A model of the interplay between
academic agency, institutional
structure and open culture in the
contribution and non contribution of
Open Educational resources.
By
Glenda Cox
Context: OER in South Africa
• University of the Western Cape were the first
to launch an OER directory.
• SA Department of Higher Education and
Training included a section on the value of
OER in their 2012 Draft policy Framework for
the Provision of Distance Education in SA
Universities.
• UCT OpenContent launched in Feb 2010
• UNISA has recently launched “UNISA Open”
2
3
OER from UCT: OpenContent
4
+185 000 visits
184 countries
UK:
5980
USA: 21
437
Germany: 1632
India: 6010
Philippines:
2134
Brazil:1564
Australia:
1892
South
Africa
91 281
5
Why am I doing this?
• My day-to-day work
• The basic rational of this study is that if
academics do not contribute and continue to
contribute resources as part of their academic
practice all Open Initiatives at UCT will fail,
“without academic buy in OER has no future” (
Browne et al. 2010:5). Rolfe (2012) concludes
that “central to sustainability is the community
and growth of a critical mass of interested
individuals” (p.7)
6
Purpose of this research
• Participation, both globally and locally is a
voluntary process.
• Why are academics contributing or not? At
UCT roughly 320 contributors so far ( out of
1000 permanent staff and many more on
contract and part time)
7
Goals
• Explain what impacts on individual choices in
the “socio-cultural system” in other words in
the context and also the broader realm of
ideas
• Aim to explain the interplay between the
various complex and transforming
components
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Research questions
• What is the relationship between academic agency{Individual
choices}, the institutional system {context}and open culture
{ideas}and how does this impact on contribution and noncontribution of OER by academics in a Higher Education Institution?
• Sub questions:
• 1. Why do academics choose to, or not to, contribute OER?
• 2. What aspects of institutional structure impact upon OER
contribution and non contribution?
• 3. How does Open culture influence academics contribution to
OER?
9
Literature focused on sharing and
concerns about sharing
• Studies mostly in US, Europe, UK
• A handful from Africa
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Suggested ‘motivators’ from literature
• Can be grouped under three main headings:
• Altruistic: Altruistic motivations are inspired by the premise that
everyone has a right to education and therefore learning should be
available to all, built on a belief in sharing and culture of
collaboration.
• Reputational: In the case of reputational or commercial
motivations the argument here is around raising the visibility of the
institution thereby enhancing its branding. This can also be on an
individual level
• Transformational: Transformational motivations concern
a fundamental change in the way education at institutions
have functioned
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Key Concerns from literature
Sustainability
Systemic organisations
issues: Time, copyright
infringement, lack of
promotion and
recognition
Quality: View that some
materials are of poor
quality
Pedagogy: Some
disciplines and materials
not suited and OER are
not interactive
Personal concerns:
students won’t come
to
lectures
12
Key concerns
Cultural
Structural
Individual
Philosophy of
openness.
Technicalaffordances of the
internet
Pedagogy
Altruism
Financial-models
Sustainability
Legal-alternate
copyright licensing
Quality
13
Identifying the GAPS
Empirical
Theoretical
• Few empirically based, but
many based on surveys &
not detailed interviews
• Very few studies in Africa
• Some partial attempts to
describe
• Not compelling or
sufficiently explanatory
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Identifying the GAPS
Empirical
• Rolfe (2012) suggests that the
interviews are a better method of
collecting data [than the survey]
because if the “richness of
opinion”
• Ngimwa (2010) has written a
report on OER readiness in Africa
and says:“the question of human
factors affecting this adoption still
remains a big issue”
• Percy (2011) suggests a qualitative
study were academics are also
asked the underlying feelings
and attitudes towards OER and
how these are affected by culture
and politics.
15
Identifying the GAPS
Theoretical
• McAndrew (2006) used
Activity Theory as a lens to
investigate how the various
aspects in the adaptation of
OER influence an entire system.
• Hodgkinson-Williams and
Paskevicius (2012) also used AT
in order to understand the role
of postgraduate students in
adapting academics teaching
materials as OER. These
authors have used AT to make
useful causal arguments
around the university system as
well as to explain individual
actions.
16
Filling the Gaps
• This research will build on the pioneering
work of these authors who used AT to explain
the impact of OER. This research will
potentially fill this theoretical gap where up to
this point in time only a few attempts have
been made to move beyond describing the
results of interviews and surveys to explaining
why academics share OER or choose not to
share OER
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Theory
• What do I need? A theoretical framework that:
• enables a fine-grained analysis of the individual as well
as the institutional and cultural systems within which
they are located
• will be able to provide descriptive and analytical tools
to enable the description and exploration of barriers
and enablers and how these impact upon teaching
projects of the individual academics
• is dialectical in its approach and able to move between
the individual and the social setting
• it needs to enable an explanation of change and
transformation.
18
Starting point: Activity Theory
• Activity Theory enables the researcher to
investigate activity within a social setting. This
social setting is also referred to as the activity
system. Engeström (1987) formulated a model
of the structure of this system which includes
the subject, object, tools, division of labour,
community, rules.
19
Pilot study (conducted 2011)
• 3 academics who have contributed
• 3 academics who have NOT contributed
• to assess the usefulness and applicability of
Activity Theory to frame and describe the
barriers and enablers across various contexts
within the University (UCT) system.
20
21
Barriers to sharing from Pilot
• The main barriers to contribution seem to be
around
– the rules of the institution around promotion and
what is valued by the institution.
– rules around the quality of teaching materials and
their readiness which seem unclear and are tacit
– some concerns about the pedagogical use and
value of OER.
22
Enablers: New findings from pilot
• In this pilot study it seems that the altruistic belief that
sharing has value (Sclater 2010a) is combined with
another enabler such as increased visibility.
• Other enablers of sharing includes;
– the importance of the stage in career in a faculty like
commerce where commercialisation is a key barrier to
sharing;
– the content of the resource itself is suited to sharing, this
enabler can also be a barrier, in other words some content
is simply not suited to sharing;
– the technical ability of the lecturers who are able to record
and upload their own lectures without any support from
the institution is an enabler.
23
Subjects’ role/Agency
• It is not clear from this initial pilot study
whether the role of the individual academic in
exercising their free will is important
• The three academics who are sharing were
also faced with constraints that they managed
to overcome because of their belief in sharing
and the value they place on OER.
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Theory (repeated slide)
• What do I need? A theoretical framework that:
• enables a fine-grained analysis of the individual × as
well as the institutional  and cultural systems within
which they are located.
• will be able to provide descriptive and analytical tools
to enable the description and exploration of barriers
and enablers  and how these impact upon teaching
projects of the individual academics (did not test this).
• Is dialectical in its approach and able to move between
the individual and the social setting. x
• And lastly it needs to enable an explanation of change
and transformation.(Did not test this)
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Gap: explaining agency
• It seemed from the pilot that my explanation
of why academics were adding resources was
limited.
• I would like to explore “agency” and I feel that
the well established social realism of Margaret
Archer could potentially fill this gap
• Archer also theorises the relationship
between structure and agency
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Archer: Agency
• An individual’s sense of self comes from what
really matters to them, what we choose to
invest in. Individuals can exercise free will
however there are ‘degrees of freedom’ that
are constrained by the social structure (Archer
1982:464).
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Agency of lecturers
...Individuals develop
and define their
ultimate concerns,
those internal goods
that they care about
most (Archer 2007:42)
Ultimate
Concerns
...develop course (s)
of action to realise
that concern by
elaborating a
project...
Projects
Translated into
a set of
practices
Practices
Engeström and Archer
• AT: Structure and culture
• Archer: Agency and interplay between structure and agency
• The two theories overlap in some ways as they are both
“materialist and realist, and all focus on tool and artefact-mediated
human labour as the basis of social reproduction and change and as
the basis for development of knowledge” (Wheelehan 2007:5).
• Wheelehan (2007) suggest the two theories should be blended in
order to take into account both the individual agency and the
broader workplace context and the presence of unequal power
relationships in the socio-cultural context (p.5)
29
Use both Activity theory and Archer
Tools
Structure
Subject/
agent
Outcome
Object
Activity
system
Rules
DOL
Community
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Research design
• The bulk of the data will come from interview
transcriptions and will be qualitative.
• Some quantitative (analysis of codes and artefacts)
• I am using a case study approach. The aim of these
cases is : “to catch the complexity of (each) single case”
(Stake 1995: xi). The study will not attempt to claim
findings generalisable across all HE institutions
however it hopes that the deep mining nature of the
data will reveal the agental, social and cultural
influences on OER contribution and non-contribution
that have previously been unexplored.
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Sampling
• 14 academics from UCT.
• Purposive sampling, a non-representative subset of
some larger population, (Cohen, Manion and Morrison
2007:114) will be used to identify these 14 individuals.
• Purposive sampling allows the researcher to “Handpick
the cases on the basis of their (researchers) judgement
of their typicality or possession of the particular
characteristics being sought” (Cohen, Manion and
Morrison 2007:115).
• The academics will each be interviewed twice with a
gap of approximately one year between interviews.
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Method
• Maxwell’s Qualitative Research Design (2005, 2011) (critical
realist)
• Interviews will be transcribed and then coded according to
the activity theory framework which will position the
barriers and enablers onto nodes in the activity theory
triangle (Rules, Community, Division of Labour, Tools).
• Interview questions informed by Archer’s (2003, 2007)
work on agents and their ultimate concerns, projects and
practice.
• Coding is the main categorising mechanism in qualitative
research. Coding gives the researcher a mechanism to
“fracture” (Strauss 1987, p.29) the data and rearrange it.
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Interviews (focus 1)
• First round complete- busy with findings
• Focus 1 includes open ended questions asking:
acedemics why they are sharing or not
sharing?
• Also questions around themes that have
emerged in the literature
34
Factors impacting OER
Cultural
Philosophy of
openness.
Structural
Agentiall
Technicalaffordances of the
internet
Pedagogy
Financial-models
Altruism
Legal-alternate
copyright licensing
Quality
35
Findings: Complex interplay between
factors impacting OER
Cultural
Philosophy of
openness.
Structural
Agential
Technicalaffordances of the
internet
Pedagogy
Financial-models
Altruism
Legal-alternate
copyright licensing
Quality
36
Interviews (Focus 2)
• Set of questions around life concerns, projects
and practices
• Can you describe your life projects or key
goals that you would like to achieve over the
next few years?
• whether or no they saw ( or had seen)
anything in their backgrounds which was
helpful or obstructive in relation to the
realising of concerns? Etc…
37
Individual action on OER sharing
Agential
Pedagogy
• Understand life
concerns and life
histories in order to
understand the
concerns academics
have
Quality
38
Stop here….
39
Archer (2003)
• Archer maintains that individuals have ‘internal
conversations’ where they reflect on social
situations in light of their concerns and ask
themselves “what should I do?”
• Archer has identified four forms of internal
conversation which govern agents’ responses to
social conditioning
• These conversations she argues are the link
between society and the individual, structure and
agency.
40
Four forms of internal conversation
• Communicative: maintain structure
• Autonomous: ambitious and seek to change
structures to fit their concerns
• Meta- reflexives: idealists who help others
and will ignore or subvert any constraints or
enablers in the structure ( Context)
• Fractured: not able to have internal
conversations
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Meta-reflexives
• Usually academics ( but will have to show
that)
• They reflect on the process of reflecting
• High ideals and serve others
• Subvert constraints and enablements in their
environments in order to achieve their
concerns
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Findings: reward and policy
• Would some kind of reward enable you to add
teaching materials as OER?
• Would a University policy enable you to
share?
• Both aspects in the literature
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Reward or Policy
Group 1
Group 2
Total
Reward an enabler
Policy an enabler
Yes
Yes
No
No
5 whether or no they
2 saw ( or had seen)
4
anything in their backgrounds which was
helpful or obstructive in relation to the
2
5
1
realising of concerns
3
7
9
7
5
6
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Possible explanation
• For these meta-reflexives incentives do not
work.
• They are not sharing because they have
chosen not to…
• Their life concerns and projects are not about
sharing so for some of these academics
incentives will not change their practice.
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Culture, Structure and Agency
Why are some academics influenced by structure
and culture?
Why are some not?
What are these academics concerned about and
can we model a framework to encourage them to
share?
How to explain sharing and not sharing?
Agents at the heart of sharing ( not extrinsic
awards)
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