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THE OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING (ODL) IN AFRICA IN THE DIGITAL AGE

THE OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING (ODL) IN AFRICA IN THE DIGITAL AGE. A KEYNOTE SPEECH DELIVERED BY PROF. TOLLY.S.A. MBWETTE. Presented By. Prof. Tolly.S.A. Mbwette Professor of Environmental Engineering, CoET, UDSM. President Pan African University (PAU) Council,

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THE OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING (ODL) IN AFRICA IN THE DIGITAL AGE

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  1. THE OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING (ODL) IN AFRICA IN THE DIGITAL AGE A KEYNOTE SPEECH DELIVERED BY PROF. TOLLY.S.A. MBWETTE

  2. Presented By Prof. Tolly.S.A. Mbwette Professor of Environmental Engineering, CoET, UDSM. President Pan African University (PAU) Council, Immediate Past Vice Chancellor, OUT & President African Council for Distance Education (ACDE). E-mails: tsambwette@gmail.com or tsambwette@yahoo.com 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  3. PRESENTATION OUTLINE • BACKGROUND • INTRODUCTION • EVOLUTION OF MODES OF DELIVERY OF ODL AND ITS IMPACT IN AFRICA • WHO SHOULD EMBRACE ONLINE LEARNING, OERs & MOOCs IN AFRICA? • CAPACITY BUILDING NEEDS & DIGITAL FLUENCY IN AFRICA 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  4. PRESENTATION OUTLINE CONTD… IMPORTANCE OF ODL INSTITUTIONS UNDERTAKING RESEARCH IN ODL DELIVERY & PUBLISHING RESULTS THE IMPACT OF THE DIFFERENT ODL DELIVERY MODES IN AFRICA IMPORTANCE OF MAINSTREAMING QUALITY ASSURANCE IN ODL DELIVERY FORESEEN GLOBAL ROLE OF ODL IN PEACE BUILDING AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  5. PRESENTATION OUTLINE Contd…. IMPORTANCE OF SUSTAINABILITY AND RESOURCE MOBILISATION IN ODL DELIVERY CONCLUSIONS SOME RECOMMENDATIONS 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  6. BACKGROUND Open Learning refers to a way of studying that allows anyone to learn where and when they want, to receive and send written work by mail or e mail (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/business-english/open-learning, vis. 20.10.2013) 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  7. BacgroundContd… What is important is that the common thread of Open Learning is the focus on the needs of the learner as perceived by the learner. Distance education or Distance learning is generally defined to be the education of learners who may or may not always be physically present at designated learning centres (para-phrased from Wikipedia). 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  8. Background Contd… The United States Distance Learning Association, defines distance learning to be “The acquisition of knowledge and skills through mediated information and instruction encompassing all technologies and other forms of learning at a distance” (Margareth Rouse, 2016). 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  9. Background Contd… Blended learning simply refers to “learning models that combines traditional classroom lectures with e-learning solutions’ (wikibooks, vis.04.09.2016). edutechwiki considers Open and Distance Learning to be synonymous to e-learning and is nowadays considered to be “the most viable means for broadening educational access while improving the quality of education, advocating peer to peer collaboration and giving the learners a greater sense of autonomy and responsibility for learning” (vis. 04.09.2016) 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  10. BackgroudContd…. edutechwiki considers Open and Distance Learning to be synonymous to e-learning and is nowadays considered to be “the most viable means for broadening educational access while improving the quality of education, advocating peer to peer collaboration and giving the learners a greater sense of autonomy and responsibility for learning” (vis. 04.09.2016) 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  11. INTRODUCTION Digital Era, Shepherd (2004) stated that such an era is characterized by technology that increases the speed and breadth of knowledge turnover upon which state sustainability depends on within the economy and the society. According to literature (Wikipedia, 2016), Digital literacy is defined to be the knowledge, skills and behaviours used in a broad range of digital devices that are networked rather than computer devices. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  12. INTRODUCTION Contd… The best academicians will be those who have full digital literacy. A staff member with digital fluency is considered to be one who has a high level of digital skills and experience in exploiting well, a variety of digital devices. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  13. Introduction Contd…. The author takes online learning as a method of learning and delivery that heavily relies on two-way exploitation of computers, networks, electronic platforms and a host of mobile devices including cameras to facilitate learners and instructors to access various digital materials as well as to deliver worked assignments, tests and exams to the course instructors that can be automatically or manually assessed. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  14. Introduction Contd…. MOOCs are large scale open online courses that are offered by various individual institutions as well as groups of institutions for various purposes. They are available as for profit or non-profit courses and they do not always lead to award of qualifications (https://www.coursera.org/ vis. 04.12.2016; https://www.edX.org/edX/, vis. 04.09.2016; https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/online-learning/, vis. 04.09.2016, https:www.blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/, vis. 04.12.2016). 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  15. Introduction Contd…. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (ibid) defines OER as “Teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others without profit” (emphasis is mine). 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  16. Evolution of Modes of ODL Delivery The coming of the digital era has led to major evolution in the modes of delivery of ODL education that has evolved from the initial dominance of the correspondence mode to the current complex set of modes of delivery guided by the fast developments and dynamic exploitation of the Information and Communication Technologies. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  17. Evolution of Modes of ODL Delivery Contd…. Use of desk tops in computer laboratories look already very archaic in favour of the wireless environment and enhanced use of a variety of mobile devices in college or university set ups. The flexible use of satellite communication and existence of several marine cables linking the entire world as well as effective exploitation of the solar energy has made delivery of ODL education to be much easier. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  18. Evolution of Modes of ODL Delivery Contd… ODL education is nowadays within the reach of millions of citizens of the entire world, regardless of one’s wealth or distance from urban centres i.e. inclusive education. The importance of print media in ODL cannot be under-estimated where printing costs are manageable. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  19. Evolution of ODL Modes of Delivery Contd… Digital resources are increasingly the most preferred even under many operational constraints. Conventional universities are adopting the blended mode of T&L. Some conventional universities offer the same curriculae in blended and distance modes. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  20. Evolution of Modes of ODL Delivery Contd… The most extreme delivery mode is the one where a learner can access ODL education 100% online with all its inherent challenges associated with cheating or plagiarism particularly when such a course is a MOOC that has enrolled millions of learners from all over the world. Use of ODL delivery mode has become nearly ubiquitous from pre-primary to universities 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  21. Evolution of Modes of ODL Delivery Contd… Opportunities - African learners accessing a huge number of OERs that can be accessed at will and with no need for fees except where they wish to register for accredited programmes. Non-African learners can access high quality OERs originating from Africa like those prepared by African Universities and AVU or the TESSA electronic resources. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  22. Evolution of the ODL Delivery Modes Contd…. Challenges - Existence of poor quality electronic resources, - High costs of internet and security against cheating, - Unreliable supply of electricity, - Mass failures in MOOCs courses, - Poor delivery of ODL courses by conventional universities. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  23. WHO SHOULD EMBRACE ONLINE LEARNING, OERs & MOOCs The following five groups of stakeholders can be identified: Lecturers/teachers or Learning facilitators, Instructional technology designers including technicians, All academicians who hold administrative duties like Heads of Departments, Deans/Directors, Deputy Vice Chancellors or The Vice Chancellor and equivalent positions, The learners/students, Policy decision makers. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  24. Who Should embrace Online learning,OERs & MOOCs Contd… While categories No.3 and 5 of the stakeholders listed above only need a reasonable understanding of the benefits of the three delivery techniques, the remaining categories of stakeholders need to have substantial practical skills in exploitation of multi-media technologies. However, for older academicians, their juniors or PhD students be trained instead of wasting efforts to impart such skills on them. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  25. CAPACITY BLDG. NEEDS IN ODL & DIGITAL FLUENCY IN AFRICA In order to ensure that the importance and awareness of the role of ODL in educational delivery is guaranteed at all levels, there is a need to build capacity of the different stakeholders in Africa as ably realized by SADC countries through the SADC ODL project that was established in 2008 with funding support of the African Development Bank (SADC, 2016). 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  26. CAPACITY BLDG. NEEDS IN ODL & DIGITAL FLUENCY IN AFRICA Contd… A holistic national or regional capacity building programme ought to cover the policy developers, decision makers, the development partners, the private sector, the potential learners as well as the general public. This SADC project, realized the need to build ODL capacity at all levels starting with vocational education all the way to university levels. It only missed pre-primary and primary education. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  27. CAPACITY BLDG. NEEDS IN ODL & DIGITAL FLUENCY IN AFRICA Contd… At SADC level, ODL policy was developed and implemented by individual nations and many efforts were taken to educate the policy decision makers and implementors as well as the general public through various public education programmes including extensive use of the social media. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  28. CAPACITY BLDG. NEEDS IN ODL & DIGITAL FLUENCY IN AFRICA Contd… What was supposed to follow the initial capacity building efforts should have really been to build ODL capacity of all the teacher colleges as well as all teachers from pre-primary to university level. Overall, the project was able to attain the two project objectives that were focused on building a regional ODL policy and strategic planning and the second of capacity building for ODL. The experiences of SADC countries ought to be shared and replicated in the rest of the African Regional Economic Communities 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  29. CAPACITY BLDG. NEEDS IN ODL & DIGITAL FLUENCY IN AFRICA Contd… The other important need for Africa is the necessity to build capacity for digital fluency amongst the African academicians in order to ensure they can cope effectively with the new students who are apparently more digitally competent than their lecturers. Hence the current efforts of ACDE to develop an African MOOC on digital skills fluency is very timely. It is my sincere hope that during this conference we shall get updates on how close is ACDE or its institutions to offer the MOOC. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  30. Importance of ODL Institutions Doing Research & Publishing on ODL Delivery Unless the African ODL community produces research results that indicate that the ODL delivery mode guarantees quality, those who benefit from discouraging the general society from being admitted or registered in the ODL education mode may thrive. If African ODL institutions do not undertake research, who else will do? 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  31. Importance of ODL Institutions Doing Research & Publishing on ODL Delivery Contd… It is necessary for me to stress that the research findings have to be shared in form of reports as well as quality publications that would provide a substantial amount of evidence about the suitability of this mode of delivery as proven by the UK Open University on a number of occasions when UK or Open University Netherlands students surveys have been undertaken (Alan Tait, H. Mulder) . 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  32. Impacts of the Different ODL Delivery Modes in Africa At the moment, most African universities that are regarded to be using the residential or conventional mode do not use face to face delivery as the sole mode. They combine lectures with e-learning delivered through a variety of electronic platforms mostly based on free open source softwares. Most conventional universities are now delivering education using blended learning as defined earlier on or the so called hybrid delivery systems. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  33. Impacts of the Different ODL Delivery Modes in Africa Contd.. Because of the high cost associated with the exclusive use of commercial electronic platforms like Blackboard or WebCT, most African universities prefer to use the free open source electronic platforms like various versions of MOODLE that are more sustainable and easier to customize. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  34. Impacts of the Different ODL Delivery Modes in Africa Contd.. Most African ODL universities like UNISA, NOUN, OUT, Open University of Sudan are at different stages of utilizing digital resources that are still supplemented with limited print media. These universities also benefit from accessing various OER repositories like the one maintained by SAIDE (https://www.saide.org.za; vis. 22nd Feb. 2017). Another initiative to provide access to OER is titled Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) which is a network of teaching institutions in Africa from about 12 African countries and teacher educators. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  35. Impacts of the Different ODL Delivery Modes in Africa Contd.. The AVU Portal, titled OER@AVU (https://www.oer.avu.org or https://www.org/avuweb/en/ both vis. 22nd Febr. 2017) is another African authored source of mainly scientific OERs that is most accessible to even non-African learners that confirms that Africa can indeed be an origin for good content. These materials are available in English, French and Portuguese. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  36. Impacts of the Different ODL Delivery Modes in Africa Contd.. Efforts of the ACDE-TCC to collaboratively identify common gaps in OER and research has led to the current efforts to develop a joint OER on “Digital Skills for the 21st Century” as spearheaded by OUT and supported by SAIDE. It is envisaged that this will soon lead to the first quality MOOC of the ACDE. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  37. Impacts of the Different ODL Delivery Modes in Africa Contd.. The author is aware of a number of courses and/or entire programmes that are now delivered as online courses from OUT, UNISA, NOUN and OUS. The course programmes accredited by The Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) at OUT that are delivered fully online for some time include the Masters in Curriculum Design and Development (CDD) that are offered globally in collaboration with UNESCO effective July 2016. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  38. Impacts of the Different ODL Delivery Modes in Africa Contd.. Online Masters degree programmes offered by OUT to international learners from Africa include The Masters degree in ICT Law as well as the Masters degree in International Criminal Justice just to mention a few. Other African online qualifications that can be earned through hybrid courses with majority of courses offered online include those offered jointly by UTAMU in Uganda in collaboration with MUST. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  39. Impacts of the Different ODL Delivery Modes in Africa Contd.. Another African university that offers similar fully online courses in form of MOOCs is Wits University in South Africa (http://www.wits.ac.za, vis. 23.06.2016). The university claimed to be the first African university to offer a suite of online courses that were to be available over a period of three years starting with 3 MOOCs that could be accessed by logging on to www.edx.org/school/witsx. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  40. Impacts of the Different ODL Delivery Modes in Africa Contd.. Most other online courses that are offered by universities that can be accessed by African learners are from Europe, USA, Canada, Australia and Newzealand. A number of upcoming Asian universities also offer some online programmes although only a few offer programmes in English and these are mainly from Malaysia, Indonesia, Hongkong, Singapore, S.Korea, Thailand and China. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  41. Impacts of the Different ODL Delivery Modes in Africa Contd.. It is interesting to note that to date, there is no known popular MOOC originating from Africa and we may ask ourselves why not and for how long do we have to wait for this to come as questioned by Oyo & Kalema? (2014). It has to be admitted though that, use of electronic platforms and online modes of delivery in Africa is still facing many operational problems associated with the unreliability of power supplies thus necessitating designers of electronic platforms to design systems that can run in both online and offline mode (popularly called MOMO for mobile MOODLE). 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  42. Impacts of the Different ODL Delivery Modes in Africa Contd.. African universities must exploit well the solar energy in order to deal with the macro-problems that create difficult working conditions. Furthermore, the high cost of bandwidth is still an impediment to many universities. The poor service delivery of some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or companies offering cloud computing services in remote regions in the geographically big African countries. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  43. Importance of Mainstreaming QA in ODL Delivery It necessary to acknowledge the existence of erroneous beliefs by many genuinely ignorant stakeholders that ODL education is of inferior quality. Reasons for such beliefs range from their sheer ignorance, negative mindset or simply non-exposure to ODL delivery and hence the importance of having a comprehensive quality assurance framework guiding its delivery cannot be overstressed. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  44. Importance of Mainstreaming QA in ODL Delivery Contd… It is necessary to ensure that quality assurance and control framework is mainstreamed in all outputs from ODL delivery universities or courses delivered in ODL mode as part of their organizational culture. The fact that ACDE has developed a comprehensive quality assurance toolkit since 2012 that can be effectively deployed to assit universities to check and improve their compliance to it as an internal review process followed by an external review process by peer reviewers. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  45. Importance of Mainstreaming QA in ODL Delivery Contd… This toolkit can be currently accessed online through the website of ACDE, UNISA and NOUN (http://www.acdeafrica.org), http://www.unisa.ac.za), (http://www.noun.edu.ng), respectively. The ACDE Quality Assurance Agency (AQAA) is currently hosted by NOUN. The toolkit was verified by an international panel of experts in ODL since the year 2012. In 2015, the Executive Board of ACDE approved the ACDE quality assurance framework. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  46. Foreseen Global Role of ODL in Peace Building & Conflict Resolution In areas where peace is elusive, ODL can be used to reach the sparcely populated society that are in conflict at the same time with similar information through public education programmes that promote the critical need for peace to prevail if sustained development is to be attained. The ODL mode can be used to bring about reconciliation or conflict resolution without the need for any parties to travel to and from the coordination office 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  47. Foreseen Global Role of ODL in Peace Building & Conflict Resolution Contd… The ease with which one community can be able to communicate with the other at no cost by using skype or whatsup, twiter, instagram or video conferencing is an attractive feature that ought to be encouraged and fully exploited. The cost-effectiveness of exploitation of ICT will also minimize the unit costs of provision of communication services in sparcely populated communities. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  48. Sustainability & Resource Mobilisation in ODL Delivery The use of ODL mode of delivery demands continuity of the affordable services that will not act as a disincentive to the learners if not guaranteed. However, it will be necessary to exploit ICT to reduce the cost of accessing higher education by the learners as a result of the emerging associated efficiency gains. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  49. Sustainability & Resource Mobilisation in ODL Delivery Contd.. It will be necessary for African university leaderships in ODL delivery institutions (be they public or private) to undertake a number of innovative ways of mobilizing additional resources rather than relying on Government subsidies or grants alone in order to ensure the sustainability of their operations. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

  50. Sustainability & Resource Mobilisation in ODL Delivery Contd.. In other words, in addition to the traditional higher education roles of teaching, research and publications and community service in form of public service or consultancy services; ODL institutions are challenged to be more creative or imaginative to think out of the box in terms of knowing how the institution can reap maximum returns whenever an opportunity occurs. 5th ACDE Conference Khartoum, Sudan March 2017

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