Designing for and with diversity: Widening access through radical flexibility and intentional equitable hospitality
Daniela Gachago (Presenting), Shanali Govender (Presenting), Christine Immenga (Non-Presenting), Nadine Hamman (Non-presenting)
Heltasa, 14th of October 2025
Overview
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Link to slides
Widening Access imperative / Microcredentialing in HE
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What and how should learning designers learn? (Heggard & Dickson-Dean, 2022)
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WHAT IS PGBOLD?
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Radical Flexibility
“Radical flexibility is not just about making the logistics of education practices easier or more flexible (e.g., providing students with a menu of assignments to choose from), but means taking seriously the nature and purpose of learning itself at the fundamental level of human life, where human life is understood to be enmeshed relationally with all that goes on around, with, and through it. In other words, radical flexibility is a backdoor into thinking not just about how to deliver education equitably, but to ask what kind of education, what kind of university, do we want—which is in turn to ask, what kind of life, what kind of future do we want, and for whom?” (2020, p. 852)
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Intentional Equitable Hospitality
Intentionally Equitable Hospitality or IEH (Bali et al, 2019) suggests that the facilitators of a space view themselves as hosts, responsible for welcoming every participant, questioning for whom the space might be hospitable/welcoming and for whom it might not be. It also entails setting intentions for equity and recognizing when our efforts do not work for certain groups.
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Radical flexibility and intentional equitable hospitality:
Structural examples
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PGBOLD
Cluster 1:
Learning Design: Practices, Process or Emerging Field?
1.2: Design thinking process
1.1: Introduction to learning design
1.3 Learning design models
Cluster 2:
Learning design for Social Justice
2.1: Designing for Social Justice
2.2: Co-creation in learning design
2.3: Becoming a Learning Design Professional (RPL)
2.4: Learning analytics
Cluster 3:
Designing digital habitats
3.1: Platforms and tools
3.2: Designing and assessment
3.3: Producing online content
3.4: Facilitating online
3.5: Designing with AI
Cluster 4:
Critical and Caring Reflective Perspectives on Learning Design
4.1: Learning Design Intervention: Design and Development
4.2: Learning Design Intervention: Evaluation and Quality Assurance
4.3: Learning Design Intervention: Showcasing Critical Reflexivity
1.4: Project management
1.5 : Learning design in practice
THE BIG SHAPE OF BOLD
Orientation (no credit - required for all)
Four clusters
12 short courses (120 credits)
Some compulsory / some mandatory
Cluster 4 can only be taken by PGDIP participants and has to be taken last
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STACKING COURSES
Radical flexibility on course level: intentional equitable hospitality
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Entry scenarios
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Radical flexibility and intentional equitable hospitality:
Pedagogical examples
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An understanding of diversity (SG)
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Making diversity visible: From personas to course buddies
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Krish - RPL
Context / Design Challenge
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Design Challenge: 20 portuguese-speaking participants from the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo have expressed their interest in joining the short course Learning Design Models last minute. They will each pay the short course fee (5500 ZAR per person). These participants are UEM lecturers across various disciplines. They also vary in age. They have access to a computer and internet but have various degrees of english language proficiency. Also, they are new to BOLD and very likely to the field of learning design. How can we redesign the short course to accommodate these extra participants? Think of limitations (ie time, budget, technology, language, facilitation)
Design Dash Solutions
translation of materials/resources
portuguese speaking facilitators
different onboarding spaces/meetings
shared spaces and parallel spaces (online/offline)
iterative feedback loops
choice
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Take home message
When designing programmes and courses, we need to think about creating conditions that enable diversity to be welcome and to flourish:
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Pomisa country report 2023, p. 21
link to slides
Take home message
Need for radical flexibility as an overarching framework / aspiration for the course facilitators
IEH for the nitty gritty design
Need for solidarity:
Scarcity mentality
Creating empathy
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References
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Thank You
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For more information, contact PGBold@uct.ac.za or visit cilt.uct.ac.za/bold
Funded by UCT Formal Online Education Project (UFO)
Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT). (2024). Introduction to Generative AI. (CC-BY-NC 4.0)