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Title of Presentation

My MOOC and other animals: options for online research capacity building at a University of Technology

Initials and Surnames of ALL authors:

D.D. Pratt

Institution / Organisation

Durban University of Technology

Abstract: Open courseware (OCW), open educational resources (OERs), educational Internet portals and massive open online courses (MOOCs) are all viable options for college e-learning, depending on the context, purpose and target audience, but with very little agreement in the literature as to the definition and relative effectiveness of the various genres. This paper will first review the literature in an attempt to arrive at an overview of these options, and their strengths and weaknesses. It will then look at various examples of these options as used in research capacity building for staff and students at a University of Technology, and finally, the inclusion of their best features in the Research MOOC. The latter, however, will be shown to have some “un-MOOC-like” qualities. This is because it is, in a sense, the culmination of the author’s multifaceted development in e-learning expertise, and combines elements which have been found to work in actual tuition, ranging from undergraduate courses to higher degree research modules and, ultimately, mixed-mode research capacity building workshops. The research approach to e-learning innovation is critical realist, viewing enhancements to learning through information and computer technology (ICT) as part of evolutionary social development, and not just involving acquisition of more technologically advanced electronic gadgets. It will be suggested that the integration of ICT into programme design, whether it involves OCW, OERs, Internet portals or MOOCs, has the potential to transform the system of relationships involved in research capacity building. The Research MOOC, integrating best practice in the author’s previous e-learning programmes, has been set up online, and is to be piloted in 2015 in six research capacity building workshops, providing some feedback as to its effectiveness as a distance option for a multi-campus university.

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ABSTRACT

Open courseware (OCW), open educational resources (OERs), educational Internet

portals and massive open online courses (MOOCs) are all viable options for college

e-learning, depending on the context, purpose and target audience, but with very

little agreement in the literature as to the definition and relative effectiveness of the

various genres. This paper will first review the literature in an attempt to arrive at an

overview of these options, and their strengths and weaknesses. It will then look at

various examples of these options as used in research capacity building for staff and

students at a University of Technology, and finally, the inclusion of their best features

in the Research MOOC. The latter, however, will be shown to have some “un-

MOOC-like” qualities. This is because it is, in a sense, the culmination of the

author’s multifaceted development in e-learning expertise, and combines elements

which have been found to work in actual tuition, ranging from undergraduate courses

to higher degree research modules and, ultimately, mixed-mode research capacity

building workshops. The research approach to e-learning innovation is critical

realist, viewing enhancements to learning through information and computer

technology (ICT) as part of evolutionary social development, and not just involving

acquisition of more technologically advanced electronic gadgets. It will be suggested

that the integration of ICT into programme design, whether it involves OCW, OERs,

Internet portals or MOOCs, has the potential to transform the system of relationships

involved in research capacity building. The Research MOOC, integrating best

practice in the author’s previous e-learning programmes, has been set up online, and

is to be piloted in 2015 in six research capacity building workshops, providing some

feedback as to its effectiveness as a distance option for a multi-campus university.

1. INTRODUCTION

For the educator looking to enhance tertiary instruction with digital multimedia,

several viable options are available in the form of open courseware (OCW), open

educational resources (OERs), educational Internet portals and massive open online

courses (MOOCs), depending on the context, purpose and target audience.

However, as Bates (2014) points out, all too many practitioners are uninformed

about seminal research on online and distance learning. I admit with some

embarrassment as to having fallen into this category myself until fairly recently, even

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though I have been an ardent and prolific e-learning proponent since my induction in

2002 (Pioneers ref). In the last five years my vaunted e-learning expertise was

challenged by taking on the supervision of five higher degree studies involving e-

learning (Gutteridge 2009; Sheridan 2010; Bhorat 2014; Reddy 2014; Els 2015).

Rob Gutteridge’s model of blended learning complemented my own lecturing

experience of using e-learning (Pratt and Gutteridge 2006), as did Rick Sheridan’s

work as facilitator of college community e-learning courses in Wilberforce, USA

(Sheridan 2010). However, when colleagues Preggy Reddy (2014) and Abdul

Bhorat (2014) tackled repository-type research projects, I had to rethink my whole

position on e-learning (as well as read frantically) to keep up with them. They had

also adopted a critical realist approach using Margaret Archer’s (1995) theory of

morphogenesis, which propelled me (kicking and screaming, I might add) into

theories of social structure at a deeper level than the systemic approach up until then

underpinning my blended learning practice (see Pratt 2014). The sharing of

readings and pooling of resources of these five students (four of them DUT

colleagues or ex-colleagues) meant that we could combine the insights gained in our

narrow focus on specific e-learning projects with the wider perspectives offered by

the literature, addressing another problem which Bates (2014) identifies, that is, that

there are too many research projects with an intense, specialist focus without their

being linked up with each other to lead to a more generalised view.

This paper will first review the literature in an attempt to arrive at an overview of the

main e-learning genres available, and their strengths and weaknesses. It will then

look at various examples of these options as used in research capacity building for

staff and students at a University of Technology, and finally, the inclusion of their

best (or what were thought to be their best) features in the Research MOOC. As

with many of the examples in the literature, the Research MOOC will be shown to

have some “un-MOOC-like” qualities. This is because it is, in a sense, a culmination

at this point of my development in e-learning expertise, and combines elements

which have been found to work in actual tuition, ranging from undergraduate courses

to higher degree research modules and, ultimately, mixed-mode research capacity

building workshops. The research approach to e-learning innovation described here

is critical realist, viewing enhancements to learning through information and

computer technology (ICT) as part of evolutionary social development (Aunger

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2010), and not just acquisition of more technologically advanced electronic gadgets.

Before concluding, I will suggest that the integration of ICT into programme design,

whether it involves OCW, OERs, Internet portals or MOOCs, has the potential to

transform the system of relationships involved in research capacity building.

2. REVIEW OF E-LEARNING GENRES

It is my opinion that the technology or medium whereby Internet learning is achieved

is not particularly relevant when it comes to categorising genres. I will accept

“mobile learning” (styled “m-learning”) as a legitimate division, in terms of the

additional enablements (and constraints) it contributes to the e-learning mix (mainly

the ubiquitous “apps”, which are very likely changing the ways in which we learn).

However, I have no patience with TOOCs and SOOCs and so forth (Bárcena et al.

2014: 11). These sub-genres seem to owe their proliferation more to the authors’

desperation to stake a claim for research expertise in a “unique” field rather than any

real genre differentiation. Moreover, the convergence of technologies (Dede 2005;

Fuchs 2008) makes precise classification increasingly more difficult. If my students

access the same learning resources (i.e. those on the Research MOOC) via

computer, tablet or mobile phone, does this make it a different kind of learning in

each case? Perhaps. But in an institution where load shedding intermittently shuts

down all but a few essential servers, lab computers and the thinly-scattered wifi

points (for those with laptops but no 3G), the question remains academic. As we do

not have portable inverter arrays or battery-operated data projectors, I am obliged to

have ready research workshop resources on paper (which perhaps should be

termed “p-learning”, following Bax 2003: 23, or “loadshed-learning”, following Eskom

2015).

Whatever my misgivings about genres and sub-genres, this paper will first review the

literature in an attempt to arrive at an overview of these options and their strengths

and weaknesses. Because of the length constraints of conference papers, this is a

summary only of the position taken in the more detailed account provided by Abdul

and myself (Bhorat and Pratt in press), but may contain some new sources.

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2.1 E-learning

There is very little agreement about the precise definition of e-learning, which is used

for almost any learning activity which has the slightest connection with the Internet

(Nawaz, Hussain and Zaka 2013: 425). Other terms, such as “online course”, “web-

based learning”, “web-based training”, “learning objects” or “distance learning” are

often used as if the terms were interchangeable (Moore, Dickson-Deane and Galyen

2011: 130). According to Moore, Dickson-Deane and Galyen (2011) the difficulties

arise from the fact that authors do not know which technologies should be used to

reference the various terms. Furthermore, there is currently a state of convergence

in electronic media technologies (Dede 2005; Fuchs 2008) which is rendering

distinctions between formerly distinct types of technology meaningless, and the

wireless technology used in education can be seen to be accelerating these

convergences (Dede 2005: 15.16). Definitions of e-learning often include advice

about what the person giving the definition considers to be exemplary educational

practice, which, however laudable, does not necessarily characterise instruction

“delivered on a computer by way of CD-ROM, Internet, or intranet” (see Clark and

Mayer 2008: 10). For that matter, terms such as “synchronous” or “asynchronous”

do not characterise e-learning (either mode can be, and is, used in traditional

instruction (see Pratt 2007: 710-711).

It is acknowledged that electronic enhancements to learning may include features

such as tape recorders, video machines, overhead projectors and CD-ROM, and that

these may be used in combination with more recent digital developments. Other

definitions of e-learning include not only the Internet/Intranet and CD-ROM but also

“audio- and videotape, satellite broadcast and interactive TV” (Moore, Dickson-

Deane and Galyen 2011: 130). Technically, if one wants to be pedantic, e-learning

is a wider term than online learning if it is viewed as including electronic technologies

other than the Internet. This paper, however, focusses on the electronic

enhancements to learning associated with information and computer technology

(ICT), and specifically those involving the Internet. For the purposes of this paper,

then, e-learning is defined as: “the use of computer network technology, primarily

over an intranet or through the Internet, to deliver information and instruction to

individuals” (Welsh et al. 2003: 246). The term e-learning, as in much of the

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literature, will be used synonymously with the terms online learning and web-based

learning.

2.2 Blended learning

As with e-learning, it is difficult to define blended learning (or mixed-mode learning)

satisfactorily (Jones 2006: 4528). As Graham (2006: 913) comments, “Some define

the term so broadly that one would be hard pressed to find any learning system that

was not blended”. Not daunted by this prospect, some writers have claimed that all

learning is a form of blended learning (Oliver and Trigwell 2005: 20; Masie 2006:

1320). Of course, how we define blended learning depends on how we have defined

e-learning. If the latter is defined as involving the Internet (or intranet), then blended

learning defined in the context of e-learning (i.e. not in the context of instructional

methods or educational media) must by logical extension be defined as “Combining

online and face-to-face instruction” (Graham 2006: 926). There is no point in

debating how it should be defined: once one has nailed one’s colours to the mast, as

it were, one is committed to that choice. I readily concede that blended learning may

well be used to refer to the use of mixed (i.e. traditional and “new”) media, for

example, print, CD-ROM and DVD (Wang and Hwang 2004: 410; Ennew and

Fernandez-Young 2006: 148). It has apparently also been used to refer the practice

of combining instructional methods (Graham 2006: 926). However, in this paper

(and in general), I am keeping to the definition of blended learning as being a mixture

of traditional delivery and online delivery, that is, Graham’s (2006: 926) definition,

supported by Barone Barone (2005: 14.15), Goodyear and Ellis (2007: 342) and

Nawaz, Hussain and Zaka (2013: 428), amongst others.

Gutteridge’s model of blended learning (see Table 1) captures the way in which

online and traditional learning complement each other in carrying out the essential

functions (Pratt and Gutteridge 2006: 6-7) required for learning to take place (i.e.

contextualising instruction, generating ideational content in various learning

interactions, which are governed by local social mores and regulated by reflexive

input).

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Table 1: Gutteridge’s model of blended learning delivery (in Gutteridge 2009: 62)

Blended learning is contextual-ised in the virtual, as well as the actual classroom, so

that learning initiated in the classroom can continue at any time in any place where

there is Internet access. While the actual classroom is the student’s “comfort zone”,

the “outer limits” of the vast number of Internet resources in the “virtual classroom”

have the potential to extend the student’s capacity for learning (see Pratt 2004:

1742). Online communication is carried out mainly by means of texts, yet online

discussion forums can generate ideas (ideational) in the same way as face-to-face

oral discussion groups. The face-to-face communication of traditional instruction is

more immediate and personal, but there are actually many more interactive options

online. As the majority of these options involve reading and writing, academic

literacy can be fast-tracked, provided that the interactions are geared towards

academic purposes and not just recreational talk (see Pratt 2004: 1743; 2005: 96).

By “social”, Gutteridge means the social mores or conventions governing knowledge

construction: the Internet extends the scope of these from the parochial mores of

local college contexts to those of the global learning community. There are more

resources available via the Internet than in the physical classroom or library, and

thus more data in which ideational content can be generated (Shaughnessy 1977:

245). Finally, use of the Internet affords students a far wider range of reflexive input

(i.e. feedback on their academic performance), as not only local peers but also

external peers and international subject experts can be drawn into giving advice and

support. Blended learning can thus combine the best features of traditional

instruction with the enhancements offered by online resources, which are more cost-

effective, vast, flexible and ubiquitous than hard copy resources.

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2.3 E-learning genres available for tertiary instruction

According to Ennew and Fernandez-Young (2006) there are currently two main

options available:

1. a campus-based model, which views the online medium as a complement to

traditional delivery; and

2. a distance-based model, which views online learning as a substitute for

traditional forms of delivery.

Ennew and Fernandez-Young view the second as consisting of either blended

learning or entirely online delivery, and suggest that “blended models offer

considerable potential both on and off campus” (2006: 148). This is my own feeling,

from nearly ten years’ experience of offering blended learning courses for research

capacity building. What I am working towards, although I prefer blended approach,

is an online resource which will do both, in terms of accommodating both on-campus

and off-campus groups (i.e. not only our DUT staff and students who cannot make it

to workshops, but also overseas participants). I found working with Preggy Reddy’s

and Abdul Bhorat’s research projects - particularly the readings - helpful in jogging

me out of the “online course” (i.e. online courseware) mindset and clarifying for me

the advantages and disadvantages of the various genres. Some divisions may seem

artificial, and there are a lot of grey areas and overlaps. However, each genre has

specific implications for delivery, which is a good reason for viewing them as

separate entities.

This is how Abdul and I characterised them in a recent book chapter which we co-

authored (Bhorat and Pratt in press, slightly adapted):

Open educational resources (OERS) refer to resources freely available on

the Internet, usually provided by academics, with no attempt to curate,

organise or structure them. They were launched during the period 2000-2007

(Yuan and Powell 2013: 6)

Open courseware (OCW) refers to free and openly licensed college courses

available on the Internet, and may include course planning and assessment

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material (Downes 2007: 1-2). They were the precursors of MOOCs, which

were first introduced in 2011 (Yuan and Powell 2013: 6)

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) refer to online courses which are

usually generated by corporate educational providers in collaboration with

universities (Yuan and Powell 2013: 7-9).

Internet portals are gateways providing a single access to information which

is considered useful to groups of people (Eboueya and Uden 2007: 75), and

are usually dedicated to specific or specialist areas (Di Paola and Teall 2007:

1161). Examples of exemplary educational Internet portals which are

already well established are the Athabasca site (Siemens 2013) and the

Generic Learning Centre (Armitage and O’Leary 2003).

An overview of the main characteristics of OERs, OCW, MOOCs and Internet portals

is given in Table 2. It should be noted that “free” for use does not imply that there

are no constraints for the users besides cost. Rather than go over each genre, I will

attempt to clarify the main differences in terms of their implications for instructional

delivery (see Bhorat and Pratt in press or Bhorat 2014 for a more detailed account).

Table 2: Characteristics of OERs, OCW, MOOCs and Internet portals (in Bhorat and

Pratt in press, unpaged)

OERs OCW MOOCs Internet portals

COST OF PROVIDING

Provided free by academics at universities

Contributed by universities

Funded by corporations

Free/funded

COST OF ACCESS1

Free to all users Free to all users, with controlled access

Free to users except for HE certification

Usually freely accessed

PURPOSE Altruistic: to make knowledge available to all, particularly the marginalised

Altruistic: to give the whole world access to high quality college courses

To use e-learning instead of traditional delivery for college courses

To give access to aesthetic educational or research resources

SUPPORT Ad hoc volunteerism

Corporate or HE institutional support

Corporate/HE collaboration

Research institutes, libraries or

1 “Free” for use does not imply that there are no restrictions or obligations on the part of the user

besides cost.

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OERs OCW MOOCs Internet portals foundations

CURATED Not curated Set up in advance (regular updates)

Set up in advance (regular updates)

To suit purpose and users of collection

INSTRUCTOR Not provided Usually provided

Instruction built into the course

Not provided

USABILITY Patchy Consistency dependent on producers

Consistent Consistency dependent on producers

DESIGN Horizontal Vertical Vertical Vertical

OERs are intended to be freely-available resources, and represent an attempt by

academics to resist the commodification of knowledge (Blackler 1995: 1026;

Cohendet and Meyer-Krahmer 2001: 1563) and make it feely available to everyone,

not just students registered in formal degree courses, but citizens of the world

(particularly the poor and underprivileged) to support their attempts to improve the

quality of their lives through lifelong learning (Johnstone 2005: 14-16; Wilson 2008:

2-3). The problem is that the online resources are not necessarily organised per

subject or tuition schedule so as to make instructional sense, nor are they

necessarily graded to the levels which would make them accessible to all users.

Most seriously, they are not curated at regular intervals so as to be corrected,

improved or updated if/as necessary (Bhargava 2012; Hodgkinson-Williams et al.

2013).

OCW is equally altruistic, and probably better organised and more coherent than

OERs, in terms of being structured as course (or subject) units with some form of

syllabus and course of study. These are generally updated, and usually come with

instructors to encourage students, answer queries and monitor progress. Two main

problems: are they fit for purpose, and who pays for them? The more specific,

structured and organised a course is, the less likely it will cater for all tastes and

needs (the usability paradox, Krauss 2004). And, as for cost, Abdul and I were

somewhat taken aback by an email soliciting donations for MIT open courseware

(Sent: 12 May 2015 16:1 To: Abdool Haq Mahomed Bhorat Subject: Please help us

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win OCW’s Gift Challenge). This suggested that altruism, however laudable, is not

always sustainable in actual practice.

MOOCs have been terms “weapons of mass instruction”, and were clearly not

undertaken with altruism as the main end in view. Like all apparent “freebies”

offered online, they were geared to lure people into thinking they could have

something for nothing. However, when certification became an issue, it was

“payment up front”. Unlike OCR and OCW, MOOCs are about commodification of

knowledge, and corporations immediately latched on to this aspect. MOOCs are

reported to have a huge dropout rate (Lewin 2013; Stein 2013), and are said to be

highly unpopular with university staff (McCluskey and Winter 2013: 92). However, if

only a fraction of the students registered on a MOOC pass, it would be far more than

the numbers physical campus resources (including staff) could deal with. But this

displays a kind of depraved indifference to the wellbeing of one’s students, and the

universities running successful MOOCs have been quick to supplement “canned”

instruction with student orientation (on campus where possible), weekly webinars,

and sufficient instructors to make students feel looked after. So “blended MOOC

delivery”, as with the highly successful Sheffield MOOC (Clonan 2013; Sheffield

Newsletter 2013).

Internet portals occupy a curious position, in being a wider category than any of the

other options, and not necessarily dealing with education per se (but “specific or

specialist areas”, Di Paola and Teall 2007: 1161). They are more properly

repositories, usually curated. In the course of his doctoral research Abdul

discovered that his online Photography project actually merited the designation

“educational Internet portal”, which constituted a whole genre in itself, and this is how

I came to learn of the term. His Photography Portal is free, in the sense of his

having set it up himself with available resources, yet it is currently accessible only to

DUT staff and students (registered or at pre-registration stage). There are plans,

however, to make sections of it available to people worldwide who would like to learn

photographic techniques, either run as credit-bearing short courses or just for lifelong

learning (Bhorat 2014: 198). However, the problem of running studio work online

first has to be solved. How would a portal be different from a MOOC? MOOCs are

intended to be run entirely online (with varying degrees of offline support). The main

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benefits of the portal genre is that it is infinitely flexible as to use, in the same way

that notes, books, photos, films, tapes, CDROMs, demos, field trips, libraries and

museums can be used flexibly for learning purposes: in any way the lecturers and

students see fit to use them. Finally, in Abdul’s case, they are curated (and regularly

updated) to fit the DUT Photography Programme and are available online (unless

there is a power cut in the office in which the server is kept: thus Eskom - see 2015

“load shedding” schedule - makes fools of us all).

3. E-LEARNING GENRES FOR RESEARCH CAPACITY BUILDING

Since 2006 I have been using some (but not all) of the e-learning genres described

above for research capacity building. From this time I was employed full-time as

Research Co-ordinator in the Faculty of Arts and Design (FAD), and, after

retirement, part-time as a Research Professor with DUT Research and Postgraduate

Support. In each case my brief was to assist with research capacity building, first for

faculty members, later, for all DUT staff and students. As my passion was e-

learning, I tried out various blended delivery approaches. I had used WebCT4 (and

later, WebCT6) extensively for undergraduate instruction, and even to fast-track

routine matters in Faculty research administration (with my Arts and Design FRC

Online being the “stable companion” to Deputy Dean Prof Graham Stewart’s

impressive EXCO Portfolio). However, for postgrad courses I preferred to use

Moodle, as it obliged me get to grips with the administrative side of server-based

online courses, was easier for novices to use (little or no training was required), and

gave me much more control over my online courses and resources. Moodle could

also be used by staff and students in research projects in ways in which license

provisions prevented WebCT6 (later Blackboard) from being used. Finally I could

set up/delete/adjust/clone courses (as with users) to my heart’s content: I am a

control freak and perfectionist when it comes to designing and running online

courses, in case this is not already obvious.

3.1 E-learning options linked to university programmes

The following are the e-learning options which I pioneered at DUT (or collaborated

with in supervision, as in 3.2.2), and which were linked to honours or master’s

university programmes at DUT.

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3.1.1 Online courses linked to degree courses

These were my first attempts at courseware, but were not OCW, as they were for

fee-paying DUT students. The CALT Research Module, a mixed mode course

developed in my Pioneers 2002 induction to web-based learning, was designed to

prepare students for the CALT coursework master’s, which administrative hitches

prevented from running at DUT. However, it spawned many spin-offs which were

run at DUT, with the results being documented in various publications (see, for

exmple, Pratt and Peppas 2008). The BTech Research Module for Journalism (on

Moodle) was the most successful and long-running of these (BTech Research

Module for Journalism, Video Technology, and Translation and Interpreting Practice

[TIP]). The “BTech Research Modules” were stand-alone courses for specific

purposes, although the research processes described in them were generalised to

such a degree that they could be very easily be customised to fit any discipline. The

BTech Research Module was in fact a reusable learning object, as was Comm Skills

Online, an undergraduate English communication course on WebCT4.

3.1.2 Educational Internet portals

The Photography Portal, which Abdul Bhorat and I plan to use for research capacity

building with Photography staff and students, is an example of an educational

Internet portal for higher degree study. Abdul’s paper addresses this option in some

detail, so I will not pre-empt this discussion here (see Bhorat’s “A curated multimedia

educational portal for staff and the Net Generation Photography students at DUT”).

However, a point I would like to stress is the flexibility of Abdul’s portal, which can be

used in any way which works, or not at all, for that matter. Staff members and

students who are reluctant to use e-learning can continue to use print resources if

they so choose because there is very little in the way of the online instructional

resources which could not be replicated (at greater time and cost, that is) offline: the

portal resources are just vaster, more easily accessible, and of better quality

(particularly in terms of photographic digital techniques, which lend themselves to

online displays in ways which are not possible in books. Lecturers who are

confirmed Luddites (see Lam 2000) or just more comfortable with face-to-face

interaction, which is actually necessary for “Net Gen” learners (Oblinger and

Oblinger 2005), can take a break while the “class nerd” demonstrates on data

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projector (or in a lab) the digital effects displayed on the portal website. Then the

class can go to the library - or preferred learning spaces - and view the rest in their

own time. The portal is not a course, which has to be followed in strict sequence: it

is a resource. But unlike books, films, photos, notes and commercial courseware

saved in disk, it can be updated, augmented, narrowed down or changed at will: to

this extent, it is a far superior resource that that offered by a course text book,

although books (and now e-books) have their place in the scheme of things.

Unfortunately for the book lover, most cutting-edge digital photography techniques

are found online, on blogs or webpages.

3.2 Open e-learning options used for research capacity building

The following are the open e-learning options which I used/am using for research

capacity building as part of both my supervision and research workshop facilitation. I

have also cloned one of these (the Higher Degrees Research Module) to assist

colleagues with supervision.

3.2.1 OCW

The Higher Degrees Research Module is not really a course: it is an exemplar,

developed and extended out of the CALT Research Module, which models the

research processes needed to complete a master’s or doctorate, and leads the user

in flexible, recursive stages through the path of writing a proposal, carrying out the

empirical work and writing up the thesis. It, with all its resources, is freely available

online, although would-be users must be registered to take part in forum discussions.

Why would I give away over 40 years’ work on teaching/learning and research

experience? I want my own students to have a resource such that they do not have

to ask the same questions every step of the way through a degree. I would also like

to attract good students, and this is one way of doing it. Perhaps I just like showing

off and would like a wider audience. But then, my brief is research capacity building,

and the Higher Degrees Research Module is an example of open courseware used

for this purpose, so I am happy to have it on open display as an example of what I

do.

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3.2.2 OERs

Research Matters was my next foray into using e-learning for research capacity

building. It is an open educational resource which I built up gradually on semi-

retirement in 2011, when I started facilitating research workshops for the Research

and Postgraduate Support Directorate (I also edit the higher degree forms, supervise

higher degree students, and - try to – publish, with constant interruptions). The first

workshops we ran had massive attendance and were really top-down talks, with little

opportunity for group interaction. I therefore punted the idea of dividing up the

workshop topics into smaller units, and running workshops every Friday, so that staff

and students could select and attend only those which were relevant to their needs

(see Pratt 2013: 856). To demonstrate how this might work, myself I ran 27 mixed

mode workshops in 2012, with much smaller groups, and in a computer lab venue,

so that attendees could access online resources, including discussion forums. This

put less stress on me as presenter, offered attendees more opportunity to interact

with each other and with me, and meant they could continue to access workshop

resources after the workshop was over. How can you have all the workshop

resources (including the PowerPoint slides) online and expect staff and students to

attend? Well, the whole point of blended learning is that the live interaction - the

immediacy of an actual person - makes workshop attendees feel that you actually

care (which I do); it adds a warmth and connection that even the very best training

videos lack; and a flexibility of operation in accommodating participant needs, which

cannot always be pre-empted and “canned”. However, if staff and students choose

not to attend but to use the resources online only, well, that would work for me.

The resources uploaded on Research Matters were structured chronologically per

workshop. However, when workshops on the same topic were repeated in

successive years, but not necessarily in the same 27 week sequence (some of my

topics were “farmed out” to other experts), this caused problems. Firstly, I wanted to

update resources (i.e. to suit any change in purpose and/or audience), but not

necessarily change or remove previous topic sections, so the resources built up in

train carriage fashion. (i.e. without curation or updating/removing older sections).

Next, the attendees did not build up expertise in using Research Matters, as my

workshops (now 6-8 per year) were not run in continuous sequence, as initially (not a

huge problem, but a nuisance, nevertheless). The question was whether to revamp

16

Research Matters or replace it, and as a result of the intense reading on e-learning

genres which my higher degree supervision had prompted, I decided to design, set

up and run a MOOC after the Stanford University style, that is, with more offline

support and facilitation (i.e. it would have un-MOOC-like attributes).

Figure 1: Research Matters home page

3.2.3 MOOC

The Research MOOC grew out of my discontent with Research Matters, which (to

me) seemed to be growing in “vegetable” mode. I did not want to curate the

resources on Research Matters, which seemed the obvious solution, as it would

probably have resulted in fewer, larger sections. What I wanted to do was

streamline the whole thing and make it more interactive (i.e. the online aspect). I

wanted staff and students (many who were not yet registered) to have an online

experience which would not necessarily replicate my workshop, but would serve as a

kind of proxy experience, within given constraints (i.e. not only budgetary, but also

what can reasonably be achieved on a computer or mobile with Internet access). I

17

therefore looked at what I had achieved in previous e-learning projects. I had set

online the following: notes, learning schedules, slide shows, hyperlinks (to texts or

videos), quizzes and discussion forums (general and dedicated to various topics).

Some of these resources were already available (and had been tested out) on

Research Matters and the Higher Degrees Research Module: either links could be

provided to existing resources, or the resources could be modified or updated to suit

their new context, audience and purpose and reloaded on to the Research MOOC in

a slightly different configuration (i.e. per subject matter rather than per workshop).

This meant rethinking the structure of the new course, and, in the process,

interrogating the whole concept of what was involved in learning research processes,

yet again from a slightly different angle. It is the “re-thinking” of concepts and

processes which makes e-learning potentially so valuable to the educator-

practitioner, as you have to keep asking yourself: “Why am I doing it this way?”,

“What is it that I want them to do?” and “How it is going to help them to learn

something - anything?” Finally, what makes e-learning courses work is not the

novelty of the technology - or media - per se, but the commitment to teaching and

learning, the quality of the resources, and the richness of conceptual thinking

underpinning both.

4. THE RESEARCH MOOC

The proposed Research MOOC, being more like an online course, would need to

have more explanatory features, which (I hoped) meant less in the way of induction

for attendees using it at workshops. Staff and students who could not attend the

workshops in person could still experience them in online delivery on the MOOC,

and, more importantly, could access resources, advice and feedback when/as

needed, and not just when workshops were scheduled. However, I had hoped that

feedback from “live” workshop attendees might help me iron out any problems which

both actual and virtual work-shoppers might experience when using the MOOC.

This meant that, in the instructional design (of the Research MOOC), I had to look

more carefully in advance as to what I hoped to achieve both in the blended delivery

workshops and in entirely online delivery as a “true MOOC”. I needed it to serve the

purposes of both random selection (for researchers looking for insights into a

18

particular process) and a sequenced delivery of research resources (so as to make

sense of overall research processes, but in a different way from the Higher Degrees

Research Module. And, as I believe that research processes are inextricably

interlinked and intertwined, this needed to be represented on the MOOC. As I had

already adopted this approach in my research workshop slides, I had a strategy

which I could apply in the MOOC, that of the symbolism in the “knowledge cycle”, a

kind of logo-cum-rubric which I had created to introduce my research workshops, in

order to show how reading/writing/researching are all inter-related (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: The knowledge cycle

Thus workshops were not so much on topics or skills presented as if they were

discrete, unconnected skills or entities (e.g. “Writing a proposal”, “The Literature

Review”, “Research Methodology”) but on the ways in which various activities

combined to carry out research activities, including writing a thesis. The knowledge

cycle was also intended to show work-shoppers that research is not just a solitary

form of torture (as most of us have experienced it) but part of the social process of

adding to the body of human knowledge. Research Matters, like the Photography

19

Portal, was designed as a resource meant to serve a course (workshop or

academic), and not as a course per se. The Research MOOC is both a resource

and a course (of sorts). It combines what worked well in my courseware (open and

private), Internet portals and OERs. But it is now geared towards either supporting

my (live) research workshop programme (i.e. as online resource for blended

delivery) or replacing it (i.e. as online workshop course). It is “work in progress”,

and I am still trying out various structuring and content options.

Figure 2: The Research MOOC home page

For now, this is the current structure and content. The home page (see Figure 2)

has a short introductory message, with the “knowledge cycle” image (with link to a

short note, “File 1”) placed immediately beneath. The various sections follow in

separate Moodle topic boxes (see Figure 3), almost in the fashion of a “help” menu

20

(i.e. “how to...”). The idea is to demystify research (as in the BTech Research

Module) by showing is as a series of “do-able” processes, all interlinked, but with a

specific focus and purpose. Currently only those options I have worked out in this

year’s Research Workshop Programme have been uploaded in the Research

MOOC, so the current order (i.e. in Figure 3) is not necessarily the final order in

which the MOOC contents will unfold (please be patient….)

Figure 3: Examples of topic sections in the Research MOOC

In each topic module, the following content/structure has been used, with slight

variations, depending on the topic (an example is given in Figure 4):

an MP4 file of a voice-over PowerPoint workshop presentation (two files, if the

presentation is long);

a pdf file of the PowerPoint workshop presentation (as a text download);

21

a self-test on the presentation content on an automatically graded Moodle

quiz;

an assignment geared (where possible) to the user’s research project (see

Figure 5 for an example);

a discussion forum dedicated to the topic in that topic module;

any additional resources on the topic, usually in the form of hyperlinks to

notes or YouTube videos.

Figure 4: Content and structure of a typical topic module in the Research MOOC

22

All of the above course tools had been used in various combinations on my previous

e-learning courses, with the exception of the MP4 files. These I experimented with

myself, producing them on Office 2013 PowerPoint with voiceover, saving to MP4

and using Handbrake to reduce the file size. I hoped that my voice, however

“croaky”, would to some extent give the MOOC resources a more personal

“presence” and a more “immediate” flavour. I used the same PowerPoint slides I

had used before in workshops, with slight adaptations: not just for updates and

corrections, but to accommodate the addition of voice commentary.

Figure 5: Example of an assignment geared to participants’ research

All of the resources were - and still are - being curated to fit what I have found to

work while supervising my own students as well as designing and facilitating

research workshops. Most of our students and many staff are second or third

language speakers of English, which is why I have used low-key headings, such as

“How to do research reading”. The main advantage of the Research MOOC, as with

Abdul’s Photography Portal, is its flexibility. It can be used to provide the following,

amongst others:

23

online pre-study or follow-up exercises for workshops in traditional face-to-

face-delivery;

complementary resources (including activities) for workshops in blended

delivery;

entirely online workshops on various research topics;

an online distance research capacity building course (when the module

sections are finished, that is);

online resources/tutorials for my (and/or other supervisors’) masters and

doctoral students.

Will instruction or instructional support work on the Research MOOC work? I cannot

tell: I myself still have to adapt to using it, after becoming used to working with the

resources on Research Matters (I keep looking for things in the wrong place).

Research Matters and the Higher Degrees Research Module have not fallen away,

as I can put hyperlinks from the Research MOOC to resources on earlier

repositories/courses. The beauty of setting tasks on discussion forum messages is

that the facilitator can very quickly engineer a whole new experience for work-

shoppers by the selections of hyperlinked resources s/he provides. Thus “old”

resources can become learning objects for re-use in different permutations in

different learning contexts.

5. E-LEARNING INNOVATION AS PART OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

I mentioned in the Introduction that the research approach to e-learning innovation

adopted here is critical realist, and views enhancements to learning through

information and computer technology (ICT) as part of evolutionary social

development (Aunger 2010: 763), and not just acquisition of more technologically

advanced electronic gadgets. Critical realism is a meta-view which does not exclude

(or necessarily offer judgements on) various teaching/learning paradigms or

approaches being used within it. Its main tenet in this respect is that knowledge

(although part of reality in the sense that we experience it) cannot be conflated with

reality (Bhaskar 2008: xvi). This is why I would prefer to evaluate instructional

effectiveness on the basis of “Does it achieve what it sets out to achieve”? rather

than on the teaching/learning approach used. I think that the account given here

does speak to the notion that we are dealing, not with a specific educational

24

paradigm, but with socially-accepted best learning and research capacity building

practices, transformed into virtual mode so as to support and possibly (eventually)

replace much of what is done in actual mode. The point is not which principles

should inform our teaching and learning practices, but to be clear about what they

are and to keep checking whether they are seen to work for both educators and

learners. The Research MOOC is only as good as my experience of supervision and

instructional practice can make it. Staff and students (not just at DUT, but anywhere)

are more likely to use it if it addresses their needs and fits in with their idea of what

type of research capacity building would address these needs.

While I have earlier stressed the convenience, vastness and cost effectiveness of

using Internet resources in higher degree education, the transformation of instruction

through ICT is not about “bigger, better cheaper” resources. It is a transformation of

the social structure (Pratt 2014), that network of relationships which cocoons,

constrains and shapes us, and eventually is shaped by us (i.e. for future

generations). It is not about computers, tablets, phablets, iphones and the Internet

being part of the social structure: it is about the role they play in that social structure,

a role previously played “offline” by books, notes, microfiche, films and recordings

(tape or disc), right back to the first dent in the clay or chip in the stone. My point is

that it is not about what the medium is, but what it does, and whether it does it well.

Therefore, while the integration of ICT into programme design, whether using OCW,

OERs, Internet portals or MOOCs, in my opinion does have the potential to

transform the system of relationships involved in research capacity building, we need

to be careful that it enhances this system rather than seeding it with seasonal

gimmicks. Baggaley’s warning has reference:

The MOOC is a prime example of the rapid adoption of new technologies described by the Gartner Hype model (Daniel, 2013). At present, MOOCs sit at the Hype Cycle’s “peak of inflated expectations” (p. 2), and the coming months will reveal whether or not they now join educational cloud computing and virtual worlds in the “trough of disillusionment” (p. 4) (2014: 128).

However, while I had great reservations about MOOCs from the first - mainly

negative - impressions given in the literature, I have persevered in attempting to

25

transform the genre for my purposes by using what I have learned about best e-

learning and blended learning practice.

5. CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I need to point out that my Moodle practice is supported by hobbyists,

that is, by friends and fellow enthusiasts. The servers I use were purchased with my

ad hoc publications funding, and the “back door” administration is carried out mostly

free by colleagues. My research capacity building courses, as well as the concept of

a “raps” server (i.e. for Research and Postgraduate Support) are projects which fall

within the ambit of the Research and Postgraduate Support Directorate. The

Research MOOC has been set up online, and is to be piloted in 2015 in six research

capacity building workshops, providing some feedback as to its effectiveness as a

distance option for a multi-campus university. However, only two topic modules

have been uploaded on to the Research MOOC at the time of writing this paper, as

there is much “hidden labour” involved in their preparation. I had hoped to gain

feedback on these modules for this paper from participants in the two Research

workshops which I ran in the first semester 2015. However, power cuts put paid to

Internet use during the workshop on Research Reading Skills Part 1, and a massive

drop in Internet access in the computer laboratory we were using transformed

Research Reading Skills Part 2 into a delightful live workshop presentation with

discussion (with a small workshop group, probably thinned out by the previous

session’s debacle). Of course, the one participant who had brought a tablet could

still access the MOOC, but wifi cut out when she moved closer to take part in the live

discussion…

For those readers who would like to view the Research MOOC first hand (if the

power is on in my office), it can be accessed at the following address:

http://dutmoodle.dut.ac.za/moodle/course/view.php?id=323

If readers would like to access the self-tests and assignments, please see the

posting “Register on the Research MOOC” in the News forum and follow the

directions. All feedback is welcome!

26

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