real benefits of openness. The innovation that openness affords provides solutions to a number of the very substantial challenges facing higher education. In some respects the digital, open revolution is the cause of these challenges, and it is also the solution. This victory of openness is evidenced by the value that the term ‘open’ acquires as a marketing phrase, and one response to this is to make demands on those who seek to bend the term to their own ends. Lastly, it was suggested that openness has a virus-like ability to spread across many different practices once it has been adopted in one place.
What all of these directions for openness have in common is ownership. In this book I have attempted to establish two arguments about openness: that it is a successful approach to adopt for much of education and that it is now at a crucial stage regarding its future direction. Underlying the success of openness for education is the opportunity for experimentation and innovation. MOOCs, OERs, open access and open scholarship have all been the result of those working within higher education seeking to engage with the possibilities that openness allows. Having won the first battle – that it is an effective way to operate – it is essential that the second battle regarding the future direction of openness is not lost by abdicating responsibility and ownership. This is not to say that only universities can engage with open education; there are many different ways it can be approached, and it would be foolish to be prescriptive. But it does mean that those working in education need to engage with the debates set out in this book and decide best how openness can work for them. Failure to do so will mean that others decide this on their behalf.
