remove all written works – with the promise to return copies to their owners (Mader, 1976). The originals were organised, curated, and added to a growing wealth of knowledge in the ancient world. Indeed, the concept of sharing information – the inter-library loan – was practiced here. Surety for the book’s safe return was indexed to the cost of a trireme (a type of warship), underpinning the value placed on such items (I have asserted the world would be a different place indeed if libraries continued to be paid in warships, but that is a digression beyond the scope of this foreword).

Even earlier, the Egyptian Pharoahs funded archaeological and restorative work to statuary and monuments, annotating the hieroglyphic record to attribute the original work, and then to record the details of restorative work (including the funder and archaeologist undertaking the work) – a cross between annotated resource, and attribution. Building on previous works, and preservation of knowledge is by no means a new phenomenon.

In 1945, with the conclusion of the Second World War, Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (USA) wrote ‘As we may think’, explaining the collaboration between scientists, ‘burying their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause’. This solidarity and collegiality – admittedly driven by a global need – causes him to question the future state of research, and lament the speed at which new knowledge was generated, and despair that ‘publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record’ (1945, p. 101). In other words, the abundance of information coupled with the diversity of formats (photograph, audio, video, and text) and ability to share created complex knowledge networks that offered great promise and great challenges in equal measures.

Where I am going with this is to reflect on not only the basic human desire – perhaps even need – for community, and connect it with an environment of abundance. Building a ‘common wealth’ of knowledge, educating society to be critical consumers of research, and applying the benefits of that knowledge equally is the foundation for a fair, just, and tolerant society. The intervening years since Vannevar Bush’s observation that volume of information could impede scientific discovery without adequate mechanisms to organise and access is no less true almost eighty years later.

There is, however, a clear and present challenge faced by modern society – enclosure. Public institutions use public funds to generate new knowledge, only to enclose them in proprietary systems that restrict access and promote inequality. The ability to access knowledge – even for universities – is predicated on funding. For the average citizen, paywalls represent a costly (in some cases insurmountable) challenge to access. Outmoded notions of scarcity prevail – despite advances in technology that can serve information at a fraction of a cent. Just as access for universities is predicated by funding, so too is access to learning for citizens. The seemingly inseparable relationship between debt and education can be uncritically accepted, and even – more dangerously – romanticised as ‘the poor and struggling student’, as though this is a rite of passage to earn a degree.

As open educators and practitioners, we realise a responsibility to shift higher education into an abundance mentality; that just because students have traditionally struggled does not make it a template for future generations. Many open educators I have met provide at least one story explaining their motivation toward fair, accessible, and equitable education – essentially recognising and empathising with the student experience and responding because ‘I didn’t have a choice’.

Open education, however, will not solve these problems alone. It can’t. Open education, though, is inherently combinatorial, it seeks symbiosis with other elements in the institutional ecology. If open educational principles are paired with open licencing regimes and free and open knowledge, the result are open educational resources (OER). Resources alone cannot ensure quality assured learning (or even understanding). Combining OER with accessibility standards and user experience design supports wider access to the resources. Active learning design supported by OER can result in a mOOC (micro-Online Open Course), and when further combined with assurance of learning manifests as micro-credentialing. Open learning design combined with authentic assessment practices can create opportunities for engaged, invested students who add value to their profession and society during their studies – normalising sharing and co-creation.

Whilst not exhaustive, the examples combine and complement the constituent parts. As a symbiotic relationship, both parties offer something of value, yet the result is beneficial for both. Higher education is already accustomed to the term ‘predatory’ (although ‘parasitic’ may be more apt) for elements in the ecology, yet open education invites collaboration and combinatorial power leading to positive outcomes for staff, students, and society.

The most powerful combination is open educational practices and community.

This text acts as a turning point in Australian open educational practices; not only because the community is generously and freely sharing their experiences of implementing OEP, but rather because we have a wealth of experiences across the sector from which to draw. Catalysed by the work of advocates and professional bodies such as ASCILITE and the Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL), open education has gained significant traction and recognition as a mechanism to enable equity of access, greater affordability, and a deeper authenticity in learning and teaching.  CAUL’s ‘Enabling the modern curriculum‘ projects elevated OER to national prominence for librarians, and provided a much-needed focal point for advocacy, publishing, and professional learning, whilst the ASCILITE OEP SIG provides a space for the community to meet, disseminate practice, and conduct research.

This book is the result of Alice Luetchford (James Cook University) and Angie Williamson (Deakin University) recognising the need to collate current Australasian practice as not only a celebration of national achievement, but to provide practitioners with a ‘common wealth’ of examples that answer the question ‘what does open education look like?’ In the spirit of abundance, the text is offered freely (by the generous actions of CAUL) and openly to all in the hopes it inspires further action (and a cycle of new submissions, perhaps?). When Alice and Angie called for support to complete the text, an entire Editorial Team stepped forward – you’ll find their details on this text – and took up the work in an act of true community.

The resulting book is an accomplishment worthy of celebration as a testament to those who contribute to making education – as John Dewey would describe it – ‘designed to encourage creativity, exploration, independence, and cooperative work’.

I commend this text, and its attendant community, hoping it will inspire, guide, and act as a foundation for further work in this space.

Perhaps the final sentiment is encapsulated best in one of Buckminster Fuller’s quotes that has guided my practice for some time, and I hope offers wisdom for yours.

‘You never change anything by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.’

References

Bowler, J (2024). Neanderthal child with Down syndrome lived to age 6, inner ear fossil study suggests, ABC News, June 27. Retrieved https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-06-27/neanderthal-fossil-child-down-syndrome-inner-ear-bone/104023168

Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The Atlantic monthly, July, pp. 101-108. Retrieved https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1945/07/176-1/132407932.pdf

Byock, I. (2012). The best care possible: a physician’s quest to transform care through the end of life. New York. Avery.

Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan or the matter, forme, & power of a common-wealth ecclesiastical and civill. St Paul’s churchyard. Retrieved from the Gutenberg Project https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3207/pg3207-images.html

Mader, G. (1976). The Library of Alexandria. Akroterion, 21(2), pp. 2-13. Retrieved https://doi.org/10.2307/2184670