COVID continues to have a far-reaching impact on our daily lives, from how we socialise and interact to how we learn, study and work. The university sector has been impacted perhaps more than most in terms of how teaching and learning are structured, devised, delivered and assessed.
We’ve recently completed a project for the Association of Commonwealth Universities and the British Council on the Digital University in Africa, assessing the role and impact of quality assurance frameworks on digital HE in Kenya and Nigeria. Not surprisingly, COVID featured large as a driver for online and blended learning, but the project also took in a wide range of others issues, stakeholder input and research to capture the breadth and diversity of this fast-evolving sector.
Multifaceted research
Working with our partners in Maseno University, Kenya and University of Ibadan, Nigeria, we surveyed a representative sample of HEIs across both countries, identifying and analysing digital policies where they existed, and harvesting key baseline data on how digital teaching and learning are managed. We moved on to develop a suite of case studies on digital delivery and quality assessment, drawing on experiences both of HEIs and of the ministries and HE agencies in both countries. The resulting report and recommendations were validated through our four online roundtables, involving HEIs, VCs and senior practitioners and policy-makers.
What we found
“One of the biggest setbacks to digital learning is how academic staff perceive online learning to be because we all have different understandings of what online learning should be undertaken. A number would think having a Zoom meeting is just online learning... but there is more to it than that.”
Professor Jackson Too, Commission for University Education, Kenya
Although serving different and diverse student populations within differing contexts and structures, there were many areas of crossover and shared experience across Kenya and Nigeria, notably examples of great practice in the digital sphere which were not widely known or disseminated. COVID had been identified as a catalyst for progressing new online and blended learning policies and frameworks at national level – these are currently under development, building on previous eLearning and Open and Distance Learning (ODEL) guidelines. It was also noted that digital teaching and learning were dependent on staff capacity and confidence to adapt their teaching to new delivery methods, alongside the need to overcome resistance to change. And a crucial point was that adopting digital to widen access could potentially risk excluding those without easy access to data, equipment and power.
Watch this space
The conversation will continue. We are really excited about the development of new eLearning policies in both Kenya and Nigeria which will help HEIs take forward this vital work. We will post more as these documents, and the final Digital University in Africa report, become available.
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