::eLearning Fundi::

James

ROI of eLearning II
In November 2006, I posted the first section on ROI of eLearning, and posted some questions on why getting financial quantifications on gains that can be attributed to the investment on eLearning especially in Higher Education.
Recently, a JISC funded initiative continued to define and enumerate “tangible benefits” of eLearning that could be used as an indicative measure of ROI. The benefits are in a report entitled: . Among the tangible benefits identified in the report are:

• Effect on learning (e.g. context, style, insight and reflective practice)
• Effect on exam results
• Effect on student personal development (e.g. skills, employability, confidence)
• Student satisfaction with e-learning (e.g. effect on motivation, attendance and enjoyment, as shown in national survey, institutional survey, module evaluation, focus groups, or other)
• Innovation in teaching, learning and assessment (e.g. stimulus to creative approaches)
• Influence on educational research
• Staff satisfaction with e-learning
• Effect on staff personal development (e.g. skills, employability, confidence)
• Influence on recruitment (students or staff; e.g. through greater accessibility; opening up new markets)
• Influence on retention (e.g. students or staff)
• Influence on policy (e.g. institutional, faculty/school, departmental, or other extra- institutional body)
• Effect on resources (e.g. effect on cost of delivery, time, applying full economic costing to teaching and learning)
• Modifications to learning spaces (e.g. libraries, wireless networks, informal learning spaces)
• Effect on management of learning assets (e.g. institutional IP, repositories)
• Effect on a social justice agenda (e.g. widening participation, provision of space for consideration of differing or challenging perspectives).

I am yet to read the whole report but as I do, more questions that I asked in 2006 still linger. How for instance do you tell the difference in effects on learning that are as a result of eLearning? And not, say, as a result of student’s personal initiative, extrinsic motivation (e.g. having to get a job promotion after completion of a course), what is the effects of learners’ innovativeness when it comes to using technology tools that can be attributed to effects on learning? Can we measure and ascertain that good grades in an exam can be attributed to the use of eLearning only? Hopefully, I will get insights or partial answers or convincing arguments on this and more questions as I read the the report.

Tags: eLearning Returns | eLearning | Higher education | Investment | JISC | Quantifying education | Rate of return | rate of return on investment | ROI | Tangible benefits | Technology | university

James

This week there are two articles on the funding of Higher Education (HE) that have caught my attention. One of the articles talk of a professor who has just discovered a “Better way to cut up of the pie” in South Africa, while the other one talks of a noble way of “Paying universities to lower their standards” in Italy. What is particularly interesting, Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, the Vice Chancellor of one University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa considers it pretence in the government approach of seeing the 23 universities in South Africa as the same and using the same blurred vision to dictate their kind of funding. He advocates for the recognition of the “different histories, different capacities, different resources, and different visions and missions” each of the 23 universities in funding them.

What is intriguing is his argument for more funding for Humanities than science in South African universities. (This is not only a surprise because he is of a medical background, but also for the prominence science is being given for the economic development in Africa. I would argue also, given the AIDS scourge a person of his background would advocate for more funding for medical research especially in HIV/AIDS and TB). That is not to say that humanities (or social sciences) are lesser than the natural sciences. Indeed his proposal looks more proactive than reactive on one angle – that we need to first deal with our social and individual needs before we turn onto other areas like science. That is not to say I agree with his point of view. I would add that South Africa as a country as without doubt the rest of Africa need a proactive approach to the funding of projects and by extension higher education. That is, our reason for funding more humanities projects than science and technology projects in higher education should not be based on factors like the number of Nobel prizes we have in humanities as compared to sciences. Neither should it be pegged on the areas that we are good at, we need to explore new and diverse galaxies to find if there can be better life.

Just because South Africa is good in “international mediation, non-racism, reconciliation, justice, equity and even xenophobia” we should focus all our funding there. In fact, we can use that as a step towards exploring other areas like sciences or even medical research that is of betterment of the citizenry of this country and Africa as a whole. What the old professor seemed to ignore is that, despite what we can achieve in humanities, at the end of the day the “hungry child is going to aim to become a great scientist” not because there is lots of humanities in universities, but because there is food. In a time like his where everyone in the world has been alerted of a looming food shortage (although some are saying is artificial and speculative while others attribute it to the use of foodstuff in fuel/power generation), I would have expected the professor to advocate for some funding in food and agricultural research to feed the “hungry child”. Humanities won’t feed the child. In addition, it is time we changed the meaning of struggle from the mere creation of “a humane and just society... largely [based] on humanities”. Rather, we should transform the struggle to creating opportunities for the populace. I am yet to see a humane and just society where a section of it is destitute and hungry. While the iconography, native knowledge (and I may add wisdom), and unique history should be explored further, wide and deep, it should not be at the expense of science and technology. Well maybe I did miss a point.

In Italy, the economics are working. Universities (just like in SA incidentally) get subsidies from government based on number of graduates who “pass” through a university system. In this system, government “funds allocated to a university increase with the total number of full-time equivalent students (FTE), which is defined as the ratio between the number of exams passed and the number of exams that students should have taken.” The major concern of this approach is the allure of making more money by lowering academic standards. This especially becomes a problem because all universities are meant to be autonomous and offering their own examinations. In fact, as Professors Manuel F. Bagues and Mauro Sylos Labini and Ms Natalia Zinovyeva report, “graduates from universities with a high relative number of FTE students tend to do significantly worse in the labour market.” While this might be attributed to the high number of graduates the mills are producing (as compared to those graduating from high-grading university), there should be mechanisms of regulating the quality of academic offerings and standards at universities. Perhaps such mechanisms are favouring universities that “produce higher value added”, using “system based on external examiners” and “foster[ing] reputation effects in the market for higher education”. The latter could be done by “publicising data about how graduates of different universities and disciplines perform in the labour market.”

Let us see which university publishes data on employability of its graduates first!

Tags: funding | government | Higher education | Italy | South Africa | UKZN | university

James

Day 3: (14 responses received).
Are you an academic in higher education? Are you from or working in any of the following countries (Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe)? If so, you are invited to participate on an eLearning adoption survey. Click here to participate. A guide on how to go about filling in the questionnaire is available here.

Day 28@1203 28 June 2008

Number of responses: 74

Number of valid responses: 38

Number of saved responses: 6

Countries represented: 11

Universities represented: 20

Day 13@1505 13 June 2008

Number of responses: 59

Number of valid responses: 30

Number of saved responses: 5

Countries represented: 8

Universities represented: 11

Day 9@1525 09 June 2008

Number of responses: 29

Number of valid responses: 16

Number of saved responses: 1

Countries represented: 6


Day 3@2017 03 June 2008

Number of responses: 14

Number of valid responses: 6

Number of saved responses: 1

Countries represented: 5 (Kenya (2), Mozambique (1), Rwanda (1), South Africa (1) , Zimbabwe (1)).

Universities presented: 6 (University of Nairobi (1), Africa Nazarene University (1), National University of Rwanda (1), Stellenbosch University (1), Catholic University of Mozambique (1), National University of Science and Technology (1)).

Gender representation (6 Male, 0 Female).

More information also available on my homepage.

Tags: Angola | Botswana | Burundi | Higher education | Kenya | Lesotho | Malawi | Mozambique | Namibia | Rwanda | South Africa | Swaziland | Tanzania | Uganda | university | Zambia | Zimbabwe

James

Are you an academic in higher education? Are you from or working in any of the following countries (Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe)? If so, you are invited to participate on an eLearning adoption survey. Click here to participate.

Over the last few decades, there has been a worldwide surge in the use of information and communication technologies (or digital technologies). There have been reported mixed results of the ‘digital revolution’ to the different angles and spheres of our daily life including education. However, there is a perceived lack in terms of both research and success stories in African higher education institutions with regard to the adoption of digital technologies in teaching and learning despite their promise and potential. There is therefore need to study and document the contributing factors, and at the same time develop frameworks and/or guidelines for successful use of digital technologies in teaching and learning, popularly known as eLearning.

You have been kindly requested to participate in a research on the adoption and use of eLearning/Learning technologies in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in selected countries in Africa. The questionnaire seeks to gather information about the perceptions, motivation, organisational and environmental factors affecting the use of eLearning with the aim of understanding the kind of interventions required for faster adoption and continued use of eLearning. The results of a statistical analysis of the data will be used to make specific recommendations on the areas of personal characteristics and attitudes, organisational realignments, technology policy, implementation, and operations for HEIs for successful adoption of eLearning

It will take you approximately 20 minutes to fill in this questionnaire. For internal validity of the questionnaire, some items may appear as if they are repeated. To fill in the questionnaire, copy and paste the following URL onto your browser: http://www.elearningfundi.net/survey/index.php?sid=37667 OR http://tinyurl.com/64lmob

Tags: adoption of innovation | African universities | Diffusion of innovation | eLearning | elearning adoption | eLearning Africa | Higher education | online initiatives | online universities | university

James

There is an anonymous comment on my blog "eLearning in Kenya Universities" to the effect "e-courses on CD courseware because we first got to resolve the big issue of content ownership. Lecturers seem to believe only in selling their courses and feel that they are not being paid for putting their course lectures in public domain". I agree with the author of the comment that Intellectual Property (IP) is a big issue especially when it comes to digital publishing. However, I do not agree with the notion that knowledge is a commodity that should be out there for auction to the highest bidder. In my earlier post, I mentioned that knowledge becomes power when its transferable, and can be used to improve and enrich lives. You are not powerful if you have the knowledge that you have intentionally hoarded. To put it into context, I will copy-n-paste blog I had done elsewhere on open access. Here it goes.

Open Access (OA) is resources or allowing resources to be openly (as opposed to closed, clandestinely held, or shut) available to users without restrictions or requirements for authentication or payment. OA initiatives ensure that any information that is deemed helpful to the society is opened up to the community.

From the scholarship point of view, the focus for the OA drive would be to have the all the academic articles published from renowned journals, and that researchers and scholars in the institutions need, be made openly accessible. There would be an incredible cost saving from the exorbitant prices imposed on the purchase or subscription to such journals. The money saved can be channeled to other uses. This can be made possible especially because most of the research publications are from research that has already been funded by other agencies. Achieving the OA from the scholarship point of view can be done by negotiating with the academics and researchers who publish those journals to openly avail them (divide and rule), or by negotiating with the publishers to publish the journals in OA.

What are the advantages that you gain as an individual by availing your materials for Open Access? I will give three reasons. One, you will be fulfilling your moral duty and obligation to the society for giving back to them. Recognising that the research that you undertook would not have been possible were it not of the society that was there. This is in the premise that there is no research that is done in a ‘vacuum’ or on an ‘island’ without people. Secondly, you are empowering others, who would otherwise not be. This in a way will create a fertile ground for you to do further research, and also get some feedback from more people who might have been looked out by lack of access to your research. Thirdly, you are fulfilling the very reason of your research – solving problems for humanity. By locking your research finding to the few who can afford the prices, you are propagating human problems that you claim to solve in your research. People who can not afford to get your solutions will seek solutions using other means thereby allowing unnecessary duplication of efforts and costs.

I maintain that providing open or free access to your course content empowers you, as you will get feedback, and it does not in anyway debar you. There are examples of Open Courseware Initiatives (OCI) that one can emulate. The widely refereed is the MIT. There is also a host of other organisations that have availed their materials openly and freely. Others have chosen to use the less restrictive licenses like the Creative Commons.

So do you have the knowledge power?

Tags: free courseware | Open Courseware | Coursware | Open Content | Free | South Africa | Africa | Kenya | MIT | OA | Open Access | OER | Open Educational Repositories | university | Universities

James

Killing my curiosity this Sunday, I decided to go through the websites of the Higher Educations institutions in Kenya to check about the level and status of use of eLearning. This is where all the dons are on strike asking their respective employers to add some dimes on their plates. Whether they are justified or not to go on strike is a topic for another discussion. Now to my topic.

Elearning is my pet project, what I breath, talk, dream, see and live. I share the content, vision and proposals of the World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty First Century (WDHE). In WDHE's preamble it is noted that there is an increased demand for and great diversification in higher education. Higher education is presented with promising opportunities relating to technologies. However, these opportunities have been a challenge in using them to improving the information processes within the Higher Educational Institutions. Article 12 of the declaration enumerates the potential and challenges of technology that are posed to higher education. It also states that: “…higher education should lead in drawing on the advantages and potential of new information and communication technologies, ensuring quality and maintaining high standards for education practices and outcomes in a spirit of openness, equity and international co-operation. [This can be done through the adoption of a number of approaches among them]…creating new learning environments, ranging from distance education facilities to complete virtual higher education institutions and systems, capable of bridging distances and developing high-quality systems of education… [and] … taking the new possibilities created by the use of ICTs into account” (pg 8). It is this in mind that I set to audit what the situation in the Kenyan landscape.

I started off by going to the Commission for Higher Education (CHE) website (http://che.or.ke) just to look for the accredited universities. The site was so helpful in offering me the listing of the universities. However, it would have been more helpful if there was more information like the act(s) of parliament that define the universities, give the CHE its mandate among other documentation. I will not comment about the website either because it was not part of my scope when I started to look around. Also there is a disclaimer that the "Website is undergoing total reconstruction [and]..[U]sers are requested to bear with the Commission during the period when this process is being undertaken". All in all, a company has shamelessly signed the pages as the one that designed it.

According to CHE, there are 4 categories of Universities which fall within the two broad groups, private or public (http://che.or.ke). There are seven public universities in Kenya (despite the fact that the latest news have been showing six), and on the private section six private universities with charters, six registered universities and five universities "operating with Letters of Interim Authority".

Starting with the public universities, there is the University of Nairobi (UoN), where am an alumnus (http://www.uonbi.ac.ke). The university in its home page has a link to an "Elearning Platform". Clicking the link takes me to a page "On-Going Projects in the e-Learning Section of MIS". Some of the urls are inaccessible because addresses given are within the local internet domain (only accessible within the UoN network). The page has some interesting projects on eLearning going on, with a link with some 48 odd courses that are available on CD for distribution to students "owing to complaints of unstable access to the University Intranet from some campuses as well as students' limited access to computer labs". I can attest to the fact of the unstable access of the internet because it took me more than 5 minutes to get a page load from one of the listed urls on the eLearning page. Since I did not see an eLearning strategy on the eLearning page, had to go back and check if I will get the university's strategy document. There was not intuitive link on the home page, so I did my favourite, Google it. I do not manage to get anything on the university's strategy, thought there are departmental strategic plans which I only manage to download after a number of time-outs. I do not know whether this is a clear indication that the UoN does not have an eLearning strategy, or may it is just somewhere that I cannot get, for whatever reason.

Next in line in the CHE Website is the Moi University (MU). Moi University in its website does not have a link to eLearning. In the whole site, searches give only one entrance of the word eLearning. In the occurrence, there is a statement the University is working with partners on a project MU-VLIR-UOS through which the ICT center " plans to develop among others; Student Information Systems, Human Resource Information Systems, Financial Information Management Systems besides the development of a comprehensive content platform to foster e-learning at Moi University". Like the case in the UoN, a search does not return a strategy document for the university. However there are the Foreword and Acknowledgement of the document - though it was not somewhere I could easily access it on the web. Elearning seems to be a new word for MU.

The next stop is Kenyatta University (KU). It has for a long time been associated with the Africa Virtual University (AVU) which delivers its courses through eLearning. Through this association I expected to find a more developed eLearning initiative at the University than in MU and UoN. However, that was not the case. First, for 30 minutes, the site was not accessible, giving me a time-out error. Secondly, even though the site listed some programmes being offered through eLearning, there was is no cohesion between what is being offered on eLearning and what is being taught at the university. Thirdly, there was no eLearning strategy, though KU is a step ahead of the rest in that it has an eLearning site that provides some information albeit minimal for what I was looking for.

Egerton University (EU) is listed fourth in the CHE website. Although am determined to finish the review, the sites from Kenya are annoyingly slow. On troubleshooting, I find that there is a link problem between tenet (my provider) and Jumbonet and keenest. I have some reason to try once more and find that EU's site (http://www.egerton.ac.ke) does not have a link to eLearning. The only place that seems to have some activity on eLearning is its Nakuru Town Campus, whose site I cannot access for now. An excerpt of the University's strategic plan posted on the web (www.egerton.ac.ke/download/performance/Strategies.pdf) fall short of mentioning eLearning both at the ICT's strategic and the Access to Education objectives. If there are other documentations accessible on the net, they are not apparent.

In central Kenya there is the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT). Whenever I think of it, I remember Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), but this is not the topic today. The JKUAT site (http://www.jkuat.ac.ke) seems to be faster than the once I have accessed so far. A search for eLearning takes me to its eLearning site (http://kewl.jkuat.ac.ke). One sad thing though, the administrator of the site copied a story I had put for the eLearning site of the University of the Western Cape(http://elearn.uwc.ac.za) about students login with their student numbers without even editing it to remove the reference to UWC. It is just funny. Like all the other universities above, it does not have a publicly accessible strategy document, or at least I could not easily locate it. Time to go to Western Kenya.

In Nyanza, I get to Maseno University (http://www.maseno.ac.ke). Maseno's site has an image place holder to a link to "Open & Distance E-learning Programme" which is not hyperlinked. I tried al l the possible combinations and searches to no avail. Searches like ICT and eLearning returned not a single hit. I can conclude that for Maseno, eLearning is just but a pipeline dream.

Finally, for the public Universities, there is the Western University College of Science and Technology (WUST). It is listed in the CHE site without a link to its website (http://www.wust.ac.ke), and also Moi University mentions it as one of its campuses. That’s not the concern for this article though. My searches return nothing for eLearning and a few hits for ICT not related to teaching and learning. Nothing for eLearning, maybe having borrowed leave from its mother college.

On the private universities side, I start with the University of Eastern Africa, Baraton (UEAB). Its site (http://www.ueab.ac.ke) does not have a thing about eLearning or ICT. It has nice pictures though, I liked the one of the cows.

From Baraton, I head back to Nairobi's Catholic University of East Africa (CUEA). It is the only university in Kenya with a unique domain name (http://www.cuea.edu). It took about 6 minutes to load the home page. A search for eLearning and ICT brought no results. I checked on the links, and tried on the facilities link but got a 404 error (Page not found) on its links.

Daystar University's (DU) site was relatively fast to load. The first page of the site (http://www.daystar.ac.ke) has a nice picture of a lady wearing beaded ornaments. At DU, eLearning is still a foreign idea waiting for "the day dawn and the day star to arise".

Surprisingly, I did not expect the Scott Theological College (STC) to be listed as a chartered university. Its homepage (http://www.scott.ac.ke) has a picture of a computer lesson in progress. A search for the use of eLearning was in futility. I humbly conclude that for now, it cannot use ICT or eLearning to reach to its clientele.

The United States International University (USIU) Nairobi's site is pretty slow just like the site of the other universities in Kenya (despite the name). In its homepage (http://www.usiu.ac.ke) there is a link to eLearning site (http://elearn.usiu.ac.ke). Most of the eLearning links in the site are available in its intranet maybe suggesting that they current focus is students within campus. There is an externally accessible link to WebCT though. Seems eLearning is taking place at USIU. The welcome quote on the webpage??? "Welcome to The United States International University - a unique and remarkable institution of higher learning. Our concept, experienced by thousands of successful alumni around the globe, is simple: gather students from diverse cultures at a university located in beautiful surroundings and challenge them to learn". I have seen it somewhere.... is it paraphrased from one of those adverts/slogans by the Spur Restaurants?

The Africa Nazarene University (ANU) is the last stop in the Private Chartered Universities. Although ANU has taken "a different way to Higher Education" (http://www.anu.ac.ke), it has not taken the eLearning way. Although it claims to have necessary facilities to that can support eLearning in my opinion, nothing has been posted on the site as proof that it is moving in that direction.

For the remaining universities as listed in the CHE website, I would look at them when I have time. They are:

Registered Universities
The East Africa School of Theology
The Kenya Highlands Bible College
The Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology
The Nairobi International School of Theology
The Pan Africa Christian College
St Paul’s United Theological College


Universities operating under Letters of Interim Authority
The Kenya Methodist University
Kabarak University
Kiriri Women's University of Science and Technology
Agha Khan University
Strathmore University


From the brief summary above, if the websites analysis is something to go by, it is justifiable to conclude that in Kenya, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are a distance away from reaping the benefits of eLearning. My main questions for now are: Are these HEIs aware of eLearning, its potential, promises and benefits? Is there anything that is being done that has not been reflected on their respective websites? Is there anything in the pipeline in the arena of eLearning? Are there collaborative projects going on among the HEIs institutions themselves, and among HEIs and the corporate world toward eLearning use in the HEIs? What of the government? What is the government of Kenya doing to ensure and improve access to education through the use of technology?


The whole WHDE report is available from: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001419/141952e.pdf

Tags: Egerton | eLearning | Higher education | Jomo Kenyatta | Kenya | Kenyatta | Maseno | Moi | Nairobi | Technology | UEAB | university | USIU | WDHE