Faiq Waghid

Can MOOCs contribute towards enhancing disruptive pedagogic encounters in higher education

In this article, we argue that MOOCs (massive open online courses) have the potential to enhance disruptive pedagogic encounters in higher education, especially in relation to a philosophy of African education. In the first part of the article, we expound on MOOCs as an initiative in higher education that grew out of a concern to advance access to higher education. Paradoxically, we show that MOOCs might not strictly advance equal access and inclusion but have the potential to cultivate student capacities of a critically transformative kind, more specifically, rhizomatic thinking, criticism and recognition of others. In the second part of the article, we show, in reference to an emerging MOOC, how an African philosophy of education should be considered as apposite to advance disruptive pedagogic encounters in higher education.

On the Potentialities of Practising Educational Technology in Educational Institutions

Practising educational technology can engender in students a desire for learning, where desire refers to an autonomous and affirmative force that influences students’ pedagogic (relational) encounters with other students and teachers (Zembylas, 2007, p. 334). For Deleuze and Guattari (1983, p. 28), desire is not restricted to a feeling or emotion such as pleasure or fantasy in dreams, but is a force that radicalises students into becoming deeply connected to other students in an assemblage that constitutes them.

Educational Technology and Socialy Just Pedagogic Encounters

In this chapter we tease out in more detail the notion of an education for social justice as a plausible justification for the practice of democratic educational technology that can risk-fully be enacted. Put differently, practising educational technology is itself a democratic endeavour that can be deliberative, disruptive, and rhizomatic – thus, remaining in potentiality. Education, or ways of engaging one another in the Aristotelian sense, has always been connected with the achievement of something morally worthwhile (Roland Martin, 2013).

Pedagogic Encounters in Educational Technology

In this chapter we focus on two examples of the use of educational technology involving the second and third authors. These projects used action research and discourse analysis respectively to examine the pedagogic encounters of students and teachers involved with educational technology. In the main, both projects were geared towards cultivating democratic education within educational technology practices.

Educational Technology and the Enactment of Democratic Change

In the previous chapter we offered an account of educational technology and its potential links to rhizomatic action, disruptive action and risk taking as extensions of democratic education. We shall now move to a discussion of some of the technical advances made in educational technology. In the discussion, the technological ‘tools’ will not be examined as separate entities from the educational effects they potentially offer, for the reason that the argument of this book is that educational technology in itself is a practice.

Democratic Education in Potentiality

As has been argued for thus far, democratic education has some connection with encouraging students to engage in dialogical relationships, engendering social justice practices aimed at eliminating the exclusion and marginalisation of students, and stimulating students to solve problems and to make pedagogic breakthroughs. We have found the aforementioned practices to be in consonance with an enhancement of student participation, collaboration and deliberation as they (the students) endeavoured (within educational technology as a practice) to find justifiable explanations for and understandings of educational issues.

Educational Theory and Technology

Any theory of education has some connection to the thoughts and/or ideas that constitute it. In other words, education is what it is on the grounds of the reasons that guide the notion of education. In a similar way, educational technology is also underscored by the reasons for its use. Now, much of what is happening in primary education involves socialising students into knowledge of disciplines and subjects, whereas secondary and higher education involve initiating (individuating) students into the disciplines with the aim to provoke their critical thoughts in and about such education.

On the democratisation of science education through Facebook : implications for autonomy, equality and teacher education in universities

In this article I offer a defence for using educational technology to democratise classroom practices in relation to science education and teacher education at universities. My contention is that educational technology, more specifically using Facebook, can engender pedagogical action amongst learners and educators that resonates with democratic practices. In other words, using educational technology in science and teacher education can enhance learner autonomy and equality, so that critical, self-reflexive thinking and disruptive thought and action respectively can be cultivated through technology-assisted education. Keywords: Education, democracy, autonomy, equality and technology