Taking Online Education Offline: Using Technology to Bridge Higher Education Gaps in Malawi

• In Event: Digital Transformers: How Technology is Reshaping Higher Education in Malawi, Cambodia, and Peru

Proposal

The higher education sub-sector in Malawi is one of the most underdeveloped in the region. The country is struggling to make higher education accessible to qualifying students due to an acute shortage of teaching and learning resources, individual socio-economic factors, human capacity and classroom, library, and dormitory space (Chawinga and Zozie, 2016). Driven by lessons learned during the COVID-19 global pandemic where learning institutions shut down, e-learning has become more common in Malawi. While only 12% of universities offered e-learning prior to the pandemic, that increased to 30% post pandemic (National Council for Higher Education, 2022). Although online distance, and e-Learning (ODeL) provision is reported to have significantly contributed to the upward shift of Malawi’s access rate to higher education from 0.8% to 3% in recent years, the learning pathway, just as in most education settings, is not without challenges. The e-learning pathway’s major setbacks are availability and affordability as Malawi continues to grapple with high internet costs and poor connectivity.

To resolve the internet connectivity challenges, USAID/Malawi partnered with Arizona State University to roll - out SunSPOT in partnership with BeeKee Inc. SunSPOT was designed to enable real time course delivery offline to target students in remote ODeL satellite centers.

The University of Malawi and the Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences used SunSPOT to develop offline digital libraries. The offline digital libraries provide a shift for students from relying on physical books and resources that are not readily available in university libraries to electronic resources without the need for an internet connection. The innovations provide an alternative source of learning materials especially to students learning through ODeL whose access is guaranteed even with power outages on both cellular networks and institutional networks. The innovations also provide a platform for interactive lectures and quizzes where students will get timely feedback from lecturers. Malawi’s education sector is currently in a national education digitalisation drive and this technology has been showcased to have potential for use in primary and secondary education as well. Lessons from SHEAMA’s SunSPOT technology will be applicable to anyone working in low resource settings, particularly institutions working to expand their reach to marginalized and hard to reach students.

Authors

• Mary Chitsulo, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

• Joseph Chikaphonya Phiri, Malawi University of Business and Applied Science

• Justice Stanley Peter Mlatho, University of Malawi

• Tasokwa Vida Musa Kakota