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 environments comprise both scale (in terms of numbers of students) and diversity (in terms of the types of students). As learning designers we focus on understanding the particular tools and pedagogical affordances of the MOOC platform to support learner engagement. Drawing on research into learner engagement conducted in the broader field of online learning, we consider how learner engagement in a MOOC might be designed for by looking at three pedagogical aspects: teacher presence, social learning and peer learning.

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Wikis represent flexible tools functioning as open-ended environments for collaboration while also offering process and group writing support. Here we focus on a project to innovate the use of wikis for collaborative writing within student groups in a final-year undergraduate political science course. The primary questions guiding our research were in what ways could wikis assist collaborative learning in an undergraduate course in political science and how we could support educators' in the effective use of wikis? Curiously, wikis may serve as a mediating artifact for collaborative writing even among students who are reluctant to post online drafts. The paper raises questions concerning the nature and limits of lecturer and tutor power to deliver transformative educational innovations in relation to the capacity of students to embrace, comply with, or resist such innovation. In analysing the negotiation of the use of wikis in the course by and among the lecturer, tutors, and students, we draw on two principles in activity theory, which Yrjo Engestrom argued are central to his model of expansive learning: multi-voicedness and contradictions [Engestrom, Yrjo . (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit; Engestrom, Yrjo . (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work 14(1), 133-156.]. We add a third principle, transparency, to more fully capture what we observed.

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 university and ask whether and how their practices and attitudes become open after creating and teaching a MOOC. Activity Theory is used to contextually locate the educators' motivations and to analyse their practices in terms of striving towards an object. With this lens we describe how educators' openness-related practices and attitudes change over time in two different MOOCs. Two sets of conceptions of open practices are used to detect instances of change, providing four dimensions of changed open educational practices. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and artefacts provide data for this rare study, which considers these issues from the perspective of the Global South. Through studying the educators' practices in relation to openness, it becomes evident how open practices are emergent and responsive.

Workflow management is primarily concerned with dependencies between the tasks of a workflow, to ensure correct control flow and data flow. Transaction management, on the other hand, is concerned with preserving data dependencies by preventing execution of conflicting operations from multiple, concurrently executing tasks or transactions. In this paper we argue that many applications will be served better if the properties of transaction and workflow models are supported by an integrated architecture. We also present preliminary ideas towards such an architecture.