Designing for online African learners

• In Event: Decolonizing e-learning: Time to critically examine online learning in Africa

Proposal

Distance education has long roots in the African continent. For example, the University of South Africa (UNISA) which was founded in 1873, began its distance education programs as far back as 1946. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and forced the world to shut down, all countries struggled with the mass migration to emergency remote online teaching (Bozkurt, et al., 2020) regardless of the experiences that existed with distance education or online learning, COVID-19 pushed online learning to the forefront and forced institutions of higher education around the world to rethink their purpose, course delivery, overall teaching and learning, and particularly their eLearning strategies Like all institutions around the world, African institutions of higher education had to find strategies to ensure continuity of education not only during the pandemic (Okebukola et al., 2020; Paschal & Mkulu, 2020), but also plan in case a similar situation arises in the future (Marinoni, Van’t Land, & Jensen, 2020; Mhlanga, Denhere, & Moloi, 2022). One outcome of the pandemic is a realization that there is a need to ensure that institutions either have instructional designers to develop online courses or have those who teach at the university develop skills for teaching online.The environment in which learning takes place has as much impact on the learner as the content presented and approaches used.
This paper centers African learners, ways of being and knowing in the design of online learning as a way to resist power.

Authors

• Rebecca Y Bayeck, Utah State University

• Martial Dembélé, University of Montreal

• Onesimus Otieno, Oakwood University