Challenges the Covid-19 pandemic has heaped on universities

It needs no telling that the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted activities worldwide, and since it is obvious that this disease is not going away soon, we must adopt ways to deal with in these unprecedented times.

The pandemic has affected the learning of more than 1.7 billion learners worldwide, according to UNESCO. Education sector income has been adversely affected by the decline of economic activities due to cessation of movement, unemployment, closure of institutions, and reduced or direct cut of funding to institutions.

While Open and Distance e-learning is a substitute for face-to-face learning and would reduce the study backlog and time taken to finish a course, some students have opposed this approach, arguing it is not inclusive since some come from remote areas with no electricity or internet connectivity. Some would prefer the face-to-face experience in the institution's premises.

Granted, e-learning would be a challenge for practical courses such as medicine and engineering, unlike theory courses such as social sciences, business, and humanities.

Online learning heavily depends on modern technology, infrastructure and media, which many institutions either lack, or have in limited capacity. The internet platform is a prerequisite for online learning to enable faculty to learner interaction and learner to learner interaction for discussions and sharing of ideas. Internet creates a seamless avenue and platform through which lectureres share learning materials, for example presentations during lectures.

Smart phones

Access to internet requires lecturers and learners to have computers or smart phones which are internet enabled. Another requirement is electric power to charge the gadgets. But these gadgets are expensive, and many learners are not able to afford them.

With this in mind, a number of universities have entered into partnership with service providers and suppliers to sell to students at lower than market rate prices.

Apart from infrastructure, higher education institutions require additional technology to conduct online learning for their students. The institutions install learning management systems (LMS) such as Moodle. These allow lecturers to post lecture notes and assessment materials as well as Work Based Assignments (WBAs) on the system. Eligible students with authenticated access rights then retrieve the materials.

At the tail end of learning is examination to test the learners’ level of retention and application of knowledge learned. Academic institutions need to invest in examination platforms with proctoring capability and adequate security and versatility to ensure academic dishonesty, including deception, plagiarism, theft, and fraud is minimised.

Seamless interoperability

Other technology necessary for smooth online learning include the Integrated Enterprise Programme (ERP) which enables seamless interoperability of student and administration systems and functions, web-based systems for communication with the public and learners and integrating multimedia materials within the LMS system.

Acquiring the entire infrastructure, technologies and systems requires heavy capital expenditure. The capital items are very expensive but the overall cost varies from institution to institution based on a number factors, such as number of students, number of programmes, number of campuses and outlay of each campus.

 The costs for these may range from a few hundreds of dollars to millions. Universities and other learning institutions therefore need to consider making funding arrangements with financiers, donors and partners by developing fundable proposals based on each institution’s individual need.

It is noteworthy that the Commission for University Education (CUE), the regulator of university education in the country, responded positively by hosting a biennial conference on achievements, challenges and experiences in the university sector during the Covid-19 pandemic, and assessing the level of preparedness of universities to tackle the online and distance e-learning related challenges.

CUE’s biannual conference, held virtually, was a great eye opener for many universities. Among the conference take-away were various suggestions.

One was the need to secure connectivity between CUE’s information management system and universities’ information systems from 2021 to make it easy for universities to submit data and obtain information from the commission.

Face-to-face modes

University processes will be automated to facilitate ease of online exchange of data and information across all the universities and the commission. The use of ICT will also be accelerated in the delivery of programmes to facilitate online interactive learning to reduce possible interruptions due to similar pandemics in future.

The conference resolved to train academics in the delivery of courses through blended and face-to-face modes. All universities will improve their ICT systems and infrastructure from networking to upgrading their LMS. Finally, universities will develop pedagogy training for their academic staff for development and production of online content.

What remains now is for the commission to fast track the implementation of these resolutions and approval of requests by universities to offer online teaching and examination by finalising the self-assessment (SAR) reports.

It would also help if the government could consider funding public and private universities to implement the new infrastructure for online delivery of learning.

As earlier stated, investment in technology to support online learning is very expensive and it is unlikely that an individual institution can afford it on its own. It is therefore necessary for the government to intervene and facilitate reduction of investment costs.

The government may adopt certain methods, including negotiated bulk purchases from suppliers, increase and rationalise funding per student throughout all universities and advance tax holidays in all ICT and related items to universities and other learning institutions.