From Virtual Premises to Real Promises: Tracking the Formation of the African Engineering Education Fellows in Diaspora

• In Event: Reforms, sustainable development, and social change in higher education (II)

Proposal

Formation
Research has expounded on the impact of the social restrictions mandated during the Covid-19 pandemic (Banerjee 2020). One area of inquiry reports that international students experienced isolation from peers, family members, and colleagues, negatively impacting their productivity, mental health, and willingness to complete their academic programs (Al-Oraibi et al., 2022). At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, three US-based African engineering education diasporans met through social networks to form an informal group to help one another cope with the demands of their respective graduate programs and the psychological effects of the mandated physical isolations. The informal conversations held on WhatsApp and the hangouts hosted by the group on Zoom and Gather Town served as virtual premises for participants to support one another, host professional development workshops and serve as peer mentors. This informal meeting format differed significantly from our normative experiences of mentor-mentee, classroom, or peer-to-peer meetings. It provided an outlet for attendees to be real, to be free to talk about personal and professional life outside Africa without needing to measure their words or risk being misunderstood. Using Homan's group formation theory as an analytical lens, this paper discusses how discussions in virtual premises evolved into formal ratifications demonstrated by the group members' decisions to collaborate in the authorship of research papers and the formation of a nongovernmental organization with real promise, the African Engineering Education Fellows in Diaspora (AEEF Diaspora).
This proposal presents three narratives the group describes in its agency for protest. The first describes the organic formation of the group through informal conversations as opposed to normative expectations of formality. The second describes our choice of focus group discussions as a method of inquiry in this paper consistent with our regular meeting formats. The third describes our argument that our cultural ways of knowing and being are valid forms of knowledge even if others do not deem them as scientific.

Growth
AEEF in Diaspora has established a solid and inclusive community, sustaining engagement through online platforms like WhatsApp and LinkedIn. With 41 members from various African countries (such as Nigeria, Liberia, Uganda, Mali, Tunisia, South Africa, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Tanzania, etc.) who reside in countries like Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, etc., the group serves as a virtual platform hosted in the US. AEEF in Diaspora presently comprises forty-one active members, including twenty-eight graduate students and Ph.D. candidates, two post-docs, three industry researchers, and eight faculty members in engineering /engineering education specialization. The group’s expertise includes data collection and analysis, project management, school application procedures, qualitative and quantitative research methods, curriculum development, conference, and journal paper reviews, etc.
AEEF in Diaspora leadership structure has evolved into a shared model, where all members actively engage in meaningful conversations, seek advice, and share resources. Elected executives and appointed members represent the group in discussions with external bodies, aligning with their mission to contribute expertise and influence African engineering education practices. While we maintain a formal non-governmental organization structure for specific interactions, we purposefully engage in informal WhatsApp conversations, which is helping us in fostering an open environment and active participation.
In conceptualizing the group's growth, we draw insights from Greiner’s work (1998) which conceptualizes creativity, direction, delegation, coordination, collaboration, and alliances as phases of organizational growth. While we recognize that our growth has not been linear, the philosophy of the group is to encourage personal agencies to mobilize engagement. This is made possible because of the group’s common goals and the common backgrounds we share. This cultural capital, we argue, reduces the engagement activation potential for a group like this, catalyzed by our African experiences.

Method
This paper uses focus group discussions to answer the question of what the AEEF in Diaspora is, how it was formed, and the rationale for its formation. The focus group consists of six representatives of the community (the authors) that have historical knowledge of and recent exposure to its workings. Our data collection method is consistent with the group's informal meeting format. Our method involved collaborative discussions on Zoom guided by prompts about the group’s origins, growth model, shared activities, lived experiences as fellows, and defining characteristics. We discussed our responses to these questions and reacted to the points raised to achieve a consensus.

Findings
The relaxed and informal setting allowed for natural and comfortable interactions from which key group characteristics such as authenticity, trust, and a sense of belonging were built. Members offered much-needed social support to one another and even shared networking and career opportunities. The group also enabled the development of professional and academic skills like communication and conducting academic research in a low-pressure environment. The evolution to a more structured organization was organic, necessitated by the need to be strategically positioned to drive the group's mission.


Implications
Though several miles from home, members of the group have united powerfully while in the diaspora. In an environment where our identity is loudly pronounced as underrepresented, minority, foreign-born, etc., we indeed have unique stories and experiences. Some of the narratives surrounding our racial and ethnic identities often fail to capture our homeland's true essence and potential. Also, there need to be more African engineering education research studies in a bid to contribute to “the Africa we want” (Agenda 2063). We argue that the formation of our group is an attempt at enacting the “power of protest” to provoke change in engineering education on the African continent and the world at large. We hope that the formalization of this organization will not only provide social and academic support to the current members, but also attract, educate, and engage even more Africans in the diaspora to participate in addressing engineering education opportunities in Africa. Also, we intend to make a case for informal settings as a way of building an enriching and productive community because the fact that it started out informally does not mean a structure can’t be put to it, and the fact that it is virtual does not mean it cannot be real.

Authors

• Moses Olayemi, University of Oklahoma

• Daniel Adeniranye, Florida International University

• Viyon Dansu, Florida International University

• Joreen Arigye

• Mary Benjamin, Michigan Technological University

• Ifeoluwa Priscilla Babalola, Texas A&M University