Online MOOCs battle against traditional mindsets

The once glittering allure of massive open online courses (MOOCs), viewed as new learning vehicles to carry most of Africa’s youth to the frontiers of a university education, has dimmed.

Expectations were high in 2011 when 160,000 students from around the world enrolled in Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence online course. However, only 20,000 completed it. At the time, many thought that this feat could be replicated in Africa, where demand for higher education was rising.

Subsequently, since 2012, there had been attempts to popularise MOOCs as a learning strategy, catering for students in Sub-Saharan Africa who could not be enrolled at higher education institutions.

According to the Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa, based in Kigali, Rwanda, Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest enrolment rate globally – 8% among college-aged students – yet the region has been experiencing the fastest upsurge in enrolment figures worldwide.

MOOCs not massive anymore

Speaking at the 13th International Conference and Exhibition on ICT for Education, Training and Skills Development in Kigali, on September 28, Sheila Jagannathan, programme manager at the World Bank’s Open Learning Campus, said MOOCs were no longer massive, especially in Africa, where lack of adequate platforms impacted upon online learning.

“Online learning in Africa is facing many challenges that include lack of reliable electrical supply and broadband connectivity at home,” she said.

Jagannathan noted that although most online courses are free, a large number of potential students in Africa could not afford commercial internet services, laptops or smartphones, In addition, penetration of broadband internet connectivity stood at 15.6%, although this was expected to rise to 50% by 2025.

Students favour face-to-face instruction

However, in most Sub-Saharan countries, MOOCs are often thought of as inferior to traditional face-to-face instruction, thus limiting their expansion in Africa.

“An ivory tower mindset among students has radically affected the growth of MOOCs in Africa,” said Andrew Moore, an education technology programme manager at Neil Butcher & Associates in Johannesburg, which designed professional e-learning development courses for teachers in Kenya, Rwanda, Togo, South Africa, Oman, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

However, according to Jagannathan, while MOOCs are not flourishing at tertiary institutions, they are becoming a permanent feature in Africa’s skills development scene, with MOOCs organisers shifting their focus from university students to professional learners who take online courses to develop their careers.

Used to accelerate employment

“Free MOOCs are also being used to accelerate youth employment in Africa,” she told University World News.

The MOOCs are also being targeted at graduate and postgraduate teachers, head teachers, teacher educators and education officers, in order to improve teaching skills and the curriculum, said Olivier Biard, senior project manager at Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) – a consortium coordinated by The Open University in the UK, offering open online courses to teachers in developing countries.

“Our main objectives are disrupting traditional teaching practices through e-learning and introducing new pedagogies relevant in the 21st century,” Biard told University World News.

Relating to efforts to empower the youth in African countries, several MOOCs have been developed to provide knowledge and skills that are not directly related to in-campus university courses. According to Daniela Casiraghi, an e-learning project manager at the Polytechnic of Milan (Politecnico di Milano), their MOOCs are meant to tackle societal challenges and promote inclusion.

“Towards this goal, we teach young people basic skills for designing buildings and businesses. These courses are distributed to African countries with internet connectivity,” said Casiraghi.

Online learning has a foothold

While acceptance of MOOCs may be low in some African countries, online learning has a foothold and may become more widespread in the future.

In January last year, eLearnAfrica, an educational platform that offers a wide range of higher education MOOCs to African students, partnered with the Association of African Universities to offer students from member institutions more than 1,000 courses from established online providers that included edX and FutureLearn.

According to eLearnAfrica CEO Brook Negussie, the platform delivers online courses designed by world-class universities and leading e-learning institutions, including edX, FutureLearn, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge. “In this regard, eLearnAfrica offers a number of degrees from accredited online universities,” he said.

Some of the degrees that are on offer include associate or bachelors degrees in computer science, health care and business administration. However, one can also study for an MBA or take courses that offer university credits.

Other online platforms

Coursera is another online platform that continues to make inroads in Africa by partnering with leading African universities to offer online courses developed by Stanford. The University of Cape Town has courses through Coursera, while the University of the Witwatersrand offers MOOCs through the edX platform.

Although most of the delegates who attended the e-learning conference in Kigali were optimistic about the role of MOOCs providing a lifeline to African students without access to an on-campus university education, they said the onus was on governments to provide broadband internet connectivity, low-cost electricity and easy access to computers and smartphones.

While MOOCs can make tertiary education more accessible in Africa, their use is limited by poor planning, costs related to the accessibility of fast internet services, inadequate ICT human capacity and lack of electricity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, MOOCs will have to overcome the barrier of mindsets that favour in-campus university education and its face-to-face methods of instruction.


COMMENTS

Naturally so. Learning requires a level of inspiration that a MOOC can’t provide. A gifted teacher can push buttons, assess progress. Learning isn’t a body of knowledge to be digested.

Rosemary Aud Franklin on the University World News Facebook page

That depends on the student and their needs and their goals. In some cases a MOOC might fit the bill perfectly. In other cases it might be entirely unsuitable.

Steve Foerster on the University World News Facebook page