Teaching in the time of COVID: decisions and rapid transitions to distance learning in four African contexts across three countries

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

As the international community engaged in expanding quality and equitable education for children to adapt to the unyielding contextual changes occurring due to COVID-19 and the mass closures of schools around the world, one message resonates stronger than ever: the collective social responsibility to maximize learning and adapt quickly to provide education for already marginalized children is daunting, powerful, and filled with lessons to learn. This panel examines the rapid regrouping and adaptations that have taken place to maintain the delivery of early grade instruction using available distance learning strategies in four distinct African contexts: 1) four provinces across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 2) two under-resourced states in central Nigeria, 3) conflict-torn areas across northeast Nigeria with some of the highest rates of internally displaced persons in the world, and six of Senegal’s fourteen regions. Each of these examples represents the ongoing and combined efforts of ministries of education and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as contributions from other donors such as UK AID, private and organizations and religious groups, nonprofit and for-profit development organizations, local media and production companies, civil society and community-based organizations, administrators, teachers, parents, and the children themselves.

USAID is no stranger to investing in the design of interactive radio instruction (IRI) and other available communication tools for the purpose of improving access and quality of education. After the first IRI activity to teach early math skills to first graders in Nicaragua was proven effective in increasing learning outcomes by Stanford University in the 1970s, IRI became a popular tool to expand quality education in resource-lean environments around the world. Over the last decade IRI has been customized for remote populations and/or emergency environments, leveraged during the Ebola crisis in Liberia, and applied to a vast number of subject matter and audiences. The strategy for interactivity was fundamental to the approach and set it apart from other forms of distance learning in the early days: in IRI a radio “instructor” set up interaction and activities by giving direct instructions to listening students and teachers, followed by pauses for response and reinforcements of the correct answers and lesson patterns. However, IRI was never intended to be a self-instructional tool to be utilized without a teacher or facilitator and requires considerable formative assessment and planning to do it well. It is not a perfect fit for an emergency situation, such as a spontaneous school shutdown. Many advances in other tools, such as e-learning and mobile applications that facilitate interactive learning or data collection have also been proven to be effective and often complement face-to-face or radio instruction. Depending on mobile phone penetration and literacy, cell phones can play a major role in delivering stories and instructional content and monitoring.

In the past designing and researching appropriate distance learning approaches have had the luxury of time to maximize design and assess interactivity and learning, the ability to have teachers and students gather and interact, and a modicum of control over the supporting hands-on materials, such as books and writing utensils. COVID-19 took away these basic conditions elements and replaced them with a sense of urgency and the need to immediately align with pre-existing curricula and project activities. The need to pivot quickly to maintain learning during the COVID-19 pandemic posed unforeseen challenges about how to maximize quality and access and utilize the most effective tools in the country and communities to set up interactive learning immediately. In times of crisis, there is much to do and much to learn.

These four examples in west and central Africa highlight how decisions were made to use available tools and resources to adapt. They offer interesting and different stories of how ministry staff and counterparts and experts from around the world made the difficult decisions about what tools and priorities to focus on to ensure the greatest immediate educational outcomes. They analyze the roles of radio and whether setting up interactivity is realistic without skilled teachers, and if so, how to create lessons well. Each panelist explores local balancing acts, such as how many languages can we manage and how can we be efficient in our design? How do we get the message out to communities and family members to facilitate distance instruction, especially when many of those individuals cannot read well themselves? How do we ensure learning in subjects such as reading through radio, where written materials may or may not be present? Who can help us? And how do we measure success?

The lessons learned go beyond the immediate contexts and interpretations of social responsibility. Cell phones play a role in all the examples, but in differing ways. Each of the panelists analyzes the questions: how did we decide and when did we readjust? how can these experiences highlight opportunities to introduce new tools and strategies that can improve educational systems in the long term? What have we learned about delivering quality education from the decades of research on interactive audio instruction, from new mobile applications like WhatsApp or interactive voice response (IVR), and from our attempts to make gender equity and social inclusion at the forefront of the types of interventions that we want to stick?

A practical and informative panel, these four presenters will highlight the process, key decisions in these individual contexts, and the evidence resulting from their activities, followed by reflections by a discussant with long term experience in distance learning in poorer countries, and a question and answer period.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Audrey Marie Spencer, Chemonics International

Individual Presentations

• Community engagement, inclusion, and the conversion to distance learning in the Democratic Republic of the Congo - Nathalie Louge, FHI 360; Fred Kasongo, Chemonics International

• Instructional radio and TV lessons as new reality for educating children in low resourced communities - NURUDEEN Adeshina LAWAL, CREATIVE ASSOCIATES INTERNATIONAL; Shu’aib Muhammad Dabo, Creative Associates International; Zahra Maishanu, Northern Education Initiative Plus (NEI Plus)

• Lessons learned from distance learning education in conflict areas in northeast Nigeria - Ayo Oladini, Creative Associates International; Emily Koester, FHI 360

• Lecture pour tous: shifting to radio programming to support students’ reading during the COVID-19 crisis in Senegal - Ablaye Niang, Chemonics International; Jennifer Swift-Morgan, Chemonics International; Jake Thomsen, Chemonics International

Discussant

• Andrea Bosch, Chemonics International