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Olive Mugenda, Vice-Chancellor, Kenyatta University (KU), Kenya
e-Supervision to support the development of doctoral studies in Africa

Ensure that quality of training programmes is everywhere.

Doctoral students are often already employed at the university.

Most phds in Africa are employed at the university. It is not usual to find phds that are not at the university.

Age average of phd students is 30-50, very different from other places.

Challenges of doctoral education in Africa:

• Shortage of phds in universities: growth of academic staff has not matched the growth of enrolment, low levels of research in some disciplines.
• Quality of phds: quality of institution depends on the quality of the academic staff, and the quality of doctoral students depends on the quality of the supervision.
• Low completion rates: part of it due to lack of or bad supervision.
• Lack of international exposure of faculty: lots of inbreeding too. Quality of faculty is, to a large extent, dependent on the international exposure acquired in graduate & postdoctoral education.

Factors the impact the quality of PhDs:

• Lack of institutional and programme policies: organization, incentives, discipline expectations, a clear supervision policy with detailed responsibilities, etc.
• Supervision itself, that requires support and challenges.
• Massification of higher education, high number of people globally.

e-supervision

• To complement internal supervision and support.
• For supervision to be more effective.
• Connecting the supervisor and the student regardless of space.
• Intensive use of ICTs.
• Also in the thesis defence.

Advantages:

• Use the services of renowned experts.
• Increase the quality and improve the experience.
• Productive and effective way to manage and supervise students.
• Strengthen local research capacity and regional networking, holistic and inclusive approach, active involvement of institutions… and students themselves.
• To extend research and employment opportunities into remote, rural and hard-to-fill locations.
• Access to desirable research internships.
• Minimize supervisors’ travel time.

Challenges

• Lack of a well defined e-supervision professional code of conduct.
• Poor e-supervisor and e-supervisee technological knowhow, access to technological infrastructures.
• e-Supervision is costly.

Recommendations

• Develop an e-supervision framework.
• Define the role for e-supervisors, and the student and supervisor e-relationship.
• Assurance of quality.
• Remuneration of e-supervisors.
• Institutional collaboration on e-supervision.
• Recognition of e-supervisor work by home and beneficiary institutions.
• Capacity building for e-supervision.

Discussion

Miquel Duran: how many time can the doctoral students allocate to their PhDs, especially the ones that “need” the PhD? Mugenda: lecturers normally have time allocated for that.

Chrissie Boughey: how do we transpose the different models of supervision of the different disciplines into e-supervision? Mugenda: regarding research methods, it is a matter of finding what is actually different and what is common. And then centralize what is common and distribute or adapt what is really different.

Hilligje van’t Land: if the e-supervisor is not from the university, how does it fit with local relevance, and with local content? Will the strategy be in line with the university’s strategy? Mugenda: this is a minor problem in comparison with the amount of students that want to do a PhD and not be able to do it. And it is also a matter of binding the e-supervisor with the university.

Ismael Peña-López, lecturer and researcher, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
e-Supervision: framing the debate

We can define four stages in technology adoption:

1. During appropriation people get to know what new technologies are out there, they learn how to use them, they master them… but not necessarily use them or use them in a specific environment and for a specific purpose. E.g. learn that text editors exist, learn how to use them, but still use typewritters.
2. In the adaptation phase, old technologies are replaced by the new ones, but just to perform exactly the same tasks, routines, processes. E.g. typewritters are thrown away, but text editors are used to type the very same letters. The cost of using a new technology is clearly here an expenditure, as no major benefits appear.
3. Improvement happens when benefits begin to overrun the cost of using new technologies. Here, costs are investments that pay back in the medium and long term. E.g. text editors are used intensively allowing for thorough edition (copying, pasting, formatting, etc.), tracking changes and versions, passing documents along (by e-mail, that is, another concurring technology) so that they can be commented, reedited, etc.
4. Last, and most important, transformation implies that the whole process is though (almost) from scratch, deploying the full potential of new technologies to redesign processes and tasks. E.g. documents begin not with an original from a single person, but collaborative tools come in place (like wikis, pads or the like) where everyone can contribute at the same time, with no need for centralization, no need for preset structures, etc.

e-Supervision can be described in this framework. Thus, there is not a single definition of what e-Supervision is, but a continuum of definitions as e-Supervision itself evolves from adaptation to improvement, and from improvement to transformation (and including a phase 0 of adoption, which is by the way most needed).

1. During appropriation e-supervision is, actually, supervision. Period. Everyone is using technology, but not for supervision purposes.
2. In the adaptation e-supervision can be defined as electronic supervision as traditional tasks (meetings, reviews) are done with the help of technology: videoconferences, support of digital documents. This phase is needed because it bridges both worlds (supervision with e-supervision) but has to be quickly overcome, as the cost of the change of technology does not come with any evident benefit.
3. Improvement happens when these benefits of e-Supervision imply an evolution, an evolved supervision. Tracking changes, control version, creation of communities of practice and communities of learning within (or with-out) learning management systems… even xMOOCs can imply several opportunities for improvement of old practices.
4. Last, and most important, transformation is rethinking e-supervision (almost) from scratch. It’s about enhanced supervision, deploying all the potential of research 2.0, connectivist MOOCs, peer-to-peer assessment, e-portfolios, personal learning environments. That is, rethinking the whole research and supervision practice, now taking into account not only tools, but the concurrence of other actors, of new roles (and responsibilities

Downloads:

Prezi slides:
Peña-López, I. (2013). e-Supervision: Framing the Debate. Workshop within the LEADHER PLEDS Project at the Open Univeristy of Catalonia, 31 October 2013.

Prezi slides as PDF:
Peña-López, I. (2013). e-Supervision: Framing the Debate. Workshop within the LEADHER PLEDS Project at the Open Univeristy of Catalonia, 31 October 2013.

Hilligje van’t Land, Director, Membership and Programme Development, IAU

There is a dire need for real phds, in Africa or elsewhere, virtual or not.

There also is a need to collaborate, to innovate in the field of how to foster brand new research and how to support the new research done by PhD students.

Added to that, there is a need for research networks: it is important to note that supervision is also part of being a network.

A very important challenge is how to provide technical support, how to bring into research ethical dimensions, or how to lead the administrative changes that have to accompany the changes in research and in supervision.

But most important of all, beyond theories, we have to see how to put e-supervision into practice, to make it happen.

Marta Aymerich, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)

One of the keys of research and PhD is supervision. It is not a trivial matter and thus needs being addressed properly.

ICTs have provided very powerful in knowledge related tasks. We thus need to leverage the power of ICTs in research in general and in supervision in particular.

We need to discuss the structures in place for doctoral education.

Olive Mugenda, Vice-Chancellor, Kenyatta University (KU), Kenya

There is a dire need for research and for PhDs.

We especially need to train the trainers, people that will earn their own PhDs so that they can supervise/train others.

The whole process needs to be accountable, in general terms of performance, but especially in terms of ensuring quality.

We can’t keep the old model of supervision, we have to open up supervision.

We have to change paradigm, get out of old way of thinking and foster e-supervision.

Jaume Casals, Vice-Chancellor, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in representation of the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP)

PhDs are the jewel of the crown, thus we have to harvest them with care.

During the year 2012, the research programme on Communication and Civil Society of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute carried on a series of research seminars on Internet, net neutrality, hacker ethics and digital culture and on Internet, institutional crisis and new institutionalism — the later, coordinated by myself.

The result of that work is the recently issued working paper La reinvención de la democracia en la sociedad-red [The reinvention of democracy in the network society], coordinated by Arnau Monterde Mateo, Adrià Rodríguez and myself, and which has been published in Spanish.

I want to very sincerely thank Arnau Monterde for the opportunity he gave to me to take part and coordinate one of the seminars, and acknowledge the huge amount of work that Arnau Rodríguez devoted in putting all the pieces together. On the other hand, the final paper would not have been possible without the contributions of the participants that attended the seminars. In no particular order, and besides Arnau, Adrià and I, those were Pablo Aragón, Cristina Cullell, Débora Lanzeni, Carlos Sánchez Almeida, Javier Toret, Gala Pin, Carlos Tomás Moro, Joan Coscubiela, Gemma Galdón, Tomás Herreros, Rommy Morales, Pedro Miguel Da Palma Santos, Joan Subirats and Alicia Domínguez. A warm thank you to all of them.

Abstract

From the Arab Spring, through movement occupywallstreet or 15M it has been opened a new cycle of political network movements which propose many new elements regarding the political use of new technologies and the Internet to collective action. These new movements see the network not only as a tool or battlefield, but also as an organizational form, establishing a relationship that commonly has been linked to ethics and ways to do of hacker communities.

Moreover, the financial crisis in Europe is deepening blocking political institutions that have been building since the beginning of modernity. This crisis is expressed not only in the inability of these institutions to tackle the current economic, social and political, but also in its complicity with the mechanisms of financial dispossession. Such institutional crisis determines the need to exercise both a critical and process of invention and construction work that starts from the new technological possibilities and lessons of network movements, hacker culture and free software, which enable reinventing institutional and constitutional forms, and therefore also of democracy itself.

Download

Monterde, A., Rodríguez de Alòs-Moner, A. & Peña-López, I. (Coords.) (2013). La Reinvención de la democracia en la sociedad red. Neutralidad de la Red, ética hacker, cultura digital, crisis institucional y nueva institucionalidad. IN3 Working Paper Series, WP13-004. Barcelona: UOC-IN3.

Political behaviour and political communication

Este grupo de trabajo abarca diferentes aspectos metodológicos vinculados con la medición de comportamientos, valores y actitudes sociopolíticas, así como la repercusión que dichos aspectos pueden tener en el análisis de la relación entre ellos. En este sentido, tendrán cabida en él ponencias que incorporen elementos asociados al diseño de investigaciones empíricas, la operacionalización de conceptos, o la creación de indicadores e índices de medición tanto de comportamiento político y electoral, como de actitudes y valores sociopolíticos. Serán bienvenidos también los trabajos que traten de la adaptación de los indicadores-conceptos (y en su caso, preguntas de cuestionario) al contexto de la investigación comparativa. Tienen su espacio así mismo en este grupo otros aspectos más específicos de la metodología de encuestas tales como el impacto del modo de administración del cuestionario (CAPI; PAPI; CAWI, etc.) en la tasa de respuesta o los resultados obtenidos, los sesgos de la no respuesta parcial o total y cómo (intentar) remediarlos, y otros temas relacionados.

Who answers what and when? The effects of questionnaires in the no answer in the surveys of the CIS barometers.
Lucía Medina Lindo, Robert Lineira, Jordi Muñoz Mendoza, Guillem Rico Camps

• Analyze the effect of the design of surveys in the answers
• Assess whether the results of surveys shape opinion

The analysis goes through the people that did not answered or stated that they “do not know” to political surveys.

• Length of the question: the longer, the more no answers. Not conclusive.
• Position in the questionnaire: the later the question comes, the more no answers. Yes, and significant (tiredness effect).
• The more the options a question has as suggestions for answer, the better. Yes.
• Autonomy of the question. The more you have to know about the options, the worse. Yes.
• Central categories. They act as a harbour and make people answer less no. Yes.

Methodological problems in the measurement of the remembrance of one’s vote: the post-electoral surveys of the CIS.
Jaime Balaguer, Mónica Méndez Lago

Analyze the bias in the remembrance of one’s vote through individual data. Why is that that there are biases?

• Around 30% of people state having voted a party that they did not.

Change of option, memory (one option, other non stated), occultation.

• Index of no collaboration
• Interest in politics
• Political knowledge
• Partidism
• Ideological identity
• Moment of the decision
• Doubts about the voting option (no significant)

Conclusion: better to use the pre-electoral survey and not the post-electoral, as the post-electoral has suffered many influences and is of lower quality.

Decided or undecided. An investigation of individuals’ (in)decisions to Catalan independence
Xavier Fernández-i-Martín, Toni Rodon

Do people that answer the question about the independence of Catalonia do it honestly?

• Undecided people that dk/na: nonresponse: do not answer, item nonresponse: do now want to answer, uncommitted nonresponse, indecision
• Uncertainly about their preference: social conformity, social ambivalence
• Heterogeneity in the distribution of uncertainly and undecided

Hidden preferences:

• Abstention too high, people hiding preferences
• Spiral of silence
• Cross-pressure. People living in ”adverse” scenarios for their true options

According to the model, there is highest consistency for the “yes”, high consistency for the “no” and low consistency for the abstention. And the consistency of the “yes” is growing along time, then refuting the spiral of silence hypothesis.

Measuring tolerance towards corruption. An application of the unidimensional scaling.
Pablo Cabrera Álvarez, Danilo Serani.

What is the relevance of political corruption? There is a tolerance towards political corruption, not blaming or accepting practices ethically refuted. There are several degrees of tolerance: from tacitly accepting corrupt practices to even defending them (e.g. demonstrations in favor of corrupted politicians).
There is a cognitive dissociation where one condemns corruption while, on the other hand, some corruption is tolerated or even defended.
Analysis based on building a Likert scale of corruption tolerance.
Hypotheses:

• Social nature: Power corrupts man
• Efficacy: It does not matter whether the politician is corrupt, but that he performs well
• Indistinction: Everyone is corrupt, everyone does it.

The scaled proved significant, though the wording of the options could be affecting the final results.

The gender gap in political knowledge: is it all about guessing?
Mónica Ferrín, Marta Fraile, Gema García

Is there really a difference/gap in political knowledge between men and women? Do women really know less about politics than men? Why? Reasons in literature:

• Socialization: politics is a man thing
• Socioeconomic inequalities between men and women make them more prone to be knowledgeable in politics
• The format of questions affects the result. Men are less risk averse and usually answer. Women, more risk averse, would rather not answer than providing a wrong answer.
• Different interests and areas of knowledge.
• Other: surveyor effect, context effect, etc.

Political representation and citizen participation: whan can political theory bring to institutional reform?

En el contexto en el que nos encontramos, con una crisis económica que no solo está mostrando las debilidades e ineficiencias de nuestro sistema político, sino que comienza a afectar a su legitimación democrática, resulta imperioso revisar la organización y el funcionamiento de nuestras instituciones más básicas. Pero hacerlo exige huir de propuestas de reforma reactivas, condicionadas por la coyuntura y dirigidas a corregir malas prácticas, y a hacer un análisis de nuestras instituciones democráticas que tenga en cuenta la enorme complejidad de los procesos políticos en sistemas multi-nivel, cuyas instituciones apenas han modificado su diseño o sus fines para tener un mejor encaje en el sistema final, o para que este adquiera una mayor coherencia como un todo. Este panel tiene por objeto presentar las aportaciones teóricas que pueden ser relevantes para orientar globalmente esas reformas y mejorar la calidad de la democracia, centradas en la renovación del discurso de la representación política y la participación ciudadana (Anskersmit, Saward, Warren, Mansbridge, etc.) y su repercusión institucional (rol de los parlamentos, mecanismos deliberativos, representatividad de los grupos de interés, etc.).

Participative Democracy in local Mexican governments: the country capital
Ernesto Casas Cárdenas.

The republican perspective approaches negotiation and agreements as endogenous.
Deliberation requires:

• Equity in socioeconomic terms.
• Equality before the law and sharing of values.

Hypothesis: Success of participation is related to the commitment of the authorities with the agreements achieved.
Informal relationships between citizens, civic organizations and authorities have a key role in relationships, but can logically hurt formality.
Conclusions:

• Informality and scepticism of political parties are important barriers to the development of participation.

Liberal and democratic? The participative theory of civic neorepublicanism.
Rafael Vázquez García, Aleksandra Sojka

Can civic neorepublicanism integrate the values of liberalism and of communitarism?
It seems that after WWII democracy is not working: is too much formalist, infested with protocol, non-participative. Can we bring participation back into democracy?

• Less participation weakens democracy.
• Civil society as a fosterer.

Civic neorepublicanism:

• Plurality of groups
• Autonomy between different spheres of life
• Publicity in interaction
• Privacy as space of moral development of individuals
• Necessary legality that enables its functioning.
• The health of democracies relies on moral commitments.
• Volunteer associations.

Obedience to law has to be accompanied with moral values and strong criticism: civic disobedience is, thus, highly democratic.

Democracy, crisis, alternatives and the reproduction of the patriarchate
Jone Martínez Palacios.

Has participative democracy taken into account the gender issue?
The social contract that builds societies and democracies has surely not taken into account the feminine factor but, on the contrary, is reproducing the patriarchate of society. In this sense, democracy is not in crisis, but <em>was born</em> in crisis.
It now seems that there is an ongoing regeneration of democracy in which a new contract is being drawn and agreed, led not by the three democratic powers but led by the fourth power of civic participation.
The problem is that most participatory or deliberative democracy experiences are not explicitly addressing the issue of a sexual contract.
Proposals

• Link the economic debate to the democratic debate.
• Deepen the quality of democracy, including a notion of gender.
• Take women as full citizens.

What is represented. A renewed approach to the concept of representation.
Gonzalo Cavero Cano.

Context:

• Diversity of values
• Multilevel systems
• Giving away of sovereignty
• More actor in the political arena
• Elected and non-elected actors

Weaknesses of representation:

• Distance between representatives and citizens
• Centrality of the representative vs. Importance of what is represented
• Non-electoral representation

Changes:

• Complex institutional system
• Difficult accountability
• Globalization and ICTs
• Multiple political arenas and models of governance
• The “simple mechanism” of representation becomes a “series of complex practices” (Lord & Pollak, 2013)

So, besides the crisis of representation, is there also a crisis of legitimacy of the model?
Does not seem so.
The constructivist turn of representation (E. Severs)

• Centred in the communication processes
• Enables studying extra-parliamentary actors.
• Based on scheme of principal – agent – representation.
• Representation is more seen as an event, a process, rather than a “moment”
• This model puts into the equation of representation actors that were usually labelled as participation or civil society.

Conclusions:

• More a crisis of performance, more than a crisis of model
• Concept of representation is in tension
• The constructivist approach can contribute to explain a more complex reality
• “When we become more familiar with institutions and we cease to question the justifications of their existence, they atrophied by disuse”

Yes, they do represent us? Contemporary challenges to the idea of political representation in Spain.
Pedro Abelllán Artacho.

Two big issues in Spain that challenge representation: the 15M Indignados movement, and the Catalan independentist movement. Possible approaches to these phenomena.
15M:

• We want representation
• We want “complete” democracy
• We have representation, but “those ones” do not represent us
• In this model we cannot be represented

We need an idea of representation vs. Representative government
Complex sovereignty and will: apply Quebec to Catalonia
Catalan independentism:

• Recognition and presence, now
• I am Catalan because I speak Catalan / live in Catalonia
• If you are Catalan you are not Spanish
• They do not want us

Identity as a basis for democracy.
Application to the 15M: identity between representatives and represented citizens.