THE IMPLEMENTATION OF AN OPEN TEACHING POLICY IN OPEN EDUCATION IN MAURITIUS

This paper examines the implications of the implementation of a policy that promotes open teaching in an emerging open university. It describes the benefits and risks associated with such implementation within the context of Mauritius. It emphasises the adoption of cMOOCs which is more student-generated MOOCs that encourages student engagement based on socio-constructivism and heutagogy, instead of behaviourism and cognitivism. The use of open teaching promotes the democratisation of higher education and may help open universities to achieve economies of scale, and therefore making open universities profitable. However, open teaching through the adoption of cMOOCs may lack sustainability due to the political bearing of the open university concerning its governing bodies and the nomination of its head at the management level, the lack of electracy of a large number of contingent teaching staff as well as the lack of safeguard for the intellectual copyrights of MOOCs in Mauritius. It is recommended that open universities should invest massively in technology-enhanced content delivery and in the appointment of a graphic designer to support user-content generation.

Article visualizations: