Challenges while MOOCifying a HE eLearning course on Universal Accessibility

There are some similarities in developing a traditional Higher Education (HE) eLearning course and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), due to the use of the basis of eLearning instructional design. But in MOOCs, students should be continually influenced by information, social interactions and experiences forcing the faculty to come up with new approaches and ideas to develop a really engaging course. In this paper, the process of MOOCifying an online course on Universal Accessibility is detailed. The needed quality model is based upon the one used for all online degree programs at our university and on a variable metric specially designed for UNED MOOC courses making possible to control how each course was structured, what kind of resources were used and how activities, interaction and assessment were included. The learning activities were completely adapted, along with the content itself and the on-line assessment. For this purpose, the Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Product Grid has been selected

Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Democratic Backsliding in Turkey: Beyond the Narratives of Progress

Unpacking the core themes that are discussed in this collection, this article both offers a research agenda to re-analyse Turkey’s ‘authoritarian turn’ and mounts a methodological challenge to the conceptual frameworks that reinforce a strict analytical separation between the ‘economic’ and the ‘political’ factors. The paper problematises the temporal break in scholarly analyses of the AKP period and rejects the argument that the party’s methods of governance have shifted from an earlier ‘democratic’ model – defined by ‘hegemony’ – to an emergent ‘authoritarian’ one. In contrast, by retracing the mechanisms of the state-led reproduction of neoliberalism since 2003, the paper demonstrates that the party’s earlier ‘hegemonic’ activities were also shaped by authoritarian tendencies which manifested at various levels of governance

Similarity and difference in fee-paying and no-fee learner expectations, interaction and reaction to learning in a massive open online course

The new pedagogical opportunities that massive open online course (MOOC) learning environments offer for the teaching of fee-paying students on university-accredited courses are of growing interest to educators. This paper presents a case study from a postgraduate-taught course at the Open University, UK, where a MOOC performed the dual role of a core teaching vehicle for fee-paying students and also as a “free-to-join” course for open learners. An analysis of survey data revealed differences between the two groups in respect to prior experience, knowledge, expectations and planned time commitment. The nature and experience of interaction was also examined. Fee-paying student feedback revealed four conditions in which MOOCs could be considered a pedagogic option for taught-course designers. These are: when there is a subject need; when used to achieve learning outcomes; when there is acknowledgement or compensation for the financial disparity; and when issues of transition and interaction are supported

Where is the study of WORK in critical IPE?

The British school of International Political Economy (IPE) has been highly innovative in encouraging inter-disciplinary work, and allows eclecticism of research and investigation, which is quite distinct in contrast to its American counterpart. Critical theorists in the British school of IPE in particular have been highly prolific in recent years and adept in introducing research on a wide range of contemporary issues in the global political economy. However, this school tends to overlook very important areas of analysis: work and employment. In order to promulgate a potentially blossoming field of critical work into genuine integration across IPE and industrial relations, we must remember our ancestors. Labour process theorists Braverman and Burowoy; heterodox economics and industrial relations research and the French Regulation School; varieties and models of capitalism; neo-Gramscian researchers; as well as a range of sociological and comparative politics methodologies have been incorporated, but more can be done. This article argues that researchers from seemingly autonomous fields can teach us a lesson within critical IPE: inter-disciplinarity is not a fantasy. The analysis, as one example, of exactly how governmental policy idealises a particular subjectivity wherein workers are not employed, but are employable, in the context of what Gramsci named a passive revolution, is a research project (Moore 2010) that begins to combine what have historically been disparate literatures. Not only can this kind of research enhance existing research in critical IPE, it must be continued, to address the needs of humanity in the increasingly unstable and flexibilised world of work