Fireside Chat 11, PhD Cohort, Athabasca University, 17 November 2018

1. Paul Prinsloo
University of South Africa (Unisa)
@14prinsp
Open teaching and research in closed*
systems: doing the (im)possible
Fireside Chat 11, PhD Cohort,
Athabasca University,
17 November 2018

2. Acknowledgement
I do not own the copyright of any of the images in this
presentation. I therefore acknowledge the original copyright
and licensing regime of every image used.
This presentation (excluding the images) is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License.

3. Image credit: https://www.gauteng.net/attractions/unisa
• The University of South Africa (Unisa)
• Established 1873
• Current registration figures: 380,000 students

4. Image credit: https://www.gauteng.net/attractions/unisa
• Started at Unisa in 1995 as an administrative officer and tutor – at a
regional centre, in the Northern parts of South Africa
• In 2002 I was appointed as a Curriculum and Learning Developer
(Instructional Designer) on the Pretoria campus of Unisa
• Attended my first academic conference in 2002 at the Second Pan-
Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning held in Durban, South
Africa. Presented a paper on research I’ve done during my stint as
administrative officer and tutor
• First academic paper published in 2003 - Prinsloo, P. (2003). The
anonymous learners: a critical reflection on some assumptions
regarding rural and city learners. Progressio, 25(1), 48-60.
• Appointed as Research Professor in Open and Distance Learning in
2013
Locating myself in five acts

5. Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/shoes-walking-railroad-tracks-1245920/
A personal reflection on how closed ‘open’
can be

6. At stake is a reflection on how open
teaching and research really is in open
distance learning (ODL) contexts?
And, if open distance learning institutions
are actually quite closed, how open can
teaching and research be in open*
distance learning (ODL) contexts?

7. Assumption 1: Open distance learning
institutions are ‘open.’ How open?
• Admission requirements
• Registration periods
• Curricula
• Prescribed materials – are they all open, downloadable in different formats
• Bring your own device (BYOD) – and whatever we offer is equally
accessible and legible on whatever device
• Universal access – to those students living with disabilities
• Cost – to student?
• Transferable – to other degrees/institutions/across borders
• Student choice of formative and summative assessment
• Student input in the course outcomes and what they want to achieve
• Choosing time it takes to completion
• Epistemological access – “I can’t breathe”

8. Source credit: http://oasis.col.org/bitstream/handle/11599/2048/2016_Garrett_State-of-Open-Universitities-
Commonwealth.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

9. Source credit: http://oasis.col.org/handle/11599/2786

10. Source credit: http://oasis.col.org/handle/11599/2786

11. Source credit: http://oasis.col.org/handle/11599/2786

12. Source credit: http://oasis.col.org/handle/11599/2786

13. Source credit: http://oasis.col.org/handle/11599/2786

14. Source credit: http://oasis.col.org/handle/11599/2786

15. Assumption 2: Open distance learning
institutions are equally ’open’
No, they are not…

16. Assumption 3: All distance education
institutions are also open distance learning
institutions
While all open distance education institutions
are distance education institutions, not all
distance education institutions are open…

17. Assumption 4: All open distance education
institutions understand and operationalise
‘open’ in the same way
No

18. Assumption 5: All residential face-to-face
institutions are closed* or not-open
I know of many faculty
and departments in
traditional face-to-face
who are more open in
their teaching and
approaches to teaching
than many faculty and
departments in open
distance education
institutions

19. (Re)considering …
• In open distance learning
• Teaching
• Scholarship
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/sign-open-neon-business-electric-
1209759/

20. Behind the reasons for the degrees of open pertaining
to the below, are, among other reasons, …
• Issues of national context
• National legislation and
regulatory frameworks
• Funding formulas
• Mission and vision
• Educational sub-systems
and the institution’s place
in these sub-systems
• Student numbers
• Size of the program qualification mix (PQM)
• Student: faculty ratios
• Cost formulas, quality regimes

21. National context of Unisa: South Africa
• The intergenerational legacy of colonialism and apartheid
• Huge concerns about the state of primary and secondary
education
• Official unemployment of close to 27%
• South Africa’s unemployment rate is high for both youth and
adults; however, the unemployment rate among young
people aged 15–34 was 38,2%, implying that more than one
in every three young people in the labour force did not have a
job in the first quarter of 2018. Of the 10,3 million persons
aged 15–24 years, 32,4% (approximately 3,3 million) were
not in employment, education or training
Source credit: http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11129

22. National context (2)
• 26 public higher education institutions
• 60% growth in enrollment in higher education
• The overall participation rate grew from 14.8% in 1996 to
17.4% in 2011, still well short of the 20% target for 2016
• The participation rate for males is 6% behind females – who
are at about 22%
• Huge concerns about a dysfunctional technical, vocational
education and training (TVET) sector
Source credit: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2014062015083621

23. “Degrees cannot fix the cumulative effect of
structural racism that doesn’t just reinforce the
link between family wealth and returns to
educational attainment in the labour market
but exists as a primary function of that link”
(McMillan Cottom, 2014, par. 17)
To “expand education in an unequal society
without a redistribution of resources, you will
[merely] reproduce inequality”
(McMillan Cottom in Prinsloo, 2015)

24. So how open can an institution such as
Unisa be?
White Paper for Post-School Education and Training
https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/37229_gon11.pdf
Policy for the Provision of Distance Education in
South African Higher Education in the Context of an
Integrated Post-School System
https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/37811_gon535.pdf
Among 26 public universities, Unisa is the only
dedicated, comprehensive, open distance learning
institution

25. Department of Higher Education and Training. (2014). Policy for the provision of distance education in South African universities in the context of
an integrated post-school system. Retrieved from http://www.saide.org.za/sites/default/files/37811_gon535.pdf
OfflineOnline Fully online
Fully offline
Digitally supported
Internet supported
Internet dependent
Campus-based Blended/hybrid Remote
A
BC
Distance, digitally supported
Distance, fully onlineCampus-based,
fully online
Implications for open?

26. “Of course, not all
distance education
systems are cheaper than
the alternative,
conventional means of
teaching and training”
(Rumble, 1997, p. 2)
The social advantage of
providing access, must
be considered in terms
of quality and cost

27. ”There is plenty of evidence that open and
distance education can be more cost
efficient than traditional forms of education,
but this is not necessarily the case”
(Rumble, 1997, p. 204; emphasis added)
“… there is very little that can be concluded with
certainty. Policy-makers and institutional leaders should
be aware of lifting solutions off the shelf, hoping that
the economic benefits that may be said to apply in one
socio-economic environment will transfer, along with
the media and the technologies, to another”
(Rumble, 1997, p. 204)

28. Source credit: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3200/CHNG.41.2.30-35
2009

29. Quality
Access Cost
• The moment you increase access, what happens to quality
and cost?
• When you commit to quality learning experiences, what
happens to cost and access?
• Aiming to keep our costs as low as possible, how does this
impact on access and quality?

30. Source credit: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/916/1785
2011

31. Quality
Access Cost
“[D]istance education can achieve any two of the
following: flexible access, quality learning experience
and cost-effectiveness – but not all three at once”
Kanuka & Brooks, 2010, in Power and Gould-Morven, 2011, p. 23)

32. Quality
Accessibility Cost-
effectiveness
Considering three stakeholder groups – students,
faculty and administrators – who values which
aspect the most and how does this impact on other
stakeholders?

33. So what happens when ensuring quality costs more and
limits access? What happens when costs are cut or
student numbers increased to ensure economies of
scale? And what happens when students demand high
quality at low/no cost?
Quality
Accessibility Cost-
effectiveness
Faculty
AdministrationStudents

34. (Re)considering …
• In open distance learning
• Teaching
• Scholarship
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/sign-open-neon-business-electric-
1209759/

35. How open can teaching be in a
system/institution where…
• Curriculum and development processes ensure the
involvement of course development teams that take time, and
that fit into an industrial system of course design and delivery
• The production processes result in course to be designed and
produced for delivery in 18 months’ time
• Courses are offered by the same teaching teams in both
semesters
• Courses are designed for both printed delivery but also for
blended delivery options with teaching assistants involved in
assisting students in all first year courses

36. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/
Plan &
design
Approval
Curriculum
and
learning
design
TestProduction
Delivery
Print-based, fully offline delivery
• Economies of scale
• Learning resources (mostly static)
• Mostly asynchronous
• Industrial, sequential processes

37. So what does open teaching
look like in an industrialised
system?

38. How do the design and delivery
processes change when distance
education as “the most industrialised
form of education” go online?
Image credit: https://za.pinterest.com/pin/341569952970101904/

39. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/
How different are the processes used in an industrialised,
print-based distance education model from approving,
designing, producing and delivering (online*), (open*)
distance education? How do costs change? And quality?

40. How open can teaching be in a
system/institution where…
• You have 14,000 students per semester in some courses, with
two compulsory assignments as formative assessment and a
summative proctored assessment over a 12-14 week semester
• Faculty are also expected to do research, community
engagement and provide evidence of academic citizenship
• Intellectual Property of everything produced in the institution
belongs to the institution
• There is an established tradition of academic capitalism with
students compelled to buy additional prescribed text books,
often produced by the lecturers
• The use of OER is limited but several OER are produced

41. (Re)considering …
• In open distance learning
• Teaching
• Scholarship
Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/sign-open-neon-business-electric-1209759

42. Open scholarship: Setting the
scene
• Being a scholar in a networked world – abundance, risk
and networks
• The beauty (and danger) of the immediacy of living
“onlife”
• Brutal abuse by traditional systems of academic publishing
• Alternative forms of publishing may support the more
conventional forms of sharing/peer review
• The nature of scholarship and the sharing of
research/thinking/praxis has changed
• Being a scholar has changed

43. On being a scholar
• Having academic expertise in a particular field or
fields/disciplines
• Recognition of the expertise by institutions (e.g.
awarding of degrees/appointment)
• Acknowledgement by the gatekeepers in the
discipline/field of inquiry
• Recognition by peers
• Maintaining and expanding expertise
• Dissemination of thinking/research/praxis
• Being a gatekeeper/peer
• Developing and recognising expertise of others

44. On being a scholar and the rationale
for publishing
• Having academic expertise in a particular field or
fields/disciplines
• Recognition of the expertise by institutions (awarding of
degrees)
• Recognition by the gatekeepers in the discipline/field of
inquiry
• Recognition by peers
• Maintaining and expanding expertise
• Dissemination of thinking/praxis
• Being a gatekeeper/peer
• Developing and recognising expertise

45. Conventional publishing
– open* and closed
(Un)conventional publishing – ‘open’

46. “Conventional”
publishing in higher
education
• Monographs
• Edited volumes
• Peer-reviewed articles in
journals on IBSS, ISI,
Norwegian, Scopus
“Unconventional”
publishing in higher
education
• Blogs
• Tweets
• Opinion pieces
• Letters to the editor
• Articles in magazines

47. ‘What’ needs to be shared?
How urgent is the findings/message?
‘What’ are the
reputational
benefits and
risks?
How accessible will/should it
be?
Who will be the peer
reviewers and how will peer
review happen/impact?
Who are the gatekeepers?
Who is the intended audience
and why?
‘Where’/’how’
does it fit into
my career –
short-term/
longer term?
What are the rules?
Going conventional,
alternative or somewhere
in-between?

48. A personal
journey in open
scholarship
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/boards-height-balance-2040575/

49. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/

50. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/
Some scholars say that Twitter ‘does not
work’ for them…
This reminds me of walking into a library and
expecting books to find you
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/books-door-entrance-italy-colors-1655783/

51. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/books-door-entrance-italy-colors-1655783/
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/ant-shadow-big-small-metaphor-1541524/
Using Twitter as scholar requires effort, dedication,
a careful selection of who to follow, a willingness
to be surprised, and dealing with an
abundance of stimulation

52. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/

53. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/nacelle-workers-wall-city-work-1888587/
The increasing disappearance of
public/private/professional/personal
Using Facebook as scholar…

54. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/

55. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/

57. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/

58. Case in point: Slides prepared for a group of 30 bored
academics in a small stuffy venue. One year later,
10,773 views

60. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/

61. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/

62. The art of open scholarship:
some pointers
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/143601516@N03/28011015990

63. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/doors-choices-choose-open-decision-1587329/
Central to a strategy is to take (more conscious) control of our
digital footprints and shadows is the need to understand the
choices we have, the (sometimes irrational) reasons why we
choose specific options, the downstream effects of our choices
and the choices we don’t have
Pointer 1

64. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/window-dark-old-opinions-shadows-2387518/
Going ‘dark’ or ‘offline’ is increasingly impossible.
For a scholar, going ‘dark’ is not really an option.
Pointer 2

65. Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/sign-open-neon-business-electric-1209759/
Pointer 3: Going…

66. Source credit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

67. Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/creative-commons-licenses-icons-by-783531/

68. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/binary-code-man-display-dummy-face-1327512/
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/prey-hunt-bird-sparrow-nature-cat-244070/
Weighing the opportunities
with the risks; weighing the
abundance with the peril
Pointer 4

69. Source credit: https://tressiemc.wordpress.com/about/

70. Source credit: https://tressiemc.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/mcmillan-cottom-academic-engagement-
microcelebrity-and-digital-sociology-in-the-matrix-of-domination.pdf

71. Imagecredit:https://pixabay.com/en/sign-open-neon-business-electric-1209759
(In)conclusions
Open (as verb). Open (as adjective). Opened. Opening

72. “I beg you, to have patience with
everything unresolved in your heart and to
try to love the questions themselves as if
they were locked rooms or books written
in a very foreign language. Don’t search
for the answers, which could not be given
to you now, because you would not be
able to live them. And the point is to live
everything. Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing
it, live your way into the answer.”
(In)conclusions

73. “In the deepest hour of the
night, confess to yourself that
you would die if you were
forbidden to write. And look
deep into your heart where it
spreads its roots, the answer,
and ask yourself, must I
write?”

74. THANK YOU
Paul Prinsloo (Prof)
Research Professor in Open Distance Learning (ODL)
College of Economic and Management Sciences,
Samuel Pauw Building, Office 5-21, P.O. Box 392
Unisa, 0003, Republic of South Africa
T: +27 (0) 12 433 4719 (office)
prinsp@unisa.ac.za
Skype: paul.prinsloo59
Personal blog:
http://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com
Twitter profile: @14prinsp