This document summarizes a workshop on MOOCs in Africa. It provides an introduction and discusses participants' countries and institutions. It then examines MOOC formats, participant numbers, motivations, assessments, costs, and lecturer roles. Several MOOC categories are proposed based on purpose and level. Practical considerations like time, resources, and risks are covered. The document aims to understand developing country contexts and how MOOCs could be used or adapted while encouraging developing world voices in MOOC debates.

1. DEVELOPING
WORLD MOOCS:
A WORKSHOP ON MOOCS IN
AFRICA
EMERGE AFRICA
ANDREW DEACON, JANET SMALL, SUKAINA WALJI
18 June 2014

2. Introduction

3. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Belgium
Cameroon
Germany
Kenya
Poland
Rwanda
United States/Ethiopia
Swaziland
Tanzania
Nigeria
Uganda
USA
United Kingdom
Zimbabwe
South Africa
Participants from Countries
Where are we from…
Online courses at your
institution
yes potential
yes
established
none

4. 0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
None Blended Fully online Blended, Fully
online
Flexible courses formats offered by MOOCs
taken
No
Yes, one
Yes, many

6. MOOCs- open & online
Online courses
Open content MOOC

7. Online Course MOOC
Numbers: Participant numbers capped
by facilitation and assessment
resourcing
MOOCs have attracted 10 000s by having
almost no individual support
Motivation: Participants earn a
qualification
Participants selectively take what interests
them from a MOOC
Participants: Often have similar
backgrounds
Often very diverse backgrounds
Assessment: Meets accreditation
standards
Assessment standards less rigorous and
not accredited
Cost: Pay to join course Participants access the course for free,
paying for internet connection and
optionally certificates
Lecturer: Responsible for teaching a
curriculum aligned to a qualification
and providing support
Lecturer’s role is more limited and excludes
individual support

8. MOOCs didn’t just appear….
Image – Giulia Forsythe

9. 2000 - 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Open
education
Online
distance
learning
Open
education
resources
Open
conten
t
Connectivist
MOOC
(cMOOCs)
iTunes U,
Khan
Academy
Open source
software
Learning
management
systems
MIT – Open
Courseware
Consortium
Open
University -
OpenLearn
Stanford
xMOOCs
Udacity
Coursera
MITx edX
FutureLearn
NovoEd
OpenUp
Ed
Open to Study
Open
Universities
Australia
Directly related An influence
Learnin
g
objects
Open Textbooks
Adapted by Hodgkinson-Williams 2014 from UNESCO
Cape Town OE
Declaration
Paris OER
Declaration

10. April 2012
http://edutechnica.com/moocmap

11. October 2012
http://edutechnica.com/moocmap

12. April 2013
http://edutechnica.com/moocmap

13. October 2013
http://edutechnica.com/moocmap

14. Participants

15. = 2522

17. Mapping the landscape

19. e.g Global Citizenship
e.g Write Science
courses
e.g. Short corporate
courses via private
provider
e.g. most degrees

20. Showcase teaching
and introduce topics with
high-profile ‘rockstar’
presenters
Introduce fields and
support students in
undergraduate
study
Develop skills and
introduce topics for
postgraduate
study.
Showcase research
and special interest
topics of interest to
postgraduate level
Showcase professional
careers for continuing
education and qualifications

21. Category 1 Teaching showcase
General
interest high
profile course
Showcases the
institution by
means of an
engaging
subject or
personality led.
Global interest
and matches a
popular
understanding
of high profile
MOOCs
 n
High production costs | high enrollment | loose curriculum ties
May attract external funding

22. Category 1 Teaching showcase
General
interest high
profile course
Showcases the
institution by
means of an
engaging
subject or
personality led.
Global interest
and matches a
popular
understanding
of high profile
MOOCs
 n
High production costs | high enrollment | loose curriculum ties
May attract external funding

23. Category 2 Gateway skills
Provides
foundational,
bridging or
enhancement
skills for pre HE
entry or during
undergraduate
pathways
towards
specialisation.
Could replace
teaching for
'bottleneck
courses.’
Local interest,
either within the
institution or at a
country-wide
setting.
Moderate production costs | low enrollment | close curriculum ties
May attract external funding |

24. Category 3 Graduate literacies
Post-
graduate
level courses
to support
application or
programmes
of study
Focussed on
building
postgraduate
literacies.
Likely to be
of local or
national
interest.
Moderate production costs | low enrollment | close curriculum ties
May attract external funding

25. Category 4 Professional showcase
Geared towards
vocational skills
development,
re-tooling and
professional
development.
Could be offered
in conjunction
with professional
bodies.
Likely to be of
local interest,
although some
specialised
topics may be
globally
relevant. .
Moderate to high production costs |medium to high enrollment
Close curriculum ties |May attract organisational funding
High potential for pathway to credit or revenue generation

26. Category 5 Research showcase
Showcase
research or
more
specialised
topics of
interest
Offered at
postgraduate
level and
assume some
background in
the topicstill
geared towards
general or
leisure
learning.
Likely to have
global appeal.
Moderate/high production costs | medium/high enrollment
Loose curriculum ties

27. Category 5 Research showcase
Showcase
research or
more
specialised
topics of
interest
Offered at
postgraduate
level and
assume some
background in
the topicstill
geared towards
general or
leisure
learning.
Likely to have
global appeal.
Moderate/high production costs | medium/high enrollment
Loose curriculum ties

29. Course offered simultaneously as a formal
and as a open course.
Small private open course nested inside a
MOOC
Massive Online Course: formal course
inspired by MOOC pedagogy
Students in a course taking a MOOC with
added local support and additional material
Massive Open Online Course
Formal course with lectures and
support.

30. Wrapped MOOCs at UCT
Time Topic
Group meets every -Monday for 5
weeks
Critical Thinking in Global Challenges
https://www.coursera.org/course/criticalthinking
Group meets every -Thursday for
5 weeks
Principles of Written English
https://www.edx.org/course/uc-berkeleyx/uc-berkeleyx-colwri2-
2x-principles-1348
Group meets every -Monday for 6
weeks
Understanding Research: An Overview for Health Professionals
https://www.coursera.org/course/researchforhealth
Group meets every second
Wednesday for 5 weeks
Model Thinking
https://www.coursera.org/course/modelthinking
Group meets every Monday for 6
weeks
Design and Interpretation of Clinical Trials
https://www.coursera.org/course/clintrials
Group meets every Wednesday
for 10 weeks
Data Analysis and Statistical Inference
https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics
Group meets every Thursday for
6
University Teaching 101 *NEW*
https://www.coursera.org/course/univteaching101

32. Practicalities

33. Imagining MOOCs
The six ‘P’s approach:
 purpose
 possibilities
 pedagogy
 platforms & partners
 provisioning
 process to roll out

34. Purpose
 Broad institutional goals
Using the MOOC categories
 Department / faculty goals
 Individual goals

35. Possibilities
 Having decided on audience, purpose and
category - what are the possible topics?
Make a proposal for an actual MOOC (or
variant) – develop a concept

36. Pedagogy
 How you want your MOOC to be taught
online? (which will depend on your target
audience, course purpose and expected
learning outcomes, as well as costs and
possibly platform affordances)

37. Platform and Partners
 Which platform partner will suit your MOOC
and work best for your institution?
 Other stakeholders and funders

38. Provisioning
 Two levels:
 1. Institutional - applies to all Massive Online
courses.
 2. Course level – applies to each course

39. Process & roll-out
 identifying an academic or team of academics willing
to devote the necessary time to the project
 constituting a course development team (online
learning designers, academics & student assistants
from department who will be offering course)
 initiate course design
 course production schedule
 test materials
 launch course
 Running/supporting/monitoring
 Evaluation

40. What to expect
 The key themes:
- sheer workload involved in planning and
developing the content,
- the resources required for video production on
top of the individuals’ ‘regular’ jobs.
- Creating effective strategies to manage the large
number of participants in the MOOC forums was
also reported as a challenge.
University of London 2013 report on MOOCs

41. Considerations - opportunities
 Reaching huge numbers of students
 Reaching a much broader range of students
 Bringing expertise from the student
community into the learning environment
 Learning from the experience of experimenting
with different activities and online formats

42. Consideration - time
 Every account from university MOOC-makers
indicates a considerable investment of time –
usually more than expected in the production
of the MOOC
 The time spent on the delivery and
management of the MOOC for the first time
was also high.
 Subsequent offerings of the same MOOC were
less demanding of time.

43. Considerations - risks
• adherence with copyright laws for use of all images, figures, journal
articles, etc.;
• licensing agreements for any software that is used by course-
takers;
• export control over any software or other technology that course-
takers might have access to;
• complaints or suits from course-takers who experience damages to
their computers as a result of downloading course software;
• accessibility issues (e.g., closed captioning, translation); and
• culturally-related concerns about course content (e.g., sexual,
religious, or politically-related language or images). (Univeristy of Illinois
2013 (p 16)

44. What we’re hoping for in this two week
workshop?
 Your ideas and perspectives
 A better understanding of other developing
country contexts and how MOOCs could be
used
 Your insights to how MOOCs and their variants
can and are being used
 Encourage the voices of developing world
educators in the debates on MOOCs

45. What’s next? This week
 Read the paper & engage in the first
discussion: How might institutions in Africa
respond to MOOCs?
 Look over the some of the other resources &
engage in the second discussion forum:
Should African institutions engage with
MOOCs, and if so how?
 Third discussion forum: Do MOOCs bolster
Western higher-education hegemony?

46. Questions arising from paper
1. How do you imagine your institution or department
might respond to or engage with MOOCs?
2. How do the MOOC categories we outline resonate
with your institutional or departmental priorities?
3. Have you ever experimented with MOOCs within your
institution? If so, in what ways? and how has that
worked? How did your students respond and relate to
the material and presentations?
4. Have you consider using MOOCs in a wrapped or
distributed flipped format? If so, how?

47. What’s next - week two activity
1. Can you develop the landscape of higher
education provision we have presented and and
customise it to your own context? Can you
recognise what is happening in the formal, semi-
formal and non-formal domains in your institution?
2. Can you suggest some additional categories of
MOOCs we haven’t considered that might be
appropriate to your context? What criteria might
your institution or department use to determine what
category of MOOCs

48. Reading list
1. Our Paper on Developing World MOOCs: a curriculum perspective (in press).
Available at Google Drive or on Emerge Africa site:
http://bit.ly/1nj7WWP
2. General reading list: presentations and reports about MOOCs
 Presentations from The MOOCs4D International Invitational
 Yuan, L., Powell, S. & Olivier, B, Beyond MOOCs: Sustainable online learning in institutions.
 Stanford Online - Review of 2013: Harnessing New Technologies and Methods to Advance Teaching and
Learning at Stanford and Beyond
 African Higher Education and Research Space (AHERS)
3. Blogs, articles and opinion perspectives
 On MOOCs as neocolonialism
 On developing country perspective
 On cultural barriers in the design of MOOCs
 On the potential to improve access to higher education
Reading list at:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16M-dpcK0Ws8v2QtQRvbgNfIXz0dgfZEMmCJ4r9ZWGkE/edit
Please add resources and readings you have found!

49. Contact
 Andrew.Deacon@uct.ac.za
 Janet.Small@uct.ac.za
 Sukaina.Walji@uct.ac.za
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
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