Bringing the unspoken to light: Presenting the challenges of Covid-19 to quality educational delivery at the University of Liberia

• In Event: Education programing in conflict-affect contexts in Africa

Proposal

In August 2013, Ellen Sirleaf Johnson , then president of Liberia famously said that the “Liberian education system is a mess” which punctuated the failing of many students on the UL entrance exam the year before, and the graduation of one medical student at the end of the Ebola crisis. Since then, a renewed awareness on the importance of higher education has caused an exhumation of education policies and practices to be reviewed and dissected, yet movement towards meaningful reform at the tertiary level has been slow. With the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic, nations transitioned to technology-based learning which fueled global concern that the digital divide among already marginalized groups, who had limited or no access to the internet, computers and other forms of ICT would be exacerbated. This shortage of technological tools coupled with deficient infrastructure would expose the ingenuity some countries used to continue the education process while also displaying the ineptness of others. The Covid-19 pandemic provided Liberia and its flagship institution, the University of Liberia, with evidence of where they continued to lack in the teacher training, technology, and infrastructure spaces. The ideas around sustaining quality education at the UL have ripple effects throughout Liberian society. Students matriculating from the UL are expected to perform in the workplace as conduits of new knowledge to solve old problems. The UL is looked upon as the highest performing academic institution within the country. Its ability or inability to expand its delivery of quality educational experiences has a direct impact on other learning institutions as well as the national accreditation body charged with setting quality standards. This paper delves into the challenges that Covid-19 presented to the delivery of quality education at the University of Liberia in the wake of preceding challenges such as the country’s Civil Wars and Ebola and what lessons it learned to make education more accessible. Through the experiences of faculty and students, this chapter will examine how Covid-19 pushed the university to reconcile its beliefs and its actuality regarding the readiness of its faculty and student populations to transition to remote learning.

Author

• Kamille Beye, University College London, Institute of Education