ODeL Research: Beyond the Usual Suspects
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Invited presentation to the August 2022 Unisa ODeL conference for the theme: Emerging Research Approaches in Education. When people think about ODeL, they tend to think about the different implications for teaching and learning, especially in relation to the move to online learning rather than, for example, the implications for ODeL research or for ODeL researchers. Research in ODeL must address must explore some issue and must also address some challenges which are unique to the field. In general, researchers should make use of a wider variety of research strategies from different fields of practice to explore distance education or open and distance learning provision. As COL has noted in several presentations, technology has become central both to what and how we teach but also to how we gather and interpret data. So, for both teaching and learning research in ODL, we need to address issues related to continually striving to bridge the digital divide, to ensure quality in all that we do, and to build the capacity of our staff both as teachers and as researchers.