Increased knowledge, skills, practices, and resources are what communities and organisations need to survive, adapt, and thrive in a fast-changing environment. This process is known as capacity-building. Therefore, a capacity-building programme is inevitable, especially for a university which practises an online distance learning approach like Open University Malaysia (OUM). The capacity-building programme at OUM involves not only the faculty members but also the non-academic staff, for instance, staff of the Media Team.
In implementing the first phase of the capacity-building programme, there are three focus groups currently; each group consists of around eight members. Each focus group receives a learning module chapter by chapter. The six chapters are learning theories, pedagogical theories, learning design, content creation, learning analytics, and creation of learning objects.
As this is self-instructional learning, these focus group members need to read each chapter and engage in an activity at the end of the chapter. As for chapter one, they need to provide their feedback through a reflective journal. Their feedback help enhances the content of the learning materials. The output of subsequent chapters is a pedagogical framework (chapter two), learning design (chapter three), design of learning materials (chapter four) and suggestions on the use of learning analytics (chapter five).
During the 6th session discussion, the participants expressed their opinions and feedback from their own perspectives and understanding, especially content creation and designing and developing open educational resource (OER) using Canva software. The participants also learn how to license their OER using Creative Common Licences. They participated activey and contributed brilliant ideas and suggestions.
Recommendations from the participants are used to enhance the learning module. The focus groups will produce case writing in the final session as the outcome of the whole capacity-building programme. Subsequent focus groups (4 and 5) have begun their sessions. These groups (4-10) will have lesser face-to-face sessions and the activities will be gradually redesigned to allow self-study and self-assessment. The programme for the focus groups is expected to be completed by April 2023.
Revised material will used to conduct four workshops for the remaining academic staff using the second model that is based on Blended Learning Mode.