eLearning in Africa and the Opportunity for Innovative Credentialing Gertjan van Stam Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC) Harare, Zimbabwe [email protected]

Abstract. The ubiquitousness of Information and Communication Technology triggers the current revolution in education. Online repositories of courses, through MOOCs or otherwise, open exciting possibilities for access to learning, also in Africa. A multitude of constraints must be overcome, spurred on by a vision of moral obligation and commitment to prepare the next generation and the swell of young people in Africa. The changing form of future education and the need for relevant certification calls for innovation in credentialing and validation of knowledge.

1 Introduction Fundamental changes in power and organisational structures are taking place in a relatively short period of time. This revolution is in education. There is a growing swell of written opinion emerging, showing signs of this revolution. For instance, early February 2013, The Globe and Mail reported from the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos about ‘The week university (as we know it) ended’ [1]. One week later, the Wall Street Journal reported about how the ‘Big MOOC Coursera is moving towards Academic Acceptance[2]. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses. The revolution in educating coincides with the opening up of access to research findings, funded by public funds [3, 4]. The ubiquitousness of Information and Communication Technologies and Computing facilitates these new opportunities.

2 Signs of the Times Khan Academy is an online school. At first, it was one person, Sal Khan, in his home. In 2006, he started posting lessons he created for his cousins on You Tube. By 2010, Khan Academy grew out of this one-man effort. The online school has now delivered over 300 million lessons. The lessons cover almost everything in the Western primary and secondary curriculum. The academy is open for students, 24 hours/7 days a week, for free. Coursera started with two people. In 2013 Coursera employs a little over 20 persons. It has amassed more than 4 million registered users who access academic courses, online. Available 24/7, for free.

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In 2011, Udacity started with Sebastian Thrun. Thrun quit as a university professor after he opened up his classes in Artificial Intelligence over the internet. Yearly, he taught about 200 students in the prestigious Stanford University. In his first online experiment, in 2011, Thrun was teaching 160.000 students [5]. Mid 2013, Udacity has over half a million students; two years after the conception of the idea and with first courses in 2012 only. In 2002, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) opened its courses for online access through Open Course Ware (OCW) [6]. Up to mid 2013, over 100 million individual learners accessed OCW courses, with the number of learners is growing by almost 1 million per month [1]. MIT teams up with Harvard University to offer online courses via edX, all content supplied at no charge. iTunes U amasses a significant repository of free lectures, via multimedia. Although MOOCs show low pass rates, a study shows 98% regard MOOCs as having to some extent exceeded or completely met expectations [7]. Australia reported a significant higher pass rates for contextualised MOOCs [8]. The MOOCs concepts are still in the conception phase, and provide for exciting for influence across cultural divides [9]. Technology is truly disrupting the education system [10]. eBooks, applications on notebooks and tablets could replace textbooks. The end of libraries might be at hand [11]. Students can find most information on the Internet (e.g. Google, Wikipedia) and use social media to communicate. Experiences such as ‘the Hole in the Wall project’ [12] revealed how access to Internet empowers children to learn. The course ‘The Evolution of the Internet’ shows what a blended, flipped classroom education could look like at Masters level, in both Europe and Africa [13]. African professionals in the diaspora are experimenting with eLearning, and some endeavour to open up multimedia repositories to students in their home lands [14].

3 Africa Reports on how to engender human capital using ICT in Africa are scant. Africa hardly features in the massive amount of information production worldwide due to a lopsided geography of information [15]. A number of education centers are experimenting. Most enter cyberspace from an internal, institutional perspective only, for instance starting to move their e-mails off-site into the cloud. Most African countries have a very young population (Figure 1). This implies a rapidly growing school age population, signalling the urgent need for innovative expansion of education infrastructure. In 2012, the first online African Virtual University (AVU) reported having trained 43,000 students since its establishment in 1997 [17]. AVU developed 219 modules from collaborative work within 10 African countries. Over 1 million users accessed AVU’s Open Education Resources [18]. Although more research is needed to get a good overview of the African situation, there might just not be much to report on yet. Africa is not fully

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Fig. 1. Population by age groups and sex (% of total population) [16]

Fig. 2. Ten defining features of the African eLearning sector 2007-2012 [21]

engaged, with many issues remaining barriers to be conquered for an African expression of ICT [19]. The issues are relatively well known, with access and affordability of access as prominent barriers to use of ICT (see Figure 2). Apart from the differences between countries, there are significant spatial, social and ethnic divides within most countries [20]. All these divides affect – – – –

access to eInfrastructure and eServices and thus education resources ability to use eInfrastructure and eServices actual use of eInfrastructure and eServices, and the applicability of western educational resources for sustainable progress of Africa

The appropriation of knowledge applicable to the individual and national development necessitate activities that go beyond creating awareness [22]. ICTs play a crucial part in the creation and dissemination of such knowledge. However, currently, unequal access to ICTs affect opportunities, also in learning.

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The plural character of the positioning of interventions in Africa stems from two different and often competing paradigms: an African indigenous and a Western paradigm. The paradigms diverge in terms of values, definitions of social aspects and realities, and cultural approaches[23]. At the heart of this plurality are inherently different worldviews. In practice, this lead to a number of barriers to interaction and even antagonism. The process of social innovation can bridge this pluriformity [24]. The realities in Africa are particular. There are at least two societies, operating side by side [25]. One society speaks the language of the former colonizer mainly English, French, or Portugues - and works in a society with were written words reign. This society might be a maximum of about 40% of the population, mainly living in urban areas. The other society, the people living in the rural areas, speak indigenous languages and act within principal orality[26]. In Africa, the use of western language can hamper progress. African renaissance motivates the need for the democratisation of access to information and knowledge by the use of languages better known to the majority of the population, not exclusively, but alongside languages like English, French and Portuguese.

4 Going forward These are the early days of the revolution in education. Derived from Moore’s law1 this development is likely to go much faster than previous ones that did not rely on the combined processing power through the Internet. Technology, and in particular Information and Communication Technology (ICT), plays a pivotal role in the current fast-changing world. Many acknowledge this. For instance, the Worldbank states that ICT has significant potential for improving living conditions, contributing to economies, boosting education and health care and, most of all, empowering citizens, by providing them with access to information and facilities for communication and collaboration [27]. Examples of the power of ICT for development can be seen in various places in Africa. One example is the village of Macha, in rural Zambia. It provides a poignant example of how internet inspires people in rural communities to reach their collective and individual potential [28, 29, 30]. The Macha Works implementation model for rural, sustainable progress, relies upon the facilitation through ICT [31, 32, 33]. ICT is a disruptive technology. ICT provides the physical infrastructure, the data, and means of knowledge generation. For those with access to it and who interact in the global community, it has a profound effect on ways-of-life and work, on behaviour and social life. Those in less advantaged environments experience uncomfortable intangibles of how the lack of access, or limited access, increases inequality. The Internet empowers those who have access and marginalizes those who have no access [20]. 1

Moore observed in 1965: “Every eighteen months, processing power will double while cost remains constant”

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Although the world has evolved into a post-industrial society, education systems still focus on the needs of the industrial era [13]. In fact, most educational systems program young people to be ready to perform jobs in industry, for jobs that will seize to exist. Youth must be prepared for jobs that will emerge in 5 to 10 years time; jobs that cannot yet be imagined. Of course, many circumstances hamper the deployment and use of ICT in Africa. These constraints consist of environmental constraints, skills constraints, and cultural constraints [34]. The over-arching issue remains lack of access [35]. Over the past decade, the connections between Africa and the rest of the world have multiplied, and new cables are on their way. Investments and the arrival of sea cables coincided with master planning and development of terrestrial fibre networks. Additionally, the proliferation of mobile phone networks has extended possibilities for Internet connectivity, although connectivity (including coverage and cost), electricity supply, and stakeholder commitment remain huge issues. Then there is the human capacity issue. Realising the development potential of eInfrastructure and eServices requires an abundance of people with drive, vision, leadership capabilities and technical knowledge, grounded in the local context and culture. At present, there is a lack of human capital with those skills. Therefore, the education system must focus on achieving digital literacy [36]. Rwanda stands out with it national drive towards achieving digital literacy [37].

5 Vision We have a collective commitment to preparing the next generation to be able to lead a purposeful and fulfilling life, in which they can develop themselves and contribute to the progress of humanity. Societies need citizens who have acquired digital literacy and digital skills. A pool of sufficiently trained specialists should be able to build and maintain the infrastructure as well as the applications. They must be trained and certified in a context appropriate way [38]. Ongoing swift, and even accelerating, developments require lifelong learning. The knowledge that young people acquire in schools and universities will expire in a very few years, and some of it has already expired. Facilitation should focus on learning how to learn so that young people can take responsibility for their own continuous development after the formal education. There is a need to understand not just the technical working of computers and communication networks, but also their interaction with human society, to engender endogenous progress [39, 40]. Therefore, education must be increasingly transdisciplinary in its nature. ICT influences the content of education and the form in which education takes place. This holds for courses in all disciplines. The form of future education will most probably be a kind of blended learning: a combination of online lectures for transfer of explicit knowledge, combined with interactive class work where teacher and students meet and discuss, the so-

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called flipped classroom [13]. Online interaction and group work using social media will supplement real life interaction. Future education will take place in a networked environment, embedded in the global community, with some strong regional as well as long-distance links, and a lot of weaker global links. The education centres will be meeting places for students and scholars. There, students interact in projects and discussions on the challenges for the future, the role of knowledge and wisdom in the local society, as well as in the world at large. Students will select their courses from the network rather than their particular educational institute. Professors provide their courses to the network and scientists participate in international projects. Primarily, the education centre becomes a hub in a network, connecting people in different places. At the same time, it will be a physical focal point and meeting place where debate takes place, where thinking is stimulated, where all are being challenged, and where moral issues are taken seriously. It will be a place where connections are fostered between disciplines, to develop a holistic view and understanding of reality, within the local societal and cultural context. In the future, students will not have to choose a specific education centre. Instead, they select various courses by the best educators and put together their own program [13].

6 Accreditation and Certification The revolution in education opens alternative ways for credentialing. There is an urgent need to validate knowledge gained through open education. The Brazilian open course provider FGV Online provides the option to print ‘self-declaration of participation’ statements upon successful course completion. Engineering professionals could benefit from internationally recognized certification and accreditation. Such would demonstrate their capability and experience in appropriate engineering of eInfrastructure and eServices. Recognition enables stakeholders to identify relevant talent appropriately [38]. Local engineers can deal with local challenges, and are competent to assess and invite resources and expertise. Voluntary associations like IEEE support accreditation processes and entities around the world. Various such voluntary associations support accreditation bodies together, and it is through this that entities such as Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA), Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET), Engineers Australia, Engineering Council (UK), etc. function in carrying out accreditation. The issues of accreditation, certification and continuing education credits are an important facet in the globalized world, with a need for localization of certification to assure local applicability.

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7 In Conclusion This paper serves sensitize on the revolution in education, and on the apparent need to: 1. support digital education at all levels, and on a global scale 2. support the need for immediate ICT knowledge in education and stakeholders, especially in developing nations 3. gather and disperse indigenous courses through means of the Internet and collaborate world wide 4. develop an indigenous scientific and applied research, and social innovation systems 5. review emerging opportunities for innovative accreditation and certification of eLearning, especially for students in developing nations.

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