Browsing by Author "Deacon, Andrew"
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- ItemOpen AccessApproaches from the literature: Activity Theory, new tools and changing educators' practices(2016-02-03) Glover, Michael; Czerniewicz, Laura; Walji, Sukaina; Deacon, Andrew; Small, JanetFor a study being undertaken to investigate if and how educator practices change through MOOC development and engagement with open education, Activity Theory provides a heuristic to observe contradictions and changing educator practices after the addition of new tools to a learning environment. Ours is a longitudinal study with cross case analysis of lead educators in 3-4 MOOCs, examining themes and contradictions emerging from the semi-structured data analysis to observe change in practices. In this poster we explore the question: how and why has activity theory been used to examine the introduction of new tools/mediating artefacts into the learning environment. A fuller version of our literature review is available at http://bit.ly/1jwyit3; our study’s design amalgamates the three approaches below. Our study is conducted by Laura Czerniewicz and the MOOC team at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching
- ItemOpen AccessDeveloping world MOOCs: A curriculum view of the MOOC landscape(Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies, 2014-07) Czerniewicz, Laura; Deacon, Andrew; Small, Janet; Walji, SukainaMOOCs offer opportunities but are also pose the danger of further exacerbating existing educational divisions and deepening the homogeneity of global knowledge systems. Like many universities globally, South African university leaders and those responsible for course, curriculum, and learning technology development are coming to grips with the implications and possibilities of online and open education for their own institutions. What opportunities do they offer to universities, especially from the point of view of research-focused campus-based institutions which have not yet engaged with MOOCs and have little history with online courses? Given the complexities of the MOOC-scape, this paper provides a means for contextualising the options within an institutional landscape of educational provision as possibilities for MOOC creation, use and adaptation. This takes into account what is currently available and identifies what new opportunities can be explored. Refining this further, a categorisation of existing MOOCs is provided that maps to broad institutional interests. The notion of courses offered by universities as being either primarily ‘inward’ or ‘outward’ facing is explained. Five categories of MOOCs are described: Category One, Teaching Showcase; Category Two, Gateway Skills; Category Three, Graduate Skills; Category Four, Professional Skills and Category Five, Research Showcase. These are elaborated on and examples provided. This taxonomy provides a nuanced way of understanding MOOCs and MOOC type courses in order for educators to strategically prioritise and decision makers to support the full gamut of emergent opportunities.
- ItemOpen AccessHow do South African Educator's experiences of an online learning course prepare them to adopt inclusive education practices?(2021) Mdlulwa, Ncediwe; Mckenzie, Judith; Deacon, AndrewThis research study explored how teachers perceive the potential for online learning opportunities by investigating their experiences of an online course, Education for All: Disability, Diversity, and Inclusion Massive Open Online Course (EFA: DDI MOOC) on teaching children with disabilities. A key underlying concern is that teachers are not sufficiently trained to teach inclusively within their classroom-based environments. The literature reflects that teachers feel that they have not been provided with adequate skills and knowledge to teach students with disabilities and that a massive gap exists in teacher education, which hinders teachers from providing quality education in South Africa. These assessments of the current state of teacher education regarding children with disabilities in this country highlight a considerable need to upskill teachers, particularly those of children with disabilities. One of the proposed responses is to offer flexible online courses such as MOOCs that are open to anyone to enrol. MOOCs are a form of online courses with open enrolment delivered on web-based platforms that can support larger numbers of people. They are free courses that offer unlimited online participation, including technological advancement, peer support as well as collaborative practices. In this study, the EFA: DDI MOOC informs our understanding of how teachers might respond to and value this opportunity. This study thus sought to investigate “How do South African educators' experiences of an online learning course prepare them to adopt inclusive education practices?” Semi-structured interviews were employed as a means of collecting data. A qualitative content analysis was used to analyse and interpret the data set. The researcher was able to ascertain how the MOOC was valued by these participants including acquiring information regarding their level of engagement on the MOOC. The collected data was based on South African educators' experiences of doing the MOOC course and their readiness to implement inclusive education practices for all children with disabilities. The researcher was also interested to ascertain how the online course prepared them to adopt inclusive education practices after completion. This further included establishing how educators perceive MOOCs as being accessible, feasible, and acceptable to their context to develop increased engagement in inclusive teaching practices. The thematic analysis was used to analyse the data from the in-depth interviews. Finally, participants were selected based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The interviewees spoke of fundamental changes having occurred after participating in the EFA: DDI MOOC which led to newer understandings of their conceptualisation of inclusion. The benefits to these individual teachers were diverse, with important aspects including their intrinsic motivation, skills development, as well as the desire for continuous professional development. For some there was also an increased willingness to take up the challenge of adopting inclusive education practices as well as becoming agents of change in their communities. The flexible and low-cost MOOC mode was valued as supporting and complementing inclusive teacher education where few other opportunities existed. The overall outcome of the study was that online education (MOOCs) appeared as another important option to consider for the successful implementation of inclusive education practices. Teachers were willing to take up the challenge of adopting inclusive education practices as well as becoming agents of change in their communities. Therefore, the findings signified that MOOCs could aid tremendously towards the goal of achieving inclusive teacher education in South Africa.
- ItemOpen AccessLearning analytics: New thinking supporting educational research(2017-07-27) Deacon, AndrewThis presentation at the 3rd Learning LandsCAPE conference at Cape Town, 14-16 April 2015 explores how learning analytics have the potential to transform educational research by providing fine-grained data on access, usage and completion of online educational materials. Examples from the UCT MOOCs project are used to illustrate the kinds of insights learning analytics can provide in monitoring and evenn predicting student performance.
- ItemOpen AccessLearning as acquiring a discursive identity through participation in a community: improving student learning in engineering education(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Allie, Saalih; Armien, Mogamat Noor; Burgoyne, Nicolette; Case, Jennifer M; Collier-Reed, Brandon I; Craig, Tracy S; Deacon, Andrew; Fraser, Duncan M; Geyer, Zulpha; Jacobs, Cecilia; Jawitz, Jeff; Kloot, Bruce; Kotta, Linda; Langdon, GenevIn this paper, we propose that learning in engineering involves taking on the discourse of an engineering community, which is intimately bound up with the identity of being a member of that community. This leads to the notion of discursive identity, which emphasises that students' identities are constituted through engaging in discourse. This view of learning implies that success in engineering studies needs to be defined with particular reference to the sorts of identities that students develop and how these relate to identities in the world of work. In order to achieve successful learning in engineering, we need to recognise the multiple identities held by our students, provide an authentic range of engineering-related activities through which students can develop engineering identities and make more explicit key aspects of the discourse of engineering of which lecturers are tacitly aware. We include three vignettes to illustrate how some of the authors of this paper (from across three different institutions) have applied this perspective of learning in their teaching practice.
- ItemOpen AccessLearning from the rhetoric of academics using educational technology(University of the West Indies, 2007) Deacon, Andrew; Wynsculley, CathrineSeminar presentations, by academics successfully using educational technology to support their courses, form a visible part of many staff development programmes. These events contribute to developing a community of academics that use educational technology and are sharing experiences on its use in supporting teaching and learning. We draw on classic rhetorical analysis to highlight the epideictic or ceremonial form of these presentations we see as exemplary of these events. These presentations tend to be quite distinct from how educational technology research or best practice is disseminated. We argue that this epideictic form is a vital component in emerging communities of practice and, for example, communicates the value of working collaboratively. While the underlying intuition is widely acknowledged, our analysis offers a framework to view these conscious and stylistic choices across learning communities.
- ItemOpen AccessLearning through engagement: MOOCs as an emergent form of provision(Distance Education, 2016-06-01) Walji, Sukaina; Deacon, Andrew; Small, Janet; Czerniewicz, LauraMassive open online courses (MOOCs) are a new form of educational provision occupying a space between formal online courses and informal learning. Adopting measures used with formal online courses to assess the outcomes of MOOCs is often not informative because the context is very different. The particular affordances of MOOCs shaping learning environments comprise scale (in terms of numbers of students) and diversity (in terms of the types of students). As learning designers, we focus on understanding the particular tools and pedagogical affordances of the MOOC platform to support learner engagement. Drawing on research into learner engagement conducted in the broader field of online learning, we consider how learner engagement in a MOOC might be designed for by looking at three pedagogical aspects: teacher presence, social learning, and peer learning.
- ItemOpen AccessMathematical errors made by high performing candidates writing the National Benchmark Tests(Pythagoras, 2017-04-25) Bohlmann, Carol A; Prince, Robert N; Deacon, AndrewWhen the National Benchmark Tests (NBTs) were first considered, it was suggested that the results would assess entry-level students’ academic and quantitative literacy, and mathematical competence, assess the relationships between higher education entry-level requirements and school-level exit outcomes, provide a service to higher education institutions with regard to selection and placement, and assist with curriculum development, particularly in relation to foundation and augmented courses. We recognise there is a need for better communication of the findings arising from analysis of test data, in order to inform teaching and learning and thus attempt to narrow the gap between basic education outcomes and higher education requirements. Specifically, we focus on identification of mathematical errors made by those who have performed in the upper third of the cohort of test candidates. This information may help practitioners in basic and higher education. The NBTs became operational in 2009. Data have been systematically accumulated and analysed. Here, we provide some background to the data, discuss some of the issues relevant to mathematics, present some of the common errors and problems in conceptual understanding identified from data collected from Mathematics (MAT) tests in 2012 and 2013, and suggest how this could be used to inform mathematics teaching and learning. While teachers may anticipate some of these issues, it is important to note that the identified problems are exhibited by the top third of those who wrote the Mathematics NBTs. This group will constitute a large proportion of first-year students in mathematically demanding programmes. Our aim here is to raise awareness in higher education and at school level of the extent of the common errors and problems in conceptual understanding of mathematics. We cannot analyse all possible interventions that could be put in place to remediate the identified mathematical problems, but we do provide information that can inform choices when planning such interventions.
- ItemOpen AccessMOOC-making and Open Educational Practices(Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 2016-12-05) Czerniewicz, Laura; Deacon, Andrew; Walji, SukainaMOOCs have been seen as holding promise for advancing Open Education. While the pedagogical design of the first MOOCs grew out of the Open Education Movement, the current trend has MOOCs exhibiting fewer of the original openness goals than anticipated. The aim of this study is to examine the practices and attitudes of MOOC educators at an African university and ask whether and how their practices and attitudes become open after creating and teaching a MOOC. Activity Theory is used to contextually locate the educators’ motivations and to analyse their practices in terms of striving towards an object. With this lens we describe how educators’ openness-related practices and attitudes change over time in two different MOOCs. Two sets of conceptions of open practices are used to detect instances of change, providing four dimensions of changed open educational practices. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and artefacts provide data for this rare study, which considers these issues from the perspective of the Global South. Through studying the educators’ practices in relation to openness, it becomes evident how open practices are emergent and responsive.
- ItemOpen AccessMOOCs, openness and changing educator practices: an Activity Theory case study(10th International Conference on Networking Learning 2016, 2017-03-06) Czerniewicz, Laura; Glover, Michael; Deacon, Andrew; Walji, SukainaThe practices and perceptions of educators formed through the creation and running of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provide a case study of how educators understandings of ‘openness’ change (Beetham et al 2012, p 3). We are interested in how educators engage with open education resources (OER) and openness as part of developing open online courses, and how this informs their practices and attitudes afterwards. Deepening understandings of these changes is important for informing strategies involving helping educators in adopting productive open educational practices. Our research question is how do educators’ practices change or not change when using - or not using - OER in and as a MOOC? We are interested in whether and why educators adopt open practices in their MOOCs. We employ an Activity Theory (AT) conceptual framework as a heuristic tool to track and thickly describe educators’ practices and perceptions. This frame enables us to locate educators’ practices - in a context of mediating nodes, i.e., tools/artefacts, rules, divisions of labour, and community – as they strive towards and consider their object. The object upon which the educators act is the development of a new interdisciplinary field. We focus on the role of two mediating artefacts introduced into the activity system, namely Creative Commons (CC) licenses and the ‘MOOC design’. We describe how the open aspect of these artefacts mediate and affect educator’s perceptions, attitudes and educational practices in the context of their object-directed activity system. We draw predominantly on semi-structured interviews with the MOOC lead educators and the MOOC learning designers. Interviews were conducted at two time intervals, before and after the MOOC has run. From this we craft two activity systems. We have categorised our findings according to Beetham et al’s dimensions of open practices. Further, two broad themes emerged from the data analysis. These are Affordances of the MOOC and Reflection on educational practices
- ItemOpen AccessMOOCs, openness and changing educator practices: an Activity Theory case study(International Council on Distance Education, 2017-03-15) Czerniewicz, Laura; Glover, Michael; Deacon, Andrew; Walji, SukainaThe practices and perceptions of educators formed through the creation and running of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provide a case study of how educators understandings of ‘openness’ change (Beetham et al 2012, p 3). We are interested in how educators engage with open education resources (OER) and openness as part of developing open online courses, and how this informs their practices and attitudes afterwards. Deepening understandings of these changes is important for informing strategies involving helping educators in adopting productive open educational practices. Our research question is how do educators’ practices change or not change when using - or not using - OER in and as a MOOC? We are interested in whether and why educators adopt open practices in their MOOCs. We employ an Activity Theory (AT) conceptual framework as a heuristic tool to track and thickly describe educators’ practices and perceptions. This frame enables us to locate educators’ practices - in a context of mediating nodes, i.e., tools/artefacts, rules, divisions of labour, and community – as they strive towards and consider their object. The object upon which the educators act is the development of a new interdisciplinary field. We focus on the role of two mediating artefacts introduced into the activity system, namely Creative Commons (CC) licenses and the ‘MOOC design’. We describe how the open aspect of these artefacts mediate and affect educator’s perceptions, attitudes and educational practices in the context of their object-directed activity system. We draw predominantly on semi-structured interviews with the MOOC lead educators and the MOOC learning designers. Interviews were conducted at two time intervals, before and after the MOOC has run. From this we craft two activity systems. We have categorised our findings according to Beetham et al’s dimensions of open practices. Further, two broad themes emerged from the data analysis. These are Affordances of the MOOC and Reflection on educational practices.
- ItemOpen AccessMOOCs, openness and changing educator practices: an Activity Theory case study(Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Networked Learning 2016, 2016-05-19) Czerniewicz, Laura; Glover, Michael; Deacon, Andrew; Walji, SukainaThe practices and perceptions of educators formed through the creation and running of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provide a case study of how educators understandings of ‘openness’ change (Beetham et al 2012, p 3). We are interested in how educators engage with open education resources (OER) and openness as part of developing open online courses, and how this informs their practices and attitudes afterwards. Deepening understandings of these changes is important for informing strategies involving helping educators in adopting productive open educational practices. Our research question is how do educators’ practices change or not change when using - or not using - OER in and as a MOOC? We are interested in whether and why educators adopt open practices in their MOOCs. We employ an Activity Theory (AT) conceptual framework as a heuristic tool to track and thickly describe educators’ practices and perceptions. This frame enables us to locate educators’ practices - in a context of mediating nodes, i.e., tools/artefacts, rules, divisions of labour, and community – as they strive towards and consider their object. The object upon which the educators act is the development of a new interdisciplinary field. We focus on the role of two mediating artefacts introduced into the activity system, namely Creative Commons (CC) licenses and the ‘MOOC design’. We describe how the open aspect of these artefacts mediate and affect educator’s perceptions, attitudes and educational practices in the context of their object-directed activity system. We draw predominantly on semi-structured interviews with the MOOC lead educators and the MOOC learning designers. Interviews were conducted at two time intervals, before and after the MOOC has run. From this we craft two activity systems. We have categorised our findings according to Beetham et al’s dimensions of open practices. Further, two broad themes emerged from the data analysis. These are Affordances of the MOOC and Reflection on educational practices.
- ItemOpen AccessMOOCs: A UCT Discussion(2014-11-05) Czerniewicz, Laura; Walji, Sukaina; Small, Janet; Deacon, AndrewThis is a presentation by MOOC Task Team to inform the discussion around MOOCs in the UCT Course provision landscape. The presentation took place at the Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CILT), Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) here at UCT on 31 March 2014.
- ItemOpen AccessOER in and as MOOCs(African Minds, International Development Research Centre & Research on Open Educational Resources for Development, 2017-11-10) Czerniewicz, Laura; Deacon, Andrew; Walji, Sukaina; Glover, Michael; Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams; Patricia ArintoThis chapter reports on the investigation into the production and rollout of four Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa, and on the experiences of the educators involved in their production. The overarching aim of this study is to address the question: How does MOOC-making with Open Educational Resources (OER) influence educators’ Open Educational Practices (OEP)? The authors were interested to know why UCT educators wanted to make MOOCs, whether they adopted OER, whether their practices become more open after making a MOOC, and in which ways. Drawing on Beetham et al. (2012) and Hodgkinson-Williams (2014), an analytic framework of OEP was developed comprising three dimensions: legal, pedagogical and financial. The research methodology is qualitative, using semi-structured interviews and data from MOOC discussion forums. Six MOOC lead educators were interviewed at three intervals: before their MOOCs ran, immediately after their MOOC’s first run, and six to 10 months later. Transcripts were coded using OEP concepts. The findings offer insights into the relationships between educators’ motivations for making MOOCs, their MOOC design tools, the OEP that can be identified and the contradictions they experienced in making MOOCs. Despite the challenges that educators faced, they largely achieved their purposes of making MOOCs and manifested legal, pedagogical and financial dimensions of OEP. The impact on educators’ open practices was observed in several subsequent projects after the MOOCs were first run. Tensions involved in making MOOCs, adopting OER and enacting OEP point to how educators could be better supported to become more open in their educational practices. No negative experiences were attributed to the creation of OER and, indeed, MOOC-making with OER appeared to be conducive to OER adoption in general. However, more time would be needed to conclude whether these educators could become OER advocates or could function autonomously in creating and sharing OER.
- ItemOpen AccessPedagogic strategies to support learning design thinking in a masters course(Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2013) Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Deacon, AndrewThe demand for further skills and qualifications in the educational technology field remains strong as the range of technologies increases and their potential use in educational contexts becomes more compelling. Students registering for the University of Cape Town (UCT) Masters level courses are employed in schools, government agencies, universities, non-governmental organisations, or in the corporate sector, where their role in designing educational technology interventions represents part of their responsibilities. Because they have varying levels of experience in designing educational materials and/or using educational technologies, they need to develop learning design thinking and gain practice with a broad range of pedagogic strategies, theories, and technology tools to be productive in the workplace. Over the past four years we have developed and adopted a course for the needs of people who are keen to apply these skills in their work contexts. We describe here, the pedagogic strategies we explicitly adopted to model and support learning design thinking in one of four modules, Online Learning Design. The module adopts a learning design framework developed by Dabbagh and Bannan- Ritland (2005) to introduce students to design processes, and uses the same framework as a loose structure for the module and assignments. We apply Dabbagh and Bannan- Ritland's classification of pedagogic strategies to model and analyse approaches to cultivating learning design thinking amongst the students. As an analytic advice, we draw on Engeström's (2001) Activity Theory to describe the evolving learning context and our changing pedagogic strategies over four years. We focus on key tensions that emerged from the adoption of a range of pedagogic strategies to cultivate the students' learning design thinking when developing learning activities to communicate complex design issues. The key social change highlighted in this paper is that educational technology educators aiming to cultivate students' learning design thinking, need to apply their design thinking to their own practice.
- ItemOpen AccessPosition Paper: MOOCs(2015) Czerniewicz, Laura; Deacon, Andrew; Fife, Mary-Ann; Small, Janet; Walji, SukainaMassive open online courses (MOOCs) are a flexible and open form of self-directed, online learning designed for mass participation. There are no fees or entry requirements and no formal academic credit is available. While completion rates are low (on average ten per cent) due to varying motivations for enrolling in a MOOC, absolute numbers of participants who complete are usually high. While access to the course material is free, MOOC platform providers often offer certificates of completion at a cost. MOOC platforms provide institutions with cloud-based hosting environments for delivering courses, offering scale and functionality while the institution provides the course material and reputational value. This paper discusses the key aspects of Massive Open Online Courses in a South African educational context.
- ItemOpen AccessUCT ERT Student Experience Survey 2020(University of Cape Town, 2020-09-25) Marquard, Stephen; Walji, Sukaina; Lester, Soraya; Kefale, Kende; Deacon, AndrewFinal report of the UCT Emergency Remote Teaching Student Experience Survey 2020, an online survey of student experiences of emergency remote teaching (ERT) during the 2nd term of 2020 (April to July 2020). The purpose of the survey was to inform and improve the design of courses taught online during the second semester of 2020 (August to November), and improve support for students where possible. The survey was thus a form of institutional research and followed an exploratory research design rather than setting out to confirm or disprove specific hypotheses. The report presents key concerns of students during this time period, including mental health, course workload in relation to available time, and challenges relating to course site design, assessments, social connectedness, Internet access and mobile data and preferences relating to video material and synchronous teaching. While most students experienced some difficulties arising from ERT and the COVID-19 lockdown conditions, students who no longer had access to UCT residences after the start of ERT were particularly adversely affected.
- ItemOpen AccessWeathering wikis: net-based learning meets political science in a South African university(Elsevier Ltd., 2007) Tony Carr; Morrison, Andrew; Cox, Glenda; Deacon, AndrewWikis represent flexible tools functioning as open-ended environments for collaboration while also offering process and group writing support. Here we focus on a project to innovate the use of wikis for collaborative writing within student groups in a final-year undergraduate political science course. The primary questions guiding our research were in what ways could wikis assist collaborative learning in an undergraduate course in political science and how we could support educators' in the effective use of wikis? Curiously, wikis may serve as a mediating artifact for collaborative writing even among students who are reluctant to post online drafts. The paper raises questions concerning the nature and limits of lecturer and tutor power to deliver transformative educational innovations in relation to the capacity of students to embrace, comply with, or resist such innovation. In analysing the negotiation of the use of wikis in the course by and among the lecturer, tutors, and students, we draw on two principles in activity theory, which Yrjo Engestrom argued are central to his model of expansive learning: multi-voicedness and contradictions [Engestrom, Yrjo. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit; Engestrom, Yrjo. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work 14(1), 133–156.]. We add a third principle, transparency, to more fully capture what we observed.