anticipating intellectual property (IP) difficulties. The University of Cape Town concluded fairly cumbersome agreements with these institutions, allowing for use and modification of materials. From 2009 onwards we became involved in accelerated OER developments at UCT and in Africa, led, interestingly enough, by the same University of Michigan. With greater institutional support at UCT for OER materials development, we embarked on the process of rendering our materials suitable for placement on the open content pages of the UCT website. At this point we became aware that many of the materials we had inserted into our course disks had to be removed or replaced with hyperlinks which the students needed to access for themselves — and with greater difficulty, given bandwidth constraints — in order to obtain IP-compliant materials. This was a time-consuming task and progress was slow. Updating materials on disk and changing defunct hyperlinks required constant vigilance and effort. Feedback received from students was an important trigger for these changes. Rewriting webpages, done mainly by one person (myself), was time-consuming, unremunerated work, due to the absence of a specific budget. Residual connectivity problems with students in other African countries were persistent. Enthusiasm for the new mode of teaching was not universal amongst teachers. Student calibre varied from intake to intake. During the ensuing two-year cycles we experienced variable engagement as the law of thirds applied, with the top third actively contributing, the middle third passively lurking, and the bottom third never engaging. Much administrative cajoling was necessary, based on electronic performance tracking to pinpoint problems with both teachers and students. Some of the teaching staff were not motivated, and forum discussions for their topics did not materialise in a timely manner or at all, and were deemed unsatisfactory. There was no dramatic improvement in student catchment area, enrolment numbers or quality and performance. Workload increased substantially for staff, with many more administrative demands to keep up participation levels. The amount of material provided expanded exponentially in breadth and depth, and students had difficulty absorbing it, despite its design being aimed to facilitate a less detailed first-level reading, with optional links to deeper and more varied materials. There was a sense, particularly amongst the specialist trainee students, that the materials they were required to master were unbounded. For busy staff at a South African research university, the extra administrative teaching burden involved with daily online interactions compared with limited, compact, weeklong block teaching proved insupportable and unpopular. Modular learning materials were used as stand-alone courses or as components of programmes within and outside the academic
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