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We interviewed people living in African countries who have taken Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) created by the University of Cape Town to ask about their challenges, goals, and value studying online. They are drawn to taking MOOCs in part because of the claims around flexible learning opportunities for people with busy lives. A striking feature in these interviews is the many references to the challenges associated with negotiating time to study online. Here we wish to move beyond simply identifying deficit models of time or time management and rather seek to understand the value of MOOCs to people with work or career transition goals. The MOOC takers’ experiences are quite different to those in conventional degree courses as MOOC participation is voluntary and must be negotiated around existing commitments, suggesting a need for reframing of what is valued by people studying online in their own time.Keywords: flexibility, MOOCs, online learning, temporalities, time

In this article I provide a critical overview of the process followed in a project to identify, support and fund educational development projects in four South African Universities between 2008 and 2013. It draws on my experience as project director in managing the process as well as the data collected to identify and respond to key challenges experienced along the way. Based on this experience I provide recommendations to facilitate the use of central teaching development funding effectively.

In this chapter, I explore the size and discipline of the largest classes offered at two higher education institutions in South Africa and based on the evidence at four institutions make the case that large classes is a minority phenomenon with less than 28% of courses offered having more than 100 students registered. I suggest that large classes offer unique opportunities for delivering the quality learning experience we wish for our students. However, taking advantage of these opportunities require significant planning, support and expertise. I also discuss current practices that undermine the efforts of individual lecturers to achieve effective learning in their large classes.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in African Journal of Research in Mathematics Science and Technology Education on 2009, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/03043790902989457., In this paper, we propose that learning in engineering involves taking on the discourse of an engineering community, which is intimately bound up with the identity of being a member of that community. This leads to the notion of discursive identity, which emphasises that students' identities are constituted through engaging in discourse. This view of learning implies that success in engineering studies needs to be defined with particular reference to the sorts of identities that students develop and how these relate to identities in the world of work. In order to achieve successful learning in engineering, we need to recognise the multiple identities held by our students, provide an authentic range of engineering-related activities through which students can develop engineering identities and make more explicit key aspects of the discourse of engineering of which lecturers are tacitly aware. We include three vignettes to illustrate how some of the authors of this paper (from across three different institutions) have applied this perspective of learning in their teaching practice.

Bibliography: leaves 203-208., The first- and second-year results of the 1989 engineering student intake were analysed and revealed that matriculants from Black Education Departments performed significantly worse in the first year than those from White Education Departments. Matric point scores were found to be good predictors for White Education Department matriculants, but less so for Black Education Department matriculants, with matric Physical Science a better predictor than matric Maths, for both first- and second- year courses. Using interviews and a survey of students, a set of academic and non-academic problems experienced by first-year engineering students were identified with black students found to have experienced a particular set of problems to a greater degree than white students. The data produced a portrait of the interaction between first-year engineering students and the academic and social systems of the university. The dominant feature that emerged was one of distance between the individual students and elements of the university environment, including staff, fellow students and the academic material. Factors from the student's personal and educational background that appeared to accentuate this experience of distance were identified. Recommendations to the Engineering Faculty were compiled on the basis of this analysis together with student suggestions for improving the first-year engineering programme.

In this study, I undertook to investigate how the requirements of formative and summative assessment influence the practices of teachers of art, craft and design in Botswana junior secondary schools (BJSS) in relation to the continuous assessment portfolio (CAP). I used qualitative research methods for data collection, mainly using in-depth interviews with individual teachers of art, craft and design. I also used grounded theory approach to interpret and analyse the collected data. The sample was chosen from different junior secondary schools near Gaborone, in Botswana. Interviewees had common qualification entry requirements while their experiences and backgrounds were different. The theoretical and conceptual frames underpinning the study are mainly Bourdieu's theory of practice and Lave and Wenger's theory of communities of practice. I focused my study on using these theoretical and conceptual frames to help describe the basis for the participants' choice in their judgements during their development of students' CAP. The outcome of this study makes claim that the teachers of art, craft and design who participated in the study clearly understood the requirements of the CAP. However, they chose to ignore these requirements due to the pressures originating from the tensions between formative assessment at school level and summative assessment at the level of the national examinations. These choices result in teachers undertaking activities which emphasize doing well in the national examinations rather than developing the students' skills for future use. This practice results from teachers' efforts to gain recognition for themselves and their schools as a result of outstanding national examination results. Good performance by their students in national examinations enhances their reputation as teachers and makes them eligible to be entrusted with national responsibilities such as being appointed moderators and examiners.

This study looks at eight individual PBL facilitator cases in the field of medical education at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The aim of this study is to gain an understanding of what affects facilitation practice in a problem-based leaning (PBL) classroom. The facilitators come from various backgrounds and have different levels of knowledge and experience. They are, however all employed in a course on a part-time basis during the second semester of the MBChB first year programme. Each facilitator was observed during their facilitation of a PBL tutorial and thereafter they were interviewed about their actions in the classroom. Bourdieu's theory of practice was used as the theoretical and descriptive framework in this study of educational practice in PBL. Bourdieu speaks of 'habitus' or the 'dispositions' of facilitators that influences their practice. He describes the 'field' as the specific area where interactions occur that are shaped by the habitus of its participants and in turn shapes their habitus. He also describes 'capital' or assets that the facilitators may possess from their previous or current fields that shape the interactions in a field. This theory offers insight about who the facilitators are, how they behave in the teaching practice setting and provides an understanding of what contributes to their practice in PBL. The findings are that facilitator actions in the classroom were shaped by a number of factors including their personalities, social backgrounds, qualifications, experience, beliefs and perspectives, their fields of practice as well as the medical education field at UCT with its institutional factors and values. Theory of practice not only illustrates the principles underlying facilitator practice in the PBL classroom, but allows a description of the interactions between unique facilitator dispositions, experiences, assets and values within a field of medical education. This study forms the basis for future studies in the area of PBL facilitator practice and will contribute to improved staff development, placement and appreciation of PBL facilitators.