No quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without full acknowledgment of the source. The importance of the study was evident during the closure of higher education, when access to educational resources became crucial in the distance and online form of teaching.
Research Background and Problem Statement
In the current context, the value of MOOCs provides an important opportunity to rethink their use. This will briefly unpack the importance of MOOCs in the current Covid-19 climate where online learning has come under the spotlight.
South African Higher Education Context
4 the research does not claim that MOOCs made in the Global North are being dumped on young people from poor areas as a form of charity. In 2015/16, during the FMF student protests, the first MOOCs were created in South African universities.
Youth unemployment
Even when young people from marginalized backgrounds manage to enter a HEI and graduate, finding employment is not guaranteed. The research is not arguing that issues of access to HE or unemployment will be solved by offering MOOCs to this group.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution and impact on Higher Education
It sees young people from these communities as having their own agency, aspirations and desires to lift themselves out of poverty. The research agrees with Merrington (2017) that even if youth from poor households overcome these challenges and graduate from higher education, finding employment can be a challenge.
Positionality of the researcher
Research Aims
Research Objectives
Permissibility refers to “perceived and actual properties of a thing, especially those fundamental properties that determine how the thing might be used” (Bower, 2008, p. 5, citing Norman, 1998). In LoP, "boundaries contain the potential for unexpected learning, and boundary crossing is necessary to live in the landscape of practice" (p. 18). Research sites can be described as fringes, "places where extreme people live differently, think differently, and spend differently" (p. 32).
Many people do not have internet at home, which is a big problem. The findings of the introductory course students revealed their digital exclusion due to their context. The success of the wrapped MOOCs has been attributed to the interaction of peers in the class. 2018) 'The role of microorganisms in achieving the sustainable development goals', Journal of Cleaner Production, 182(June), pp.
Wrapped MOOCs are an attempt to provide this sense of community, with this in mind - the questions will include issues of community and belonging.
Significance of the study
Thesis outline
The literature and definition of packaged MOOCs are reviewed, highlighting how previous research in the Global South has approached this. It starts with an analysis of the demographic data of the participants who participated in the two completed MOOCs.
The kind of knowledge that MOOCs convey is particularly criticized in the Global South. By applying this theory to young people from marginalized groups. the acknowledgment of their history, life experiences, upbringing and access to basic education implies that they are passive learners waiting for MOOCs or packed MOOCs to give them knowledge.
Becoming and Belonging in Landscapes of Practice ................................................... 4 1
34;The landscape shapes our experience of ourselves and thus contributes to our identity" (Wenger-Trayner et al., 2015). The landscape is therefore diverse and "the boundaries of practice are inevitable, not formally marked, but unambiguous" (Wenger-Trayner et al. ., 2015, p. 17).
Boundary object s and the role of b rokers
Validity is defined by Saunders et al. 2009) as "the extent to which data collection methods accurately measure what they were intended to measure and the extent to which research findings are actually about what they purport to be" (p. 603). The codes at the end of the diagram are the features found in the wrapped MOOC.
Summary
Methodology
Introduction
This chapter describes the methodological choices of the research and explains how they guide the analysis chapters. In the following chapters, this positionality is discussed together with the research findings to enable 'deep theorising' (Lillis, 2008). The chapter concludes with how the research was validated and the limitations of the process.
Research Methodology: Qualitative case study
The research uses a case study methodology and uses ethnographic methods to explore the packaged MOOC as a boundary object. The researcher has chosen the case study methodology because it allows for the exploration of a bounded context phenomenon, a 'case'. The researcher also chose the case study methodology because it “recognizes the importance of the subjective human creation of meaning, within limited objectivity” (Baxter.
Research Sites
This practice of taking the MOOC every week in the computer lab became part of the experience. The researcher's insider knowledge made her the master for the wrapping of the Writing MOOC in the 2019 cohort. Decide on which resources or aspects of the MOOC to use in the blended courses.
The Ethnographic approach
Positionality
However, the researcher was only involved in the production of the Writing MOOC and partially involved in the Changemaker MOOC. In both cases, however, the researcher was not part of the learning design process or the pedagogical methods. Nor was she involved in either of the two MOOCs' development processes.
Reflexivity
Participants, sample size and selection
The 2018 GLA program was contacted by the RLabs facilitators and asked if they were willing to participate in the data collection process. The GLA program only accepts unemployed young people who do not have access to higher education institutions and come from the surrounding areas. Two of the interviewees were employed after the GLA training, as they had completed their training the previous year.
Data collection
- Focus group and evaluation survey
In the case of the Writing Wrapped MOOC, the educators sent an email to the 2018 cohort asking that students contact the researcher to participate in the data collection process. A “clear statement of purpose” (Saunders et al., 2009, p.173) of the research was explained to the cohort of 2018 Introductory semester students with the request that they contact the researcher if they are willing to participate in the study take. All the students from both case studies did not know the researcher's role as part of the production of MOOCs and only perceived her identity as that of a researcher.
Data coding
- Data analysis with Landscapes of Practice
- Analytical framework
As mentioned, one of the critical differences between CoP and LoP is the concept of knowledge, explained as knowledge of a subject and of a person's "relationships to a diversity of practices across the landscape" (Wenger-Trayner et al., 2015, p 13. The analysis regarding the two packaged MOOCs case studies would involve looking at how the packaging process facilitated adaptation to the rules of the platform to allow students to engage with the content of the MOOC and imagine themselves in the landscape. to understand who they is (p.21). The data can also be analyzed to argue that wrapping or repurposing the MOOC into a boundary object creates an opportunity to reformulate the political inequalities and the epistemological flatness of the practices (Wenger-Trayner et al. , 2015) .
Reflexivity
The argument for finding boundary subject characteristics in a wrapped MOOC will allow the research to be replicated for government youth programs, non-profit organizations and tertiary institutions to demonstrate how to use MOOCs as low-cost free online resources. The separation of roles was facilitated by the fact that the participants were students and not MOOC educators.
Ethical considerations
- Consent
- Validity and Reliability
- Transparency
- Triangulation
Excerpts from the course evaluation report are in Appendix D, the focus group excerpts in Appendix C. Excerpts from the focus group and student evaluation report are in and codes are in Appendices C and D. A focus group from the wrapped Writing MOOC was not possible as students from the university were on vacation during the data collection time frame .
Limitations of the research
RLabs, where nine participants participated in a discussion about the experience of a MOOC wrapped in Changemaker. However, interviews, secondary data from the student survey, notes, and online forums on Coursera platforms combined to create multiple sources of information to confirm hunches, identity patterns, and make findings more accurate and reliable.
Summary
Some students spoke to and appreciated the teachers in the MOOCs who were familiar and understood their context. For some students in the introductory course, using English as the primary language made accessing the content challenging. In the case of the university students, the brokers were the teachers of the Writing MOOC and the learning designer associated with the MOOC.
Research Findings
Purpose of the Research
RQ2: To what extent can a packaged MOOC provide social and epistemological access to higher education in South Africa. It begins with an overview of the demographics of the participants who are students who participated in a packaged MOOC. The findings were organized into coded themes, using the analytical framework described in Chapter 3.
Participants
It is also in line with the social learning theory approach, specifically in relation to Wenger-Trayner et al. 2015) point out that learning is socially situated, a process of identity formation in a lived experience of the world, where the knowledge is embedded in different social contexts (p. 9). The research also finds echo in the social learning theorists such as Wenger-Trayner et al. 2015) acknowledging the life experience, knowledge and context of the students who apply the content of the packaged MOOC rather than acquire the knowledge passively. Alignment emerged from the codes as students referred to their impression of a packaged MOOC and how they negotiated the rigidity of the MOOC platform to handle the content.
Students impressions of MOOCs
- Rigidity of the MOOC platform
- Feeling excluded, lost, digitally excluded
Rigidity of the online platform would be related to the concept of scope of Wenger-Trayner et al. (2015) (p. 21). It was evident from the findings that the reasons for feeling lost were due to the lack of opportunities and career orientation at school. Three out of five RLabs students attributed feelings of being lost or lacking direction as the reason they enrolled in the GLA program.
Students impressions of wrapped MOOCs
- Flexible structure
- More accessible content
- Promoting Engagement
- Feelings of Inclusion .................................................................................................. 9 6
- Providing brokers
- Adaptability to extend the relevance and provide epistemological access .............. . ...... 11 4
- Foregrounding identity and reflexivity ....................................................................... 11 7
- Enabling new forms of peer engagement ................................................................... 12 0
The Writing MOOC educators also insisted on using animated characters in the MOOC that were characters or had similar identities. But taking the MOOC offline means losing the functionality of the platform that will have to be incorporated into classroom activities. In the case of the wraparound writing MOOC, it could have provided a smoother wraparound experience for educators and students.
In the case of the university students, they experienced learning from the African continent about migration, identity and mobility. This reflexive process is crucial in the global Southern context to address issues of coloniality and content localization in the packaged MOOC.
