The establishment of a higher education open and distance learning knowledge base for decision makers in kenya
The Aims and Objectives of OLDEA-EA
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- 1.3.2.1 Open Learning Association of Kenya (OPLAK)
- The Aims of OPLAK are as follows
- 2.1 The Following major tasks face decision makers in Kenya 2.1.1 Increase Enrollment in Higher Education
- Increase Opportunities for Relevant Degree Courses
- Increase Opportunities and Access to Continuing Distance Education
- 2.1.4 Provide Opportunity for Women Education in Science and Engineering
- Challenges Facing Distance Education Decision Makers in Kenya
- The following challenges face decision makers: Lack of Funds
- Lack of a Clear Understanding of Distance Education
- Poor Teaching/Learning Practices
- Inadequate Resources (a)
- 2.2.6 Inadequate Library Resources
- Slow Internet Connectivity
- Scarcity of Computing Resources for Technology Enhanced Distance Education
- Lack of Skills in Information Communication Technology (ICT)
- 2.2.10. Attitude towards Technology Enhanced Learning
- 2.2.11 Communication Policy
- 2.2.12 High Telecommunication Costs
- 3.0 INFORMATION NEEDS FOR DECISION MAKERS IN KENYA
- 3.1 Distance Education Policy
- Management and Financial Planning of Distance Education Programmes
- 3.3 Programme Design and Development of Materials
- 3.4 Financial Planning and Management
- 3.5 Learner Support System in distance Education Programmes
- TRAINING NEEDS FOR DECISION MAKERS IN DISTANCE EDUCATION
- 4.1 Capacity at the Policy Level
- Institutional Capacity Building
- Individual Capacity Building
The Aims and Objectives of OLDEA-EA
The association (OLDEA-EA) is governed by a constitution. The association was formed in 1998 September in Dar-es-Salaam by a team of distance education experts from the region. The National association selects representatives to the regional association. Executive leaders of the association are based on a two-year term. The first chairperson was a distance education expert from the Open University of Tanzania. The current one is from the Department of Distance Education, University of Makere. The association holds annual conferences once a year. 1.3.2.1 Open Learning Association of Kenya (OPLAK) The Open Learning Association of Kenya has been formed by experts of distance education in Kenya. The association has finalized its constitution, outlined its functions and applied for registration with the Kenya government authorities. Registration is expected next month. The author of this paper is one of the executive members of OPLAK and responsible for facilitating the registration of OPLAK. The Aims of OPLAK are as follows:
OPLAK provides opportunities for membership from the following institutions:
There is a membership subscription fee. Once the registration has been secured by the Registrar of Societies and Associations in Kenya, then other formalities will be put in place. Distance Education Associations are playing an important role in networking decision makers and stakeholders in distance education within the region. This has resulted in capacity building within the region, collaboration in external examining and supervision of dissertations, exchange of course materials, improvement in course design and development, and improved learner support systems. 2.0 TASKS AND CHALLENGES FACING TARGET AUDIENCE AND DECISION MAKERS University institutions in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa are overwhelmed with major tasks related to Access, finance, quality, internal and external efficiency and therefore are unable to meet the demand for education. In terms of government financial support to public universities it is estimated that since the late 1980’s throughout the 1990’s recurrent expenditures declined by around 45 percent, prompting increased commercialization of degree programmes in an attempt to offset the fall in government funding. 2.1 The Following major tasks face decision makers in Kenya 2.1.1 Increase Enrollment in Higher Education A large pool of qualified tertiary age school graduates cannot enroll in higher education in sub-Saharan Africa. The gross-enrollment ratio at the University level in Sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest in the world. The number of students enrolled in Universities (618,000) is only 4.7% of the total 13 million students enrolled in general secondary level education. Policy makers, planners, stakeholders and all decision makers in Kenya are faced with a major task of large numbers of qualified students who cannot be admitted into public universities. In Kenya for example, both public and private Universities provide University opportunities for not more than five percent of the relevant age groups, namely 20-24 years old school leavers. For instance in 1999 out of the 36,666 candidates who sat for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KSCE), and were qualified for admission into the public universities, only 8,892 or a mere 29.5 percent were admitted into the public universities in the year 2000. This is less 6 percent of the total number of students who registered for the examination or 1.3 percent of the total number of the secondary school enrolment. Furthermore enrolment in the public universities has stagnated below 40,000 students over the last two decades. The effect has been accumulation of a high number of working people qualified for university education who have failed to join because of limited facilities and thereafter settled to pursue middle level course programmes with a hope that doors would in due course open to enable them realize their dreams for higher education. The existence of numerous private universities has not tremendously altered the situation. Distance Education remains one of the best alternative channels for increasing enrollment in higher education.
Many students who would like to pursue degrees in Computer Science and Computer Engineering do not get accepted in Kenyan Universities because of lack of resources and capacity. This situation is particularly alarming to decision makers given the importance of computer science and engineering in the new “knowledge economy”: Experience of East Asian countries and India provides evidence that a critical mass of professionals in these areas drives economic growth and creates employment opportunities. The recent economic success of India’s software industry can be traced to the nation’s ability to anticipate global trends and quickly build a critical mass of well-educated professionals. As a result of these low enrollment levels, a large number of students – the wealthiest or those who are fortunate enough to get a scholarship – go aboard to study. In the first half of the 1990s, approximately 56,000 students from AVU’s current countries (15 African countries) of operation (192,600 total from Africa) were studying abroad mainly because similar educational opportunities were not available in their countries. Of the African students studying at the undergraduate level in the USA, 22% were enrolled in engineering, computer science or mathematics. This situation has led to a significant brain drain of talented Africans. A good example from Kenya: Kenyan parents are forced to spend millions of shillings to educate their children abroad, particularly in computer science, computer engineering and Electrical Engineering. For example, parents spend about Kenya shillings 1.5 million (US$19,997) per year per student to study in America; Britain about 1.2 million (US$16,000) per year student. On the average, there are about 6000 Kenyans studying abroad with the majority in America and Britain and few in other countries (Nation Newspapers, 1998 12th July). This implies that the country is loosing a lot of money on foreign education and this does not augur well for sustainable development. This situation in Africa is not likely to improve in the years to come if countries rely solely on conventional methods to provide universities education. In SSA countries, the average tertiary expenditure per student was already 422% GNP per capita in 1995 as opposed to 26% in high-income countries. As a solution to this problem, many countries are now charging tuition in public universities and encouraging private investment in higher education. The modern distance education models like AVU will therefore, assist in tapping the potential offered by new technologies to overcome some of the financial, physical and information barriers that prevent increased access to high quality education in Kenya and sub-Saharan Africa.
Distance education programme which provide degree courses in Sub-Saharan Africa (apart from South Africa) are very few and besides, many of them focus on art-based courses. Besides, employers from the private sector and from NGO’s are faced with a huge need to train their employees. Most companies usually call upon local providers of training, usually small firms of uneven quality. Evidence collected during a market survey conducted by AVU in Kenya in 1999, demonstrates that corporations are generally dissatisfied with local providers or training. Some foreign investors train their newly recruited staff overseas but this is very expensive. Every year, for example Citibank in Nairobi sends 5 employees overseas to enroll in an MBA program and a few of its employees to Citibank’s training center in Istanbul. Citibank is looking for more cost-effective ways to train its staff because the needs are huge and costs are high. Citibank is one of the 14 corporations to have expressed readiness to invest in setting up AVU learning centers at their premises to provide professional development education to their workers. Firms are particularly interested in computer training and management courses (MBA) through modern technology distance teaching so that employees do not take time off their jobs. 2.1.4 Provide Opportunity for Women Education in Science and Engineering: Distance education models like AVU is one of the major innovations which enhance female education in computer science and computer engineering through its Pre-University Programme. The AVU Pre-University programme offers opportunities for girls to enjoy learning through many facets of teaching/learning such as (live transmission; tapes, textbooks, tutorials etc.). It also enhances women’s ability by upgrading their skills in sciences so as to enroll for computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering which have traditionally been regarded men’s domain. AVU will save the plight of women’s education in Africa. For example, there is serious low enrolment of women in science-based courses in Kenya. A number of issues have been advanced to explain the low enrolment of women, first, low secondary school enrolment greatly reduces their scope for progress in higher education. Coupled with low enrolment are high drop out rates for girls. This low rate of participants results in only small pool of girls eligible for entry into higher education (Juma, 2000).
The foregoing discussion on tasks facing decision makers in Kenyan education system brings out a number of features. First and Foremost, distance education in Kenya is not a major component of University education, although its importance has been acknowledged and recommendations for its expansion. The following challenges face decision makers:
The Ministry of Education spends more than 12 per cent of its annual budget on higher education. Consequently, the larger portion of allocation to public universities caters for salaries of university staff and very little money is left for teaching/learning materials and equipment. Since the Government does not have a distance education policy for Higher Education in place, there is no specific provision for distance education in the overall national budget. As a result, institutes/faculties of distance education in the university have to generate funds for running programmes, general planning, coordination, supervision and evaluation of the programme. In most cases, money generated from distance Education programmes subsidise other conventional programmes. Furthermore, innovations in distance education have heavily relied on unsustainable sources of funding, especially donor funding. As already discussed most of the Distance Education programmes have been launched on an ad hoc basis as means of generating income of the cash strapped public universities rather than designing them with the benefits of the learners in mind. The direct and indirect costs necessary to sustain the educational interventions have hardly been considered.
Some of the key players in distance education like Ministry of Education staff, Vice-Chancellors, Deans and Directors do not understand principles and application of open and distance education. This creates a serious gap in policy planning and implementation.
Distance Education (DE) is generally based on an indirect teaching relationship, using fundamentally self-teaching methods, with the tutor acting as a catalyst to activate the skills and situations needed for self-education. Most of the existing DE programmes especially for the School of continuing Education at Kenyatta University and the parallel programmes have adopted behaviour patterns on traditional education delivery, which is not appropriate for DE type of education. As already pointed out, the Kenyatta University programmes are of very mediocre quality and students in the institution-based mode of delivery are certainly not getting the value of their money they pay to that university.
Most of the programmes mainly use print as the medium of instruction. Supplementary materials such as audio-cassettes, video cassettes, slides and experimental kits which would reinforce each other in achieving the desired goals are generally not in use due to the poor designs of the course programmes as well as lack of funds.
(a) Many of the institutions lack study guides which would give a broad view within a context of the courses to be studied as well as information about examination schedules, contact programmes, students assignments and others (b) Apart from the University of Nairobi, College of Adult and Distance Education, other universities lack study or resource centres, which constitute an important mode of transmitting content. They would provide facilities for learning for individual or group tutoring and academic guidance and counselling. (c) Production of high quality distance materials for the Kenyan programmes appears far more expensive because the cost would include the design of the curriculum and courses authors’ fee remuneration of review and assessors and the tremendous effort devoted to the presentation of the final product use of graphics language, layout style etc. Besides faculty members are heavily burdened with many duties and at the same time do not have access to good libraries. In many programmes of distance teaching cost effectiveness is easily not met because of small numbers of students enrolled in the programmes. 2.2.6 Inadequate Library Resources Decision makers are faced with serious lack of current journals and publications in distance education. Due to limited funds available in universities, libraries are unable to subscribe to publications.
Technology enhanced Distance Education like African Virtual University relies heavily on the Internet for the delivery of academic courses; digital library; the portal and many other products. Unfortunately, slow Internet connection and low bandwidth in Kenya mitigate the effectiveness of AVU courses. Increasingly the issue of high costs for large bandwidth (pipes) is also a problem.
Computing resources, both hardware and software are expensive for any university to afford in reasonable quantities and quality. Technology is very dynamic and some universities cannot cope with these changes in terms of cost and relevancy.
Most university academics and students have very low skills in ICT to the extent that AVU’s digital library, E-learning platform and many other products are not fully utilized by faculty members. 2.2.10. Attitude towards Technology Enhanced Learning Many academics from universities in Kenya do not believe that quality education can be delivered through information technology and some of them are very slow in changing attitude towards this kind of modern Distance Education. Indeed many scholars cannot easily adopt “a mind set” which appreciates that digital literacy is an important dimension of learning like “reading and writing”. 2.2.11 Communication Policy Due to high international tariffs and lack of circuit capacity, obtaining sufficient international bandwidth for delivering web pages over the Internet is still a major problem in Kenya. The problem is enhanced by National Telecom sectors (JAMBONET) having monopoly for international bandwidth, hence Internet Service Providers (ISP) being dependent on it. This kind of scenario poses a major challenge to proper functioning and delivery of AVU products in Kenya. For instance, AVU hopes to install VSAT capabilities in some sites to deliver content from Africa to other AVU sites. Unfortunately, this might be hampered by communication regulations in Kenya, which do not allow Two-Way satellite based Internet services using very small aperture terminals (VSAT). 2.2.12 High Telecommunication Costs Currently, the average total cost of using a local dialup Internet account for 20 hours a month in Kenya is about $68 a month (usage fees and local call telephone time included, but not telephone line rental). Internet Service Provider (ISP) subscription charges vary greatly – between $10 and $100 a month, largely reflecting the different levels of maturity of the markets, the varying tariff policies of the telecom operators, the different regulations on private wireless data services and on access to international telecommunications bandwidth. It is a big challenge for decision makers to appreciate that effective distance education can be delivered via modern technologies. The Internet forms technological breakthrough in distance learning tools. Therefore, advances in the Internet concerning access and quality of information are fundamental for making distance education efficient and effective as an innovation in higher education in Kenya. For technology enhanced distance education to succeed in Kenya, Government, Universities, Industries and NGO’s all have a role to play as stakeholders. 3.0 INFORMATION NEEDS FOR DECISION MAKERS IN KENYA On the basis of the foregoing analysis, it is apparent that there are a number of areas with considerable information issues needed by decision makers for future planning to promote the expansion of distance learning in higher education in Kenya. These among others include the following: 3.1 Distance Education Policy From the analysis it is clear that there is a lack of coherent policy for distance education at the national level. Consequently distance education programmes in higher education are generally disjointed and run on ad hoc basis.
The analysis revealed that there is an absence of coordinated management structures for DE programmes and most of them have been launched with the specific function of generating funds for cash strapped public universities. Consequently, some programmes seriously exploit the learners for a mediocre quality of education they provide. In some of the institutions the management of Distance Education programmes is an appendage of the regular university programmes. There is therefore the need to:
3.3 Programme Design and Development of Materials The analysis showed that in many of the Distance Education programmes in the country, only a few of them adopted Distance Education modes of delivery largely because there is a serious lack of professional staff development for distance learning. There is a need therefore for:
3.4 Financial Planning and Management From the analysis of distance education programmes in Kenya, it was clear that information is required on the following issues:
3.5 Learner Support System in distance Education Programmes In distance learning environment, learners require effective counseling support system to reduce attrition rates. The information is therefore required in the following areas:
Analysis of information needs and aspects of higher distance education in Kenya provide a basis for developing intervention strategies to build capacities for decision-makers and institutional capacities. There are various aspects of competencies required in distance education for different target groups. 4.1 Capacity at the Policy Level At the highest level of decision-making within the general education framework, people have little understanding of the requirements of distance education. This is evidenced by lack of a national distance education policy framework. The Ministry of Education has limited structures to develop and implement effective supporting policies. However, it is evident that the current base of expertise in distance education is very thin and there are many people who do not understand principles and practice of distance education. Interestingly, Kenya was one of the pioneer countries to start higher distance education in Africa and up to now there is no Open and Distance Education University. Efforts by leading distance education experts in the country to influence decision makers to tackle a bill in Parliament on the Open and Distance Education University of Kenya has been thwarted for many years. However, there is need for distance education associations to lobby for improvement of telecommunications sector which is the pillar of Technology Enhanced Distance Education.
Institutions of higher learning in Kenya do not have strategic planning in distance education. Additionally institutions have very limited understanding of distance education systems and structures. The situation in exasperated by institutions which have centres or faculties of distance education and yet do not understand the principles, practices and implementation strategies. This scenario posses serious challenges to the quality and efficiency of distance education. Therefore, there is need to sensitize policy makers, decision makers, about distance education, its prospects and challenges. If distance education is to expand in Kenya, there is need to build capacity of employees in Universities and other relevant institutions such as Kenya Institute of Education, Commission for Higher Education and Ministry of Education and others.
There are very few Kenyans with expertise in core areas of distance education such as; Needs Analysis, Curriculum Design and Development, Course Writing and Editing, Research Evaluation and Quality Assurance. Directory: education education -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d education -> 100 Village Primary School Music Classrooms education -> Between global market and international and regional cooperation education -> Biographies of Patriots of Color at The Battle of Bunker Hill John Ashbow Colony: Connecticut Age: 22 Race: Native American Status: Free Rank: Private Position: Rail Fence Unit: Putnam/Durkee education -> a geospatial Activity a buffer from the Storms education -> Guide to Preparedness education -> Social Sciences Teaching Unit Levels 2 6 Environmental Justice education -> I. Introduction 2 II. The Creation of Literate Environments education -> Harold j. Brody, md education -> October/November 2015 Teacher's Guide Table of Contents Download 119.91 Kb. Share with your friends:
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