From 28-30 May this year, Patrick and Maja attended the eLearning Africa Conference. Also attending from our community were Jannie Stander from SAWS, and David Muchemi from IMTR, Kenya. Patrick gave a presentation on “eLearning Solutions for Professional Weather Forecasters and Hydrologists in Africa” that highlighted the many ongoing eLearning efforts among WMO Regional Training Centers in Africa and their partners. But we were there primarily to learn about eLearning efforts occurring in other sectors and disciplines, and to see what new technological and pedagogical solutions were being applied or proposed. The conference was extremely hectic, with up to 10 concurrent sessions occurring at any given time over the short 2 days. It was hard to participate in even a fraction of what was occurring.
We learned that eLearning is thriving in Africa in many ways, even though it continues to face challenges of limited technological infrastructure, doubts about its effectiveness, and limited knowledge of eLearning practices, just like in almost every other region of the world. Many international partners are working with Africans to help overcome these challenges, and many technology industries are coming up with creative solutions to provide low-cost and workable online learning approaches. The following is a brief summary of what appeared to us the key themes of the conference. Many keynote presentations from the conference are available online as recordings at http://www.elearning-africa.com/media_library_videos.php.
Why the conference is important: It has been projected that 25% of the global workforce will be African by the year 2050, yet most African countries must overcome a limited access to quality education at all levels. ELearning will not solve the education access challenge alone, but it will be a key element in the solution, and organizations and conferences like eLearning Africa will help to guide how eLearning solutions are implemented. In discussions about sources of grant funding to improve education systems, a point was made that NO MORE PILOT projects are needed. African countries know what they need, and this includes eLearning solutions that can be implemented now.
Increasing internet access: Clearly a challenge in rural Africa especially, but throughout much of the continent, the improvement of internet access is being tackled in a variety of creative ways (and being worked around in some cases). Communications satellites coupled with low(er) cost receivers with broadband internet provision holds perhaps the best promise while the fiber infrastructure continues to develop (Kenya has a growing fiber infrastructure that may be expandable, for example). SES, for example, is a company with satellites that it claims can reach 99% of the world’s population. Its services can be pre-paid and are scalable. YahClick is a regional system that using the little exploited Ka-band. In order to better spread access, a company called WiBack is providing low cost and low power consuming (solar) repeaters to extend a single broadband link over 20km. Internet access will be rapidly growing (see Lions go digital). It is estimated that the current 16% internet penetration will increase to 50% by 2025 (for urban areas penetration is already more than 50%).
Low cost computer hardware: Tablets are clearly the low-cost internet access, computing, and content distribution system of choice. One group (StudyTech) uses motorcycles to distribute tablets loaded with instructional content to students. One of the main conference sponsors was Yazmi, which offers tablets with satellite receivers built in to receive digital content. Using a small classroom server, student tablets can be synchronized and updated to control their content. Tablets have their detractors also. While some people are more concerned about tablets having too limited computing power, others see tablets as being potentially distracting to students. So controls on content and applications are desirable to many. Instead of laptops, another company, NComputing, is offering a classroom solution that allows one personal computer to support many low-cost, thin-client computer systems for students.
Mobile learning: Mobile learning is seen as a highly promising frontier. For example, 90% of people have mobiles in Uganda. In Kenya, 12% have internet access, 41% have TV, and 80% have mobiles (80% also have radio). More students have smartphones than do teachers. One non-pedagogical use of mobiles is to map student attendance, which is a serious problem in many locations, but various projects are being implemented to provide a variety of forms of content via smart phones as well, including simple SMS. Video content is the mobile format being explored the most, perhaps. One project discussed had students working side-by-side with teachers to develop their own video content for internet delivery (students as not just content consumers, but content creators).
Learning content needs: Due to the shortage of quality textbooks, some are working to make eBooks more available to fill the gap. In some schools, textbooks are considered so precious that they are locked up away from students. For some, eBooks are looked upon as a poor replacement for traditional paper books, whose tangibility is still highly valued. But it is generally recognized that quality eBook publications with multimedia content delivered on low-cost computers and mobiles are a required step to improve educational access.
Software access: Learning is about more than having students access content, it is also about having them exercise original expression in the form of research, critical, and creative papers and presentations. Free Google applications did not seem to come up much at the conference, but Microsoft had a strong presence. Microsoft is working to offer low-cost ways of maintaining their monopoly of productivity tools like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Bootlegged versions of their products harm more than Microsoft, they bootstrap users with old and unsupported versions, but new cloud-based Office applications allow for licensing that can put software in the hands of students at a very low per-student cost. Institutions may even be able to provide all students (or all employees) with continually updated software. New MS products like One Note, One Drive, and Office Mix are efforts to stay viable in education markets requiring low cost solutions. But of course Microsoft is just biggest, and not the only player in offering cheap or free software.
Teacher shortages: In Kenya, 65% of teachers fail on content exams, and this is probably not the worst case. In many locations sufficient teachers with proper credentials are lacking. Teacher education was certainly not ignored, but one of the hot topics about ways to address this issue was MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which are designed to reach large numbers with fewer faculty. Donald Clark persuasively made the case that MOOCs, if designed properly, can provide highly effective educational experiences. Many were not convinced that such an “impersonal” form of teaching can work. Clark argued, “Lecturing is easy, Teaching is hard,” and that MOOCs can provide a platform that emphasizes the latter just as easily as in the classroom. One ongoing concern about MOOCs is the high student dropout rates. But he noted that while long courses (modeled after traditional university semester-long courses) continue to experience high numbers of dropouts, short courses have been highly success at student retention (a 6-week course in perinatal care in Africa reported 35,000 participants and 65% completion!). Besides, he argues that we should be concerned about making space for “drop-ins,” and worrying less about dropouts. He also argues that because MOOCs are based on online social networking platforms, students in MOOCs actually make a closer social connection than they would in a classroom of over 25 students. Even distinguished scholars are being convinced by the MOOC platform: One physics professor has said that “video delivers me in a way that the student has complete control over”-- in other words, he realizes teaching is not all about him, but about whether the student has time to think about the content he offers. Another professor has said that in a single MOOC he will reach more students than he will have reached throughout the rest of his career. Clearly, MOOCs have something to offer to the scalability issues of the education challenge. While English dominates the MOOC world so far, a French-language site for MOOC offerings can be found at http://www.rescif.net/en/node/89.
