Presentation by Gabi Witthaus and Marwa Belghazi at MOONLITE workshop: Reaching out - Open Digital Learning for Disadvantaged Communities, University of Wolverhampton, 27 March 2019

1. Towards a Thirdspace:
Designing an inclusive open
online learning ecosystem
Gabi Witthaus and Marwa Belghazi
Reaching Out - Open Digital Learning for Disadvantaged Communities:
a MOONLITE workshop in Wolverhampton, 27 March 2019

2. Declaration of intent
Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Why do we do what we do?
What brought us together?
What brought us here?
Image by Maarten Takens on Flickr, CC-BY-SA: https://www.flickr.com/photos/takens/5638982572

3. Overview
Methodology
Displaced people in the whole learning design
cycle
Breaking “Us” and “Them”
Buffer zones, bridges and boundaries
ThirdSpaces
Speed-dating for academics and practitioners
Image by Wojtek Gurak on Flickr, CC-BY-NC:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wojtekgurak/45117005394

4. Methodology - what we asked the MOOC designers
1. In what ways did you incorporate the experiences or voices of refugees/asylum seekers in the design
of your MOOC?
2. What worked well about the process you described in question 1?
3. What would you do differently next time?
4. What advice would you give to other educators who are considering creating a MOOC with and for
refugees?
Link to summary: https://tinyurl.com/moocdesign4refugees

5. Displaced people in whole learning design cycle
Designing
In the content (e.g. Migration
Matters MOOCs - videos)
Delivery
“Graduates” become professionals
(translators, designers etc)
Danger: niche sector for refugees
(De Jong, 2018)
Image by JordanEightySeven on Flickr, CC-BY-SA
https://www.flickr.com/photos/137512247@N04/40069461771

6. Breaking “us and them”
Screenshot from MOONLITE MOOC: https://iedra.uned.es/courses/course-
v1:UNED+MOONLITE_I_001+2018/about
Turris Babel from Athanasius Kircher, Public Domain: Wikipedia
Tower of Babel
How far do we go?

7. Buffer zones, bridges and boundaries
Taking MOOCs into
physical spaces
Breaking social
isolation - creating
normality
Third Space… not “us
and them”, but also
not “we”...
Image by chris couderc on Flickr, CC-BY-NC: https://www.flickr.com/photos/131789495@N07/44976327134/

8. A ThirdSpace?
Based on Bhabha (1994) and Soja (1998)

9. Speed-dating for academics and practitioners
Incubator of ideas
Choice of location:
Universities: Gated
communities?
Accessibility of space,
language, costs
Image by Linh Do on Flickr, CC-BY: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lmdo/6404367101/

10. References
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. Routledge. London: Routledge.
Creelman, A. and Witthaus, G. (2018) ‘Facilitated MOOC support – closed bubbles in an open sea’, in Jansen, D., and
Konings, L. (eds.) The 2018 OpenupEd Trend Report on MOOCs. Maastricht: European Association of Distance
Teaching Universities, pp. 31–34. Available at http://www.openuped.eu/15-english-content/news/263-the-2018-
openuped-trend-report-on-moocs
de Jong, S. (2018). A window of opportunity? Refugee staff’s employment in migrant support and advocacy organizations.
Identities. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2018.1533192
Soja, E. W. (1998). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other Real-and-Imagined Places. Capital & Class (Vol. 22).
Cambridge MA: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1177/030981689806400112
Witthaus, G. (ed.) (2018) Refugees’ Educational Resources (RefER) Project Final Report. Milton Keynes: The Open
University. Available
at http://www.open.ac.uk/research/sites/www.open.ac.uk.research/files/files/Documents/RefER%20Project%20Final%2
0Report.pdf
Witthaus, G. (2018) Findings from a Case Study on Refugees Using MOOCs to (Re)enter Higher Education. OpenPraxis,
10(4). Available at: https://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/issue/view/33/showToc

11. Thank you!
Marwa Belghazi:
Mbelghazi@shp.org.uk
Gabi Witthaus:
G.witthaus@lancaster.ac.uk
Twitter: @twitthaus
Blog: www.artofelearning.org
Image by alfarman on Twitter, CC-BY-NC:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/676/2356518442/