Sub-Saharan Africa is among the largest areas in the world and has the bottom charges of participation in higher education anyplace in the world. The World Bank reported in 2020 that solely 9.4% of the area’s tertiary education age group is enrolled. The world common ratio is 38%.
Education is a key catalyst of financial emancipation. Open and distance education was particularly designed for this function: to make higher education accessible to everybody, in every single place. Since it’s not restricted to one campus or bodily house, this strategy empowers college students to take full duty for his or her research, to be taught anyplace and at any time. Importantly, this occurs with a higher education establishment’s assist and steerage.
MOOCs in Africa
One of the programmes generally provided by such universities in different elements of the world is the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). These are free, simply accessible and fully online courses with no entry necessities. In some creating international locations exterior Africa, such because the Philippines, Thailand and India, MOOCs are already being credited on the nationwide stage for entry into formal college education. This will increase entry to higher education.
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MOOCs are comparatively new in Africa; they’ve turn into extra frequent in the previous 5 or ten years. On paper they are perfect for many African contexts. Egyptian education researcher Ghada Refaat El Said writes that MOOCs can successfully alleviate
“Overcrowded classrooms, high costs of materials and books, commuting difficulty due to high traffic, and a need for continued education and specialised training for the workforce.”
But how precisely are MOOCs being utilized by African universities? Are any international locations’ education techniques successfully utilizing MOOCs to widen higher education entry? To discover out, we analysed current peer-reviewed analysis revealed between 2013 and 2020.
We discovered that not many African international locations understand MOOCs as instruments for reinforcing higher education entry. Where these courses are provided, they’re normally supplementary or designed merely to give college students additional tuition assist. And there’s not a lot consciousness of MOOCs amongst faculty academics and learners, who then miss out on this potential different path into higher education.
What we discovered
We searched the Sabinet, Scopus and Web of Science databases for papers by African authors about MOOCs. This produced 99 papers. Our research was primarily based on the 15 that have been most related to our inclusion and exclusion standards and that particularly addressed African points round MOOCs.
A key discovering was that MOOCs are principally used as a self-learning ingredient to assist formal {qualifications} inside African universities. In some instances, MOOCs contain face-to-face tuition and assist for college college students. However, this observe permits solely a restricted variety of learners to entry higher education. For essentially the most half, it caters solely to those that are already in the system.
The literature evaluate additionally exhibits that most individuals from African international locations taking these courses already possess some stage of higher education. So, once more, the present education entry divide isn’t addressed.
Some of the research we reviewed discovered that many learners and academics at highschool stage didn’t even know what MOOCs have been as a result of they’d no entry to digital areas.
The literature means that a few international locations in Africa – amongst them Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa – appear to have a minimum of acknowledged the position that MOOCs may play in broadening higher education entry. But this has not but been translated into nationwide coverage.
Examples from elsewhere concerning free online courses
We discovered that MOOCs are already getting used as a part of mainstream credit-bearing courses in some establishments in the Philippines, Thailand and India. That means finishing a MOOC can depend in the direction of entry to a college diploma. It helps make the diploma extra inexpensive.
Another discovering associated to how MOOCs in some creating international locations are being efficiently packaged with recognition of prior studying programmes. This is a course of by means of which casual studying can, with strict measurements and mediation, be licensed – because the South African Qualifications Authority describes it – “against the requirements for credit, access, inclusion or advancement in the formal education and training system, or workplace”.
It is obvious from these and different findings in our research that African governments, coverage makers and education sectors could be taught a nice deal from different creating international locations.
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Going ahead and adopting free online courses
Higher education establishments in African international locations should provoke dialogue with governments and accreditation our bodies on how MOOCs can be used innovatively to widen entry to higher education.
Governments that aspire to widen entry to higher education by means of MOOCs want to increase the attention of each stakeholder, together with faculty communities, educationists in higher education, coverage makers and authorities stakeholders. It’s one other method to present African college students with high quality and related education.
Article by: Mphoentle Puleng Modise. Lecturer, University of South Africa.
This article is republished from The Conversation below a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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