Between infrastructure and

improvisation: designing the

Online MPhil/PhD
Martin Oliver
Richard Freeman

Centre for Doctoral Education

UCL Institute of Education

Overview

Digital technology and doctorates

Sociomaterial perspectives
Examples of digital practices
The development of the Online MPhil/PhD
Lessons learnt

Digital technology and doctorates

The digital as a necessary point of
reference for all doctoral study

Patterns of digitally mediated doctoral activities

(Esposito, 2014)
PhD Activities

Focus

Tools/venues

Updating

Searching for relevant

materials

Google Scholar, Twitter,

discipline-specific
databases, Facebook

Networking

Seeking research bonds for

future collaboration

Email, Facebook,
research-focused SNs

Disseminating

Building reputation

Academia.edu,
LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs

Discussing research Increasing self- confidence

issues

ResearchGate, LinkedIn
groups, Skype

Pursuing personal
development

MOOCs, YouTube

Expanding knowledge and

first hand experiences

Digital support
Doctoral students have used blogs and wikis to share their work, and
reflect upon and document their progress. Self-organized systems
through which some of these activities are enacted have also been
formed.
For example, #PhDChat is an active online community initiated by
doctoral students. Individuals in the community use social media to
update each other on their progress, share resources, learn about the
profession, socialize and support each other; creating video trailers to
describe, promote and highlight academic artifacts such as books;
help-seeking with professional activities (e.g. research, teaching).
(Veletsianos, 2013)

Neither digital or open. Just

researchers.
Researchers already use technologies widely
They do not see themselves as being in a special
category of digital researchers
Cultivate online personas
Used to seek recognition
Additional to, not a replacement for, conventional
measures of reputation

(Esposito, 2013)

 How should we design a curriculum to

reflect and support this situation?

Sociomateriality
Humans, and what they take to be their learning and social
processes, do not float, distinct, in container-like contexts of
education, such as classrooms or community sites, that can be
conceptualized and dismissed as simply a wash of material stuff
and spaces. The things that assemble these contexts, and
incidentally the actions and bodies including human ones that are
part of these assemblages, are continuously acting upon each
other to bring forth and distribute, as well as to obscure and deny,
knowledge.
(Fenwick et al, 2011: vii)

Infrastructure
Information infrastructure is a tricky thing to
analyze. Good, usable systems disappear almost
by definition. The easier they are to use, the harder
they are to see. [] Through due methodological
attention to the architecture and use of these
systems, we can achieve a deeper understanding
of how it is that individual and communities meet
infrastructure.
(Bowker & Star, 2000: p33)

The campus is best thought of not simply as a constraint

but, to borrow Brown and Duguids phrase, as a
resourceful constraint (Brown & Duguid 2000: 246), one it
would be premature to write off and which those developing
distributed learning need to take seriously. [] The campus
or more generally, the co-location of learners, teachers,
labs, class-rooms, lecture theatres, libraries and so on
refuses to lie down and die.
Those seeking to develop distributed education should
understand the support a campus setting gives the
educational process and should be prepared for the
necessity to find new ways of providing that support in a
distributed education context.
(Cornford & Pollock, 2005: 181, 170)

Space
We recognise space as the product of interrelations; as
constituted through interactions, from the immensity of the
global to the intimately tiny. [] We recognise space as
always under construction. Precisely because space on this
reading is a product of relations-between, relations which
are necessarily embedded in material practices which have
to be carried out, it is always in the process of being made.
It is never finished; never closed. Perhaps we could
imagine space as a simultaneity of stories-so-far.
(Massey, 2005: 9)

Improvisation
The learning context being produced is understood
as an ecology of resources a matrix in which the
prospective researcher shapes, manages and
makes sense of the different potential forms of
assistance, be they human or material resources or
tools that are available in their formal and informal
learning ecologies.
(Esposito et al, 2013: 24)

(Re)assembling the Social

Behind the innocuous epistemological claim that
social explanations have to be ferreted out, lies the
ontological claim that those causes have to
mobilize forces made of social stuff. [] To explain
is not a mysterious cognitive feat, but a very
practical world-building enterprise that consists in
connecting entities with other entities, that is, in
tracing a network.
(Latour, 2005: 103)

Digital Literacies as a Postgraduate

Attribute?
Led by Lesley Gourlay
Longitudinal, multimodal journaling with 12 students over
9-12 month period (Gourlay & Oliver, 2013)
Focus here on 3 PhD students

A structured sequence of interviews

Digital biography
Multimodal documentation
2-3 further interviews, building student analysis of data via
presentations

Institutional ethical approval

Google Scholar and Google in general is my third half of my

brain.
So this is a screen short of [] the drive at IOE, where I
can store my data [] I had a day where Id saved my data
on USB stick where the data was corrupted. [] And I
experienced my old Macs hard drive breaking beyond
repair, loosing everything on it. [] I now store everything
on my N Drive. Some times Ill do something in my room
and then immediately when I am done, synchronise it with
my N Drive via the portal. IOE promises my data is safe
there, because its protected threefold I hope theyre
right.(Fredrick, Interview 3)

Thats really interesting how much I use the

iPad for a start everywhere and anywhere...
And I have the information there all the time
constantly, and I just feel as though I dont
have to be anywhere physical at all
anymore
(Django interview 3)

Sallys map

Removing the agency of texts and tools in

formalising movements risks romanticising
the practices as well as the humans in them;
focusing uniquely on the texts and tools
lapses into nave formalism or technocentrism.
(Leander and Lovvorn, 2006: 301)

Online MPhil/PhD: Rationale (Oct 2014)

Timely (MOOCs, tablets, smartphones and Skype)

Cheaper: no living in London, no travel, able to work
No need for visas
Support existing students who need to relocate

PRES 2013: 41.5% distance learning

Decisions

Fees identical
Supervision identical
Certificate identical
Available FT/PT identical

All for an equivalent experience

Studying on Online MPhil/PhD

Moodle

Texts: ejournal articles; ebooks and PDFs

Activities: Forums; Blackboard Collaborate
Designed for synchronous and asynchronous
study

Structure
Spectrum: Two ends, not stretching from one
Put the student in control of blended learning
Supervision, Research Environment, Library, Student
Support
Research Methods, Generic skills

Building on existing expertise

OMRes Educational and Social Research (Dr Will
Gibson)
Five years of experience in purely online environment,
including
Lessons learnt: facilitating engagement for students
based worldwide

OMRes modules
Term
1
2
3

Module 1
Approaches to
Educational Research

Module 2
Research and the
Theoretical Field

Research Methods
Writing and Presenting
Educational Research

Qualitative data analysis

Quantitative data analysis

Start point is any of the three terms (Main

start in term 1)
Part-time: Year 1 modules completed and
then start Year 2.

OMRes modules
No assessment, but mandatory
Important part of nurturing an online
research community
Also:
What is a Doctorate
Academic Writing for Doctoral Students
Information and Literature Searching

Other resources
One-off sessions of online generic skills
UCL Software Database
Ever expanding range of e-resources and
institutional commitment to expansion
Graduate Seminar, Poster Conference,
Summer Conference

Lessons learnt
Seems successful, BUT
Small numbers (21 in first year) and
intensive support
Asynchronous interaction the norm, with
most watching recordings of synchronous
at the time convenient for them (weekends
popular)

Lessons learnt
Introduced a Facebook page just for them
Not for everyone or every discipline
Our students tend to be mid-career and
most are working in an academic context
(school, FE or HE) and some in UK
Students still like to visit!

Structure

Choices enabled

MPhil/PhD Programme

Student locates themselves on

spectrum

Online resources

Either access them remotely, or travel

to the IOE

Sessions in Blackboard Collaborate

Participate live, or access recordings

when convenient

Training programme

Flexibility in light of student experience

Supervision

Supervisor/student decide best mode

Social support

Blackboard forum and/or Facebook

group

Conclusions
Designing for diversity

The importance of knowing your students

'Online' still involves real people, places and

things

May not be possible, where work demands

specialised materials (e.g. labwork)
Where does our responsibility for this start and end?

Structure can enable choices, rather than

curtail them

References

Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (2000) Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT press.
Cornford, J. & Pollock, N. (2005) The University Campus as a resourceful constraint: process and practice in the
construction of the virtual university. In Lea, M. & Nicoll, K. (Eds), Distributed Learning: Social and cultural approaches to
practice, London: Routledge Falmer, 170-181.
Esposito, A. (2013). Neither digital or open. Just researchers: Views on digital/open scholarship practices in an Italian
university. First Monday, 18 (1). http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3881/3404
Esposito, A. (2014). The transition from student to researcher in the digital age: Exploring the affordances of emerging
ecologies of the PhD e-researchers. PhD Thesis, Open University of Catalonia.
Esposito, A.; Sangr, A. & Maina, M. (2013). Chronotopes in learner-generated contexts. A reflection about the
interconnectedness of temporal and spatial dimensions to provide a framework for the exploration of hybrid learning
ecologies of doctoral e-researchers. eLC Research Paper Series, 6, 15-28.
Fenwick, T., Edwards,R. & Sawchuk, P. (2011) Emerging Approaches to Educational Research: Tracing the Sociomaterial.
London: Routledge.
Gourlay, L. & Oliver, M. (2013) Beyond 'the social': digital literacies as sociomaterial practice. In Goodfellow, R. & Lea, M.
(Eds), Literacy in the Digital University: Critical Perspectives on Learning, Scholarship and Technology, 79-94. London:
Routledge.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leander, K. & Lovorn, J. (2006) Literacy networks: following the circulation of texts, bodies and texts in the schooling and
online gaming of one youth. Cognition and Instruction 24 (3), 291-340.
Massey, D. (2005) For Space. London: Sage.
Veletsianos, G. (2013). Open Practices and Identity: Evidence from Researchers and Educators Social Media
Participation. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(3), 639-651.
http://www.veletsianos.com/publications/#sthash.1sSVwCOd.dpuf