Co-authored by Amara Atif, Mais Fatayer and Helen Chan
Open education advocacy is a long journey with initiatives often driven by intrinsic motives. While Education Portfolio and UTS library were running Open Education Week, Amara has been listening and taking initiative to start something with the potential to transform the student learning experience and teaching practice in her faculty.
For many who work in open education, you can only imagine the significant efforts and dedication an academic invest in to develop an open textbook.
Amara’s journey is unique and her journey to writing Decoding Data: a Complete Guide to Business Intelligence is worth sharing. Amara shows us that a free textbook is not enough for her students, rather it’s that living content that grows from the heart of the learning environment and engages students in their learning journey, which is something often missing from commercial textbooks.
When the textbook stops working
I didn’t set out to create a book. I just got tired of apologising for the textbook. You know the moment. You are teaching, pointing students to the Reading List in Canvas, and then saying, “This example is a bit outdated” or “This is not really how it works anymore”. That was happening more often than I liked.
The commercially published textbook I was using looked current on paper. It was a 2017 4th edition, later updated to a 2024 5th edition. But with technology changing so rapidly, it simply was not keeping up with the pace of the field or what students needed to learn. Student feedback confirmed it. The examples felt dated, the case studies disconnected, and the explanations did not always provide the clarity students needed. Most importantly, students struggled to see relevance.
A turning point in the classroom
At the same time, the Subject Dashboard gave me an important insight. My subject has always had a large number of international students (e.g., this AUT, out of 147 students, 146 are international with 136/147 from non-English speaking backgrounds). In the previous offerings of the subject EFS and SFS, what stood out most was that, despite being international students, many expressed a strong preference for local Australian examples. They wanted to understand how concepts worked in the context they were studying in. They were looking for clarity, simplicity, and relevance, not only global case studies. That made me rethink what “relevant” means. It is not just about being current. It is about being contextual. This became the turning point. How could I move beyond outdated commercially published textbook content and create something current, locally meaningful, and accessible to all students?
Starting small and staying messy
I did not begin with a big plan. I started small. In 2024, I began revisiting and refining the materials I had been developing since 2022. I rewrote examples, simplified explanations, and tested them in class. Some ideas worked immediately. Others did not. Student feedback became central. Quick check-ins, Mentimeter polls, informal conversations to understand what was working. Over time, these small changes added up. It was not a neat process. It was iterative, ongoing, and sometimes messy. But it was also responsive to students.
A creative moment that stayed
One of the most unexpected moments in this journey came from outside my own discipline. My daughter, who studied biomedical science, shared how she had learned complex histology concepts, such as the layers and structure of the human kidney, through a poem generated using a GenAI tool. What struck me was not just the creativity of the approach, but its effectiveness. The structure made the content memorable in a way traditional explanations often do not. Inspired by this, I experimented with creating a poem using UTS Copilot for one of the more abstract topics (Data quality metrics) my students struggled with. It was a small, somewhat unconventional addition, but it worked. Students engaged with it and remembered it. This experience reminded me that open education allows space for creativity. It allows educators to bring personal, experimental, and even unconventional approaches into their teaching and share them beyond our classrooms.
From individual effort to collaboration
What began as small teaching adjustments gradually grew into something larger. Along with my co-authors, this work became Decoding Data: A Complete Guide to Business Intelligence (UTS ePress, 2026). Collaboration brought in different perspectives and strengthened the material. It helped shape a resource that is open, practical, and accessible for all learners, with locally relevant, real-world case studies and interactive activities at the end of each chapter to reinforce understanding. It also made the content more inclusive and reflective of real teaching contexts.
What this journey really involved and taught me
This journey was not without challenges. There was no dedicated funding or formal recognition. The work happened alongside teaching, marking, research, and service responsibilities. Much of it felt like invisible labour, including writing, editing, formatting, and learning new tools. This highlights an important point. For open education work to grow, there must be clearer support and recognition. Encouragement, time, and reward structures are essential if educators are to meaningfully engage in this kind of work. You can read more about some of these considerations in Danny Tan’s recap of the Decoding Data book launch.
Most importantly, it showed me that good teaching materials evolve over time. They are shaped by feedback, experimentation, and a willingness to adapt.
With a little help from an Open Access publisher
Publishing and authoring OERs is often a labour of love. It’s also a dynamic space of creativity and collaboration, where authors can experiment and create bespoke works aligned to specific learner needs. Open access publishers and university presses around the world recognise these challenges and opportunities and many support OER publishing through a variety of models. For Decoding Data, UTS ePress worked closely with Amara from concept to final publication.
UTS ePress is an open access university press based in UTS Library. Established in 2004, the ePress’ mission is to remove barriers to knowledge and support authors who may be overlooked by commercial publishers. The ePress has experts who ensure our published works meet professional publishing standards including copyright compliance. To boost our OER publishing practices, we joined CAUL OER Collective back in 2023 and benefitted from the systems, communities of practice and publishing support provided through the program.
As interest in open educational practices continues to grow, publishing support and clear processes help ensure OERs are sustainable, legally compliant, and high quality. Authors like Amara are paving the way for others to adopt, grow and share their own works.
For more about UTS ePress, see our catalogue of open textbooks.
Open education as a milestone
Open education is not about creating something perfect. It is about creating something that can grow. I am especially grateful to Prof. Jose Merigo, who highlighted in the foreword that this kind of work should not be seen as additional effort. Instead, it can be a meaningful milestone in an academic career, bringing together teaching, innovation, and impact.
That idea stayed with me. Because in the end, Decoding Data is more than a book. It is a reflection of a teaching journey shaped by students, collaboration, and a commitment to making learning more accessible and relevant.