Designing Context-Responsive Online Learning: the case of a postgraduate transnational teacher development programme in challenging contexts

This paper examines how context-responsive online learning can be designed through participatory, co-creative approaches in transnational education. Drawing on the development of a fully funded Postgraduate Certificate in Online Learning & Teaching for educators in Sub-Saharan Africa, the paper explores how local knowledge, lived experience and contextual constraints can inform pedagogical design of a UK-hosted transnational education programme aimed for learners in Africa. The paper discusses co-creation strategies used to design a transnational online programme, starting with a co-creation workshop involving 27 educators from four countries. Using an adapted curriculum design method, participants collaboratively storyboarded an online module, generating artefacts that reflect their pedagogical priorities. The paper uses the preference for clear, repetitive learning structures, asynchronous discussion as a flexible mode of engagement, limited use of synchronous seminars and concise, modular content that were surfaced during the co-creation workshop to argue that dominant models of online learning require re-examination while demonstrating how co-creation can support more inclusive and contextually relevant pedagogies for online and transnational programmes.