Laura Czerniewicz

University of Cape Town | UCT · Centre for Higher Education Development

This panel will explore different dimensions of AI and inequality as it pertains to teaching and learning in higher education. It will ask what injustices AI will bring to HE, and how these can be addressed. It will also consider how AI itself can be used to help resolve existing inequalities in HE.

Collaboration or competition? This question is at the centre of this editorial, which explores the importance of sector-wide approaches to research into educational technology. This has become particularly relevant in recent years in response to a range of significant challenges or disruptions the tertiary education sector has had to face, for exam...

This paper focuses on aspects of time and educators’ timescapes during the Covid-19 pandemic. It contributes to a larger discussion about changing discourses and practices of temporality both during and after a crisis, especially those enabled by technology and neoliberal contexts. Situated within the unequal and diverse South African landscape whe...

This paper explores educators' experiences of the digitalisation and datafication of teaching and learning that intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic. It focuses on the transitions, responses, and agency of educators as the rules of their professional world changed. The paper uses data from four focus group discussions with 19 educators from div...

After decades of turbulence and acute crises in recent years, how can we build a better future for Higher Education? Thoughtfully edited by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin, this rich and diverse collection by academics and professionals from across 17 countries and many disciplines offers a variety of answers to this question. It addresses t...

The pandemic affected more than 1.5 billion students and youth, and the most vulnerable learners were hit hardest, making digital inequality in educational settings impossible to overlook. Given this reality, we, all educators, came together to find ways to understand and address some of these inequalities. As a product of this collaboration, we pr...

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using indiv...

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using indiv...

The pressure towards digital education is felt everywhere including in places with extreme digital divides. Resource-constrained educational environments are particularly threatened by datification manifest in the dominant business models of surveillance capitalism as there is less room in such contexts to refuse the ‘free’ offerings from big tech...

The pandemic affected more than 1.5 billion students and youth, and the most vulnerable learners were hit hardest, making digital inequality in educational settings impossible to overlook. Given this reality, we, all educators, came together to find ways to understand and address some of these inequalities. As a product of this collaboration, we pr...

There are concerns about mental health in academia globally, which is a direct consequence of an increase of a neoliberal entrepreneurial approach, one heightened during the time of the pandemic. This paper uses Skotnicki and Nielsen's categories of alienation and Fisher's work on capitalist realism to make sense of academic staff's responses to a...

This paper explores how academics navigate the Higher Education (HE) landscape being reshaped by the convergence of unbundling, marketisation and digitisation processes. Social Realism distinguishes three layers of social reality (in this case higher education): the empirical, the actual and the real. The empirical layer is presented by the academi...

Understanding how equity manifests in open, distance, and digital education (ODDE) requires us to grapple with several coexisting trends, including the changing forms of teaching and learning provision, the advent of a post-digital society and education, the datafication of education, inequality in society at large, and digital inequities. Most of...

In the early stages of the ‘pivot online’, various conceptions of inequalities and their relations to educational equity peppered the discourses of higher education practitioners and the promotional discourses of their institutions. Concerned with what conditions subjectification and action within micro- and meso-curricula, this paper explores the...

This paper describes and critiques how surveillance is situated and evolving in higher education settings, with a focus on the surveillance of teaching and learning. It argues that intensifying practices of datafication and monitoring in universities echo those in broader society, and that the Covid-19 global pandemic has both exacerbated these pra...

Since the turn of this century, much of the world has undergone tectonic socio technological change. Computers have left the isolated basements of research institutes and entered people’s homes. Network connectivity has advanced from slow and unreliable modems to high-speed broadband. Devices have evolved: from stationary desktop computers to ever-...

Produced from experiences at the outset of the intense times when Covid-19 lockdown restrictions began in March 2020, this collaborative paper offers the collective reflections and analysis of a group of teaching and learning and Higher Education (HE) scholars from a diverse 15 of the 26 South African public universities. In the form of a theorised...

The advent of massive open online courses and online degrees offered via digital platforms has occurred in a climate of austerity. Public universities worldwide face challenges to expand their educational reach, while competing in international rankings, raising fees and generating third-stream income. Online forms of unbundled provision offering s...

Higher education institutions (HEIs) across the globe have turned to online technologies in a bid to address the unprecedented disruption to their educational function, created by physical restrictions implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Educators, learning professionals, administrators, managers - all have had to muster the courage and deter...

This article explores how leaders, key decision-makers in research-intensive public universities perceive marketisation in the sector in relation to public-private arrangements in teaching and learning provision. The focus is on the nature of relationships between public universities and those private companies engaged in the co-creation, delivery...

As Higher Education (HE) undergoes a massive expansion in demand in most countries across the globe and experiences financial pressures, the sector is evolving rapidly. Market pressures encourage the search for additional income and new forms of provision, and Online Programme Management (OPM) companies are increasingly entering the sector as they...

This paper examines the idea of ‘core-business’ in contemporary South African public universities. South Africa’s public higher education system has global ambitions, but is also highly internally stratified. Drawing on new data from interviews with higher education leaders and government policy makers across a number of South African institutions,...

The article “Between a rock and a hard place: dilemmas regarding the purpose of public universities in South Africa” written by Rebecca Swartz, Mariya Ivancheva, Laura Czerniewicz, and Neil P. Morris, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal.

This paper explores how decision makers in higher education perceive marketisation in the sector in relation to teaching and learning provision. The study is interested in the nature of relationships between public universities and other actors, particularly private companies, in relation to the creation, delivery and support of educational provisi...

Czerniewicz, L (2018 in press) “Ecologies of (open) access: towards a knowledge society” in Smith, M and Seward, R (Eds) Governing Open Development in an Unequal World, MIT Press

This paper examines the idea of ‘core-business’ in contemporary South African public universities. South Africa’s public higher education system has global ambitions, but is also highly internally stratified. Drawing on new data from interviews with higher education leaders and government policy makers across a number of South African institutions,...

With the promises of networked learning as a base, this chapter describes changes in the higher education (HE) sector, using inequality as a frame. It provides a brief overview of particular aspects of the reconfiguring landscape where education itself has become intrinsically digitally mediated and disaggregation an important trend. It notes the g...

As Higher Education undergoes a massive expansion in demand globally, and experiences financial pressures exacerbated by the global financial crisis of 2008, the sector is evolving rapidly. Market pressures on the sector encourage the search for additional income and new forms of provision, and private providers are increasingly entering the sector...

As Higher Education undergoes a massive expansion in demand globally, and experiences financial pressures exacerbated by the global financial crisis of 2008, the sector is evolving rapidly. Market pressures on the sector encourage the search for additional income and new forms of provision, and private providers are increasingly entering the sector...

This study explored how educators, in an enabling open environment, understand and express copyright, licences, and the legal dimensions of openness as they moved from a traditional teaching role to creating massive open online courses (MOOCs). The MOOCs were produced in partnership with the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at...

Issues of inequality in higher education have received considerable attention in recent decades, but the intersection of inequality and educational technology at an institutional level has received little attention. This study aims to provide a perspective on institutional educational technology policy informed by current understandings of inequali...

MOOCs have been seen as holding promise for advancing Open Education. While the pedagogical design of the first MOOCs grew out of the Open Education Movement, the current trend has MOOCs exhibiting fewer of the original openness goals than anticipated. The aim of this study is to examine the practices and attitudes of MOOC educators at an African u...

MOOCs have been seen as holding promise for advancing Open Education. While the pedagogical design of the first MOOCs grew out of the Open Education Movement, the current trend has MOOCs exhibiting fewer of the original openness goals than anticipated. The aim of this study is to examine the practices and attitudes of MOOC educators at an African u...

This presentation critiques the Open Education movement, from its origins in the Berlin Open Access declaration in 2002 to the current heterogenous landscape.

The Commonwealth Digital Education Leadership Training in Action (C-DELTA) is a long-term programme of COL to promote a digital education environment in Commonwealth Member Nations. This concept paper proposes a holistic approach to conceptualising digital education leadership. The C-DELTA programme will provide a framework for fostering digital le...

This paper conceptualises a holistic approach to digital education leadership, presenting the argument that digital education leadership is grounded in the practice that it seeks to foster (digital literacy practice) and the processes involved in teaching that practice (digital education). In other words, digital education leadership cannot be view...

This presentation explores the need for, rationale behind and difficulties of publishing in Open Access journals and other open distributive platforms. It was presented at the 30th Annual Conference of the Asian Association of Open Universities

This presentation focuses on critiquing some of the assumptions about Open Education as a response to global educational challenges. It was presented at the 30th Annual Conference of the Asian Association of Open Universities in Manila, Philippines.

Scholars globally are increasingly required to account for the visibility and impact of their research, and visibility and impact are increasingly digitally-mediated through the platforms and practices associated with Web 2.0. Traditional prestige-based metrics of visibility (ISI/WoS Impact Factor) measure only scholar-to-scholar outputs like journ...

This presentation explores the process of making Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) from the perspective of the producing institution and the contributing academics.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a new form of educational provision occupying a space between formal online courses and informal learning. Adopting measures used with formal online courses to assess the outcomes of MOOCs is often not informative because the context is very different. The particular affordances of MOOCs shaping learning envi...

The practices and perceptions of educators formed through the creation and running of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provide a case study of how educators understandings of 'openness' change (Beetham et al 2012, p 3). We are interested in how educators engage with open education resources (OER) and openness as part of developing open online co...

Presentation on how educational technology can impact upon inequality, focusing on institutional policy.

This paper discusses Higher Education (HE) and changes in HE, using inequality as a frame. It provides an brief overview of the changes in the HE landscape; explains how Therborn’s 2013 equality/inequality is framework suitable for this discussion ; considers some of the key questions and implications at the global, institutional and course levels...

Access to educational opportunity is undoubtedly extended by the availability of open learning materials, networked learning communities, and forms of open accreditation. Networked learning has, in that sense, fulfilled many of the promises of its early pioneers. The evidence is weak, however, that access to digital opportunity translates into educ...

The practices and perceptions of educators formed through the creation and running of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provide a case study of how educators understandings of ‘openness' change (Beetham et al 2012, p 3). We are interested in how educators engage with open education resources (OER) and openness as part of developing open online co...

The networked age promises global digital cultures with flattened power relations, given the affordances of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to collapse distance, enable easier cross-country collaborations and create new opportunities for knowledge production and sharing. In the academic domains, indications are that knowledge patt...

Using Schatzki’s practices framework as a lens, this paper reports on the practices of university students accessing learning resources at a research-intensive university in South Africa. Using a mixed-methods approach, 1001 survey responses and 6 focus groups were analysed to explore how students in three professional disciplines access learning r...

As the boundaries between technology and social media have decreased, the potential for creative production or participatory practices have increased. However, the affordances of online content creation (OCC) are still taken up by a minority of internet users despite the opportunities offered for engagement and creativity. While previous studies ha...

This presentation explores the ways in which inequality manifests as the higher education sector increasingly moves to online and digitally-mediated forms of delivery.

The research environment in the global South faces many pressing challenges given resource inequality. Technical and financial issues aside, Laura Czerniewicz asserts it is the values and practices shaped by the Northern research agenda which contribute just as much to the imbalance. In order to confront these inequities, perceptions of science and...

This paper draws on actor-network theory and on the sociology of cultural consumption to examine the phenomenon of corporate Massive Open Online Courses. Through an analysis of texts available in the public domain, the paper argues that over a short period (between 2012 and 2013) digitisation technology became associated with the emergence of a hyb...

This exploratory paper picks up ele ments from the European Commission’s educational vision and philosophy behind Opening up Education , the resulting initiative of the OpenupEd.eu MOOC platform and takes this as a starting point to look at potential challenges for developing MOOCs that inclu de vulnerable learner groups. In order to align the...

This presentation describes the disparate tools, platforms and pedagogies involved in digital education in 2014, including certification and monetisation.

In this paper, we locate open access in the South African higher education research context where it is, distinctively, not shaped by the policy frameworks that are profoundly changing research dissemination behaviour in other parts of the world. We define open access and account for its rise by two quite different routes. We then present a case st...

MOOCs offer opportunities but are also pose the danger of further exacerbating existing educational divisions and deepening the homogeneity of global knowledge systems. Like many universities globally, South African university leaders and those responsible for course, curriculum, and learning technology development are coming to grips with the impl...

In this paper we present a framework for examining the changes that are taking place in the research communication practices of academics from four Southern African universities in the wider context of global moves towards open access. We argue that changes in research activity in higher education systems globally, accompanied by the communicative...

Research by higher education and communications scholars provides growing evidence of the changes taking place in the field of scholarly communication, both as result of changes in research activity in higher education systems globally (Etzkowitz 2004; Cooper 2009, 2011; Gibbons et al 1994) as well as those offered by the affordances of web 2.0 tec...

A level playing field is key for global participation in science and scholarship, particularly with regard to how scientific publications are financed and subsequently accessed. However, there are potential pitfalls of the so-called “Gold” open-access (OA) route, in which author-paid publication charges cover the costs of production and publication...

This paper describes the habitus and technological practices of a South African rural student in his first year at university. This student is one of five self-declared rural students, from a group of 23 first-years in four South African universities, whose access to, and use of, technologies in their learning and everyday lives was investigated in...

[RUS] Авторы статьи провели опрос ученых и исследователей из разных стран мира на тему Gold Open Access, отношения к такой публикационной системе и перспективах ее развития. Результаты исследования представлены в статье. - [ENG] The authors conducted a survey of scientists and researchers from around the world on the subject of Gold Open Access, re...

This presentation outlines the changing and diverse nature of the higher education landscape in South Africa in 2013, with a focus on how technology usage is changing and can potentially continue to transform educational practice, both to increase the effectiveness and scope of higher education instruction.

This presentation discusses the prime trends facing higher education in a landscape of massification and differentiation.

Open Educational Resources (OER) – that is, teaching, learning and research materials that their owners make free to others to use, revise and share – offer a powerful means of expanding the reach and effectiveness of worldwide education. Those resources can be full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, software, and othe...

n recent times the nature of scholarship has both remained consistent to its core principles, and undergone profound changes. Despite numerous high-flown claims, no-one knows how these will play out. This paper describes the digitally-mediated changes which are in process throughout the familiar scholarly cycle, and considers the issues – including...

Research into South African students' digitally mediated learning and social practices revealed a subgroup termed “digital strangers,” students lacking both experience and opportunities, who had barely used a computer and who did not have easy access to technology off campus. Using a Bourdieun framework, this group's technological habitus and acces...

This paper follows two South African Media Studies university students and their activities as producers of online content. It considers the online publication services they chose to express media-related academic and creative interests outside of formal curriculum requirements. Through peer guidance and using online search, both students were able...

This paper reports on an investigation into the online visibility of work undertaken in South Africa in the field of poverty alleviation. An experiment with Google searches was undertaken, motivated by concerns about the visibility of South African research and development work, particularly in a context where social inequality is extreme and pover...

Social divides in South Africa remain deep and the digital divide is worsening with regards to access to broadband and to computers. Yet standard cell phone technologies are ubiquitous among university students, creating new forms of digital practices and offering possibilities of access to learning and to higher education itself. This chapter prov...

This chapter forms part of the key findings of The eLearning Africa 2012 Survey, completed by 447 respondents. A detailed analysis of the Survey findings is provided in this, The eLearning Africa 2012 Report, which is the first of its kind, bringing together the views of eLearning professionals and a range of other stakeholders from across 41 Afric...

This special issue is being published at a significant point in time in relation tosimultaneous changes in higher education, in technology and in the field of learningtechnology itself. As the 2011 ALT C conference themes clearly state, learningtechnology needs to learn to thrive in a colder and more challenging climate. In thisdifficult political...

Abstract This paper uses the literature of educational technology as the site of analysis in order to map the field of educational technology. Having considered Kuhn and Bourdieu's theories, the paper frames the analysis of the field in Bernsteinian terms as a horizontal knowledge structure in a vertical knowledge discourse. Using the concepts of i...

The idea that there has been a sharp and fundamental break between young people and previous generations has become commonplace. It can be found widely in policy statements and in commercial rhetoric, it is referenced repeatedly in academic work and it persists despite a growing body of evidence that questions the foundations of the idea (Kennedy e...

This paper interrogates the currently pervasive discourse of the ‘net generation’ finding the concept of the ‘digital native’ especially problematic, both empirically and conceptually. We draw on a research project of South African higher education students' access to and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to show that age is...

This chapter explores how an online conference can be productively used by educational technology professionals and educators who teach with technology in Africa to share and learn about tools, perspectives, and practices in the emerging field of educational technology with peers from across Africa and beyond. Communities of practice can play a key...

Our previous research amongst South African university students showed opportunities in a divided and unequal context for digital democracy in the form of a mobile society. While computer divides are manifest amongst South African university students, cell phone access is ubiquitous. In the light of this, we explored students' digital practices, es...

Drawing on Archer's perspectives on the agency/structure relationship, this paper explains situations where students in varied, challenging circumstances find ways to negotiate difficult conditions. It reports on a 2007 study undertaken through a survey at three quite different universities in three South African provinces, addressing inter-related...

This article investigates the relationship between policy (conceptualised as goals, values and resources), organisational culture and e-learning use. Through both qualitative and quantitative research methods, we gathered data about staff and student perspectives from four diverse South African universities representing a selection of ICT in educat...

Drawing on Archer’s perspectives on the agency / structure relationship, this paper explains situations where students in varied, challenging circumstances find ways to negotiate difficult conditions. The paper firstly reports specific findings of a study on student access and use of technology in three universities in South Africa; and then uses A...

This paper examines findings from two surveys of 10110 university students conducted in South Africa in 2004 and 2007, and explores a theoretical lens for taking the work further. We report on the differences between male and females students' access to and use of ICTs for learning. In particular we note that whilst equal opportunities do largely e...

Globally universities are grappling with how they should be adapting to the new generation of university students who are purported to be “tech savvy” and to learn indifferent ways. The South African higher education sector, with its changing and increasingly diverse student body, is facing similar concerns. This preliminary study seeks to inform t...

Research from a survey of students in higher education institutions in the Western Cape has demonstrated that despite the difficulties being experienced in terms of access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in higher education, students report that they do indeed use computers for their learning. In this paper we explore the relat...

This paper reports on the findings of ICT access issues and social and academic uses in higher education, undertaken as part of a study in 2007 in three dissimilar South African higher education contexts. This diversity provided insight into a highly differentiated student body, varied contexts, different infrastructures and historically distinct b...