Creative Destruction: An ‘Open Textbook’ disrupting personal and

institutional praxis

Dr Janice K Jones

School of Linguistics, Adult and Specialist Education, University of Southern Queensland, Australia

Acknowledgement of CountryI acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands where my teaching and research are conducted: the Gaibal, Jarowair, Ugarapul and Butchulla peoples of Queensland. I honour the wisdom of Elders past, present and future, seeking to walk together in the spirit of reconciliation

Image: Jada DENNISON/Untitled/2015/acrylic monoprint/60 x 42 cm

Outline

About the university - snapshot of a Regional Australian University

Its adoption of Open Approaches Current working practices – tensions between thinking

and practices About the ‘Open Textbook’ project A Textbook? Why? The proposal… The challenge – thinking – professional and personal

habitus, and institutional expectations What do we learn?

Snapshot: University of Southern Queensland

Regional university 3 campuses Excellent reputation: distance education- ‘print based’ delivery discontinued.14 years online/blended deliveryTeacher Education programs fully online with flexible study blended deliveryThe University of Southern Queensland Annual Report 2015 (p.85)

Staff:Academic: 768Professional: 1021

Students (headcount):Domestic 23798International 4405Undergraduate (load) 11519Postgraduate (load) 3207The University of Southern Queensland Annual Report 2015 (p.85)

University History - Open Approaches

2007:10 courses via MIT Open Courseware consortium (OEC)

Founder member, Open Educational Resources universitas (OERu)

Currently: Open access to

research (e-prints) Open-licensed

images, videos, textbooks, journal articles, music and data sets for learning and assessment

Pre -1998 – Early adoption - vision

Blackboard, WebCT, traditional didactic use of LMS as ‘classroom’

Book-like course content - introduction, assessment, modules

Discussion forums, recorded lectures (sage on the stage

Beyond the PDF – a move to web-based content

Intent: Metadata will allow user-selected ‘smart’ content for ‘on the fly’ and tailored learning environments

Use of a content object repository to allow repurposing

Technology ubiquity vs integration

‘In the wild’: Smartphone Social/integrating Health Travel Learning, verifying Planning/selecting Buying/Booking Corporate R&D

In the university: Moodle platform Mahara e-portfolio Legacy systems Peoplesoft – CMS Sustainable, robust,

scalable, secure Economically viable Constraining

So what is possible with such tools?

How do we move beyond the limits of our imagination and habitus

How can educators and learners use these tools to create rich learning?

2016 Courses and Pedagogies

PDF core content Recorded lectures Virtual classrooms Discussion forums Quizzes Exams Group assignments

and discussions All about ‘You’….?

‘Open Textbook’ Grants 2015 – 2016

March: Competitive 2015 Excellence in Learning and Teaching Grant $15K

To explore ways to create and share open content To provide recommendations to the university for

mainstreaming open textbook authoring Guidance and support for early adopters Expert panel of judges give feedback (August/September) Janice Jones, David Jones, Eric Kong, Kate Judith (with a team

of 8 from Open Access College) A ‘showcase’ of achievements – December 2015 Final report end January 2016 Reviewer feedback – April 2016

Horseless Carriage Thinking

Most use of OEP is designed not to “disrupt the smooth running routines” (Bigum, 2012, p. 35) of existing educational practices and institutions. Open textbooks are still textbooks. Open courses are still courses. David Jones (Blog) March 2016,

Our thinking is framed by habitus – professional and personal culture and experience

Hence – we ‘read’ possibilities and innovations in terms of the known and familiar

So…an ‘open textbook’??

My story – The Academic

This is my story – experience and learning in creating an ‘Open Book’

I had not expected this to be such a difficult but transformative experience

I had not expected my experience to highlight the need for institutional learning

Nor that it would spotlight the kinds of systems and supports that will be needed as universities shift from a ‘one size’ paradigm to embrace new ways of open working – Not just OER’s but Open Education Practices

Drivers and Discourses of ‘Openness’

Institutional: Competition ‘Reach’ into untapped

markets Social justice

agendas (and funding)

Economies of scale Reduced cost for

students

Scholarly: Innovation – rewards

– reputation, standing, funding

Space for individual and creative praxis

Testing boundaries Cross/institutional

sharing

The Australian Curriculum for the Arts

…all young Australians are entitled to engage with the five Arts subjects and should be given an opportunity to experience the special knowledge and skills base of each.

All students study dance, drama, media arts, music and visual arts — from Foundation to the end of primary school. Schools will be best placed to determine how this will occur.

Lower secondary ‘experience some’ subjects in more depth. Upper years students specialise in one or more Arts subject(s) as part of their overall studies

The arts are…

…foundational to historical, social, cultural and aesthetic understandings and appreciation.

…a vital means of human expression, inquiry and meaning-making.

…a way to self understanding, aesthetic awareness, and sensitivity to other ways of seeing the world

To effectively engage diverse learners teachers must develop curriculum knowledge, skills, pedagogies and practices.

BUT….

Lines, boxes, borders, boundaries When pre-service educators begin their undergraduate

programs to become teachers, most have had minimal experience of the arts since primary school.

My research data captured over 3 years with future primary school educators confirms the majority are fearful of teaching the arts and most doubt their own creativity.

All want to know how to ‘tick the right box’ to get a HD

Limits to my/our thinking

The challenge – supporting learning

Primary: A single 10 week course with 2 week practicum – students’ sole experience of Drama, Dance, Media, Music, Visual Arts

Fully online

Secondary/MOLT: Single course to cater for specialist teachers years 7– 12

Lower school – 5 arts areas

Upper school – art subject specialist

Fully online

In the beginning…

A wordpress site with OER resources for the arts

An emphasis upon providing culturally varied arts examples

Invitations sent to colleagues world wide

Students curated CC BY SA resources

Created their own websites for the arts (assessment task)

Resources were peer reviewed/enhanced to provide useful arts content for teaching

Considerations – Quality and ‘Openness’

Artists’ reluctance to share original works

Creating a website was not an issue but securing it was

Spam became a problem

Student curated sites had value but were uninspiring

All included useful CC By SA resources

But content lacked connecting meaning/cultural or connecting narratives

Gales of Creative Destruction: August

The ‘Dance’ - Shiva: Creator/Destroyer

When things go wrong, when products break – this is a learning opportunity…

My website was hacked by ‘Hard Hitter’ ICT could not help – this was not a university computer.

The WordPress site was not a university site. Expert friends could not help. Keychain made it

impossible to open up any programs or to do any work Necessitated full re-install of the OS on my Macbook Air

and re-purchase of MS Office Apple back up technicians neglected one important

stage in walking me through re-install: settings and programs were lost…

Sleepless nights = new thinking

Mid point review…Beyond the ‘Book’?

With all content lost I sought quick solutions. The panel advised against creating a WikiBook

This forced me back to my earlier thinking but from a new angle

Akash Odedra is a dancer who has struggled to express ideas through the written word: In Murmur he repositions the centuries old dance vocabulary of the Kathak dance tradition in a modern and digital performance context.

Dance is another language: Odedra re-casts dyslexia – not as a failure to follow rules - but as a new language

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T49IjKho5y8 Metaphor – ‘beyond the book’ - from 5’.45”

The OER project transformed –

Why a book? Why ‘deliver’ Arts Curriculum content?

Disrupt boundaries Start from ancient

myths, mysteries, narratives, difference voices, ways of seeing, disonnances

http://janicekjones.com

A blogsite, pinterest, site stimulus for work by/with pre-service teachers

Linked Facebook site for artists

Starting from the earth, the elements, Indigenous peoples, stories, mysteries

The flow…

http://janicekjones.com/

The site: ArtsSpace

http://janicekjones.com/

Where next?

Continue to build the site

Engage local artists and societies to share and use works – value add

Grow Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest ‘flow’

Art exhibition linked to site in 2016

Possible link to USQ Makerspace – sharing of knowledge, skills, videos

Encourage sharing of creative writing and arts products and research– from USQ education courses

Encourage use by schools

Discussion….

ReferencesJones, D.T. (Blog, 2016, March) OEP and Initial Teacher Education: Moving on from the horsey, horseless carriage.https://davidtjones.wordpress.com/2016/03/18/oep-and-initial-teacher-education-moving-on-from-the-horsey-horseless-carriage/ Odedra A. (2014).Murmur, TedGlobal. https://www.ted.com/talks/aakash_odedra_a_dance_in_a_hurricane_of_paper_wind_and_light?language=en

Images: Fire close up texture by Titus Tscharntke (ND)https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fire_close_up_texture.jpg#/media/File:Fire_close_up_texture.jpg

Shiva Nataragja by Vassil (2007)https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AShiva_Nataraja_Mus%C3%A9e_Guimet_25971.jpg