Browsing by Author "Small, Janet"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Approaches from the literature: Activity Theory, new tools and changing educators' practices
    (2016-02-03) Glover, Michael; Czerniewicz, Laura; Walji, Sukaina; Deacon, Andrew; Small, Janet
    For 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
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    Developing 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, Sukaina
    MOOCs 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.
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    Learning through engagement: MOOCs as an emergent form of provision
    (Distance Education, 2016-06-01) Walji, Sukaina; Deacon, Andrew; Small, Janet; Czerniewicz, Laura
    Massive 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.
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    MOOCs: A UCT Discussion
    (2014-11-05) Czerniewicz, Laura; Walji, Sukaina; Small, Janet; Deacon, Andrew
    This 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.
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    Position Paper: MOOCs
    (2015) Czerniewicz, Laura; Deacon, Andrew; Fife, Mary-Ann; Small, Janet; Walji, Sukaina
    Massive 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.
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    Practitioner and institutional perspectives on lifelong learning at a South African university
    (2007) Small, Janet
    This research explores how the term 'lifelong learning' is understood at a higher education institution in South Africa. The study is built around a case study at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The research questions posed were: What are the different understandings of 'lifelong learning' at UCT? And secondly, what factors have shaped the development of these different understandings of 'lifelong learning'? The thesis approaches the research questions from two angles: What people working in the institution say about the topic and what can be read from the official University documentation on the topic. Continuing education work is used as a general proxy for lifelong learning as the term itself did not prove to be a useful identifier of specific educational activities at UCT. In analysing the data, two inter-related theoretical frameworks are employed - thematic analysis of the interviews and a critical discourse analysis of the texts. Some of the key pressures and issues facing institutions globally as well as specific local concerns are identified when setting the context. In the interviews, practitioners identified some of these contextual issues as factors influencing the development of continuing education: funding pressures, responding to socio-political demands for rapid student throughput while also widening access, and the particular character of the institution. The literature reveals some common approaches to lifelong learning - identified as economic, humanistic and social discourses - which were used to engage the perspectives of practitioners working on continuing education programmes. Based on an interpretation of the data, this thesis argues that in practice, the distinctions between the discourses tend to blend or transform. The economic and humanistic discourses begin to merge, as an individual's motivations cannot be neatly categorised as either learning for work or learning for personal development, pointing to the emergence of a new discourse. In the case of the social discourse, the more widely used definitions of social responsiveness embrace economic (and political) imperatives, while also maintaining a development and democracy agenda. Instead of seeing the data as only revealing what exists, the analysis argues that emerging discourses themselves help to create new realities.