Towards becoming a Hybrid University : IMPROVING TEACHING (AND LEARNING) AT MAKERERE
Towards becoming a Hybrid University [BRICS MODEL] and Turning Makerere lecturers into good university teachers [SOUTH AFRICAN MODEL]IMPROVING TEACHING (AND LEARNING) AT MAKERERE
Omar Kalinge-Nnyago
[This short (non-academic) article is in response to an informal call from( the now late) Dr. Abel Rwendeire in his capacity as Chair of the Visitation Committee - for ideas to improve Makerere University’s standing as a world-class university. To help further interest in the subject, We share a list of useful higher learning resources at the end of the article].
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*Omar Kalinge, 54, is a Higher Education practitioner and eLearning Consultant
Skype: omardawood79 Twitter: @omarkalinge
The African University Context
Centres of higher learning have existed in Africa for several centuries, well before the arrival of Europeans. Examples of these are the University of al-Karawiyyin in Fez, Morocco; Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt; and the University of Timbuktu in Mali.
However, modern higher education in Africa has its roots in university colleges that were created by and affiliated with European universities during the colonial period. They were staffed by Europeans or Africans trained in Europe, and their major objective was training the workforce for the public sector and teachers for the rapidly expanding secondary education sector. These institutions were patterned on the European higher education system; and after the colonies achieved independence in the1960s, the colleges became universities. Again, their academic structure, governance mode, course curricula, and methods of instruction were modeled on European universities. They were all created in the major cities, meant for the elite of African society, and alienated from the rural areas where the majority of the population lived and where the development challenges were greatest. It is hardly surprising therefore that the relevance of such higher education institutions to Africa’s post independence development has often been questioned, but still much sought after.
UNESCO data show that participation in higher education in Africa is less than 10%, the lowest (as percentage of the traditional age cohort) in the world. With the recognition that highly skilled human resources are critical to economic development, governments in nearly all African countries have implemented policies to expand access—building new universities while simultaneously increasing enrollment at existing universities.
These decisions are political as well as economic but with little consideration to the practical implications of this vertiginous growth. This leaves university leaderships with the obligation to confront too many problems with too few resources. Increased participation is certainly a good thing yet when the increased number of students outpaces the expansion and improvement of facilities, the stage is set for growing frustration, protests and conflict.
It is, of course, easier to add students than faculty. There is a growing tidal wave of secondary school leavers arriving at the university gates but no corresponding wave of qualified professors with graduate degrees or research experience. Africa’s most talented scholars often earn graduate degrees abroad then remain there. Ironically, many universities then contract foreign professors at salaries higher than those paid to national hires in order to build academic reserves. One has to wonder about the rationality of this current cycle of loss and replacement and whether those salary premiums might be better spent keeping national talent at home in order to abate the exodus. Institutional leadership rarely has the discretion to negotiate salaries to attract needed academic talent as salaries are generally determined by national governments. As a result of the outflow of talent, the slow production and difficulty of retaining new talent, universities often “make do” with lesser-qualified professors in the short-term. Yet, once entrenched, lecturers and professors often join unions that create obstacles to initiatives that would oblige teaching staff to improve their qualifications or meet performance requirements thus forcing institutional leadership into complicated dilemmas.
In these untenable circumstances, the leadership of individual institutions rarely has the necessary authority to make difficult decisions or to develop strategy appropriate and viable for local circumstances. In most of Africa, the national government limits the authority of local leadership and the autonomy of institutions. Central governments often make determinations for how a large part of the institutional budget can be allocated, leaving university leadership with little discretion. The result is serious constraints on institutional development and problem-solving. Student fees at public institutions, salaries, and infrastructure development may all be determined by the government with regard only to political exigencies.
Additionally, many governments limit resources further by making arbitrary decisions about Internet access, cutting off sites that range from YouTube to Skype. YouTube is no longer a domain that exists solely to entertain adolescents; an individual can attend an entire semester of Calculus at MIT for free at YouTube.com. Skype has become an important tool for collaborative research among scholars in different countries. With the Internet increasingly used as a pedagogical tool in higher education, these restrictions tie the hands of university leadership as well as teaching staff.
So, universities leadership is often left to solve all of the problems created by national policy but with very few tools or options at their disposal. Although the African Development Institute of the ADB (African Development Bank) is committed to providing leadership training for these key actors in higher education, how far can they succeed until there is rational political policy that provides African higher education with the autonomy and resources necessary to do the urgent work that needs to be done?
Although the GTER for Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s lowest and does not appear to have significantly increased recently in comparison to growth in other world regions, paradoxically actual numerical tertiary enrolment has dramatically increased over the past few decades. In 1970, tertiary enrolment in the region was less than 0.2 million and this figure increased to over 4.5 million in 2008 (UIS, 2010). In Nigeria alone, which has the largest tertiary education system in Africa, tertiary enrolment doubled from about 0.7 million in 2000 to 1.4 million in 2005. The annual increase in GTER for Sub-Saharan Africa was 8.6% between 1970 and 2008, compared to 4.6% globally.
Is Makerere at Risk?
This question can be answered by Makerere leadership. But it should help to know that a university whether in Africa, East Africa or Uganda is at risk if:
· You are not or no longer a top-ranked institution
· Your admissions yield has fallen and it’s costing you more to attract students
· Median salaries for your graduates have been flat over a number of years
· Your endowment is in the millions not billions, and a large percentage is restricted
· Your financial statements don’t look as good as they used to
· Your debt expense has been increasing far more rapidly than your instruction expense
· Your property, plant and equipment (PP&E) asset is increasing faster than your revenue
· You have seen a decline in net tuition revenue
· Tuition represents an increasingly greater percentage of your revenue
· You are having trouble accessing the same level of government funding
· You have had to take drastic measures
· You are consistently hiking tuition to the top end of the range
· You have had to lower admissions standards
· You have had to cut back on financial aid
· You have reduced your faculty headcount
Does Makerere need to improve?
Of course yes. And there are many areas of improvement. We focus on only two, both related to teaching. We advance two proposals here namely, (a) Towards becoming a hybrid University and (b) How to turn Makerere lecturers into good university teachers.
MAKERERE SHOULD INVEST IN BECOMING A HYBRID UNIVERSITY BY EXPANDING ITS DISTANCE AND OPEN LEARNING CAPABILITIES [The BRICS Model]
UNESCO has repeatedly argued that the number of places for post-secondary learners must increase from approximately 120 million to 240 million worldwide, with large-scale growth already having been documented over the past decade. In the emerging economic powerhouses of the world, increased access to knowledge and education is crucial to guarantee continued growth.
Yet, it is virtually impossible to build the number of traditional post-secondary institutions to keep up with the increase in demand. Traditional universities represent a tremendous ongoing financial commitment when physical campuses classrooms need to be built, maintained and secured.
The Distance Learning Solution
In distance learning, these costs (and their environmental footprint) are significantly less. This translates to more resources being spent on course design, development and student support services. This, in turn, leads to better student outcomes linked to the higher quality of instruction. Distance learning is also uniquely flexible, allowing for studies to be combined with working and family life and to be taken at the correct pace for the student (and in tune with what they can afford). Distance learning has also proven itself able to react quickly to specific economic and societal needs.
Views of distance learning vary significantly from region to region throughout the world. In most countries and regions, distance learning is respected as an alternative to studying on campus. Uganda’s higher education policies should facilitate the convergence between campus-based, blended, and distance learning as a driver for increased understanding.
Distance Learning in BRIC Nations
The term BRIC was coined to describe the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. In distance education, there has been an explosion in student numbers in these countries. Indira Ghandi National Open University in India has the world’s largest student body with 1.8 million students, while The Open University of China’s spring 2011 enrolment saw a 9% year on year increase to 467,000 enrolments. Almost one in six students enrolled in undergraduate studies in Brazil enters into a distance learning course.
There are lessons Makerere wants to learn from BRICS nations in this direction. The pressures on physical resources by designing hybrid courses (courses whose component is both face to face (40% and distance 60% for example), especially in the humanities can reduce drastically.
Terminology
There are no standard definitions for what constitutes a “hybrid” course, but some generally accepted descriptions follow. In online learning literature, the terms “hybrid” and “blended” are used synonymously.
A hybrid course uses various delivery methods to best meet course and session outcomes. The blend may consist of any combination of face-to-face classroom instruction, asynchronous discussion forums, and synchronous sessions conducted live over the Internet, depending on course content.
A well-designed hybrid course takes advantage of the best features of both face-to-face and online learning so that the activities of each reinforce, complement, and elaborate one another. In a poorly designed hybrid course, the online component is viewed as an add-on or a duplicate of what is taught in the classroom.
The proportion and structure of online and face-to-face meeting times can vary widely, based on the goals and needs of the program/course.
Makerere would become more viable if she expanded her distance and open learning capabilities and would reduce costs of teaching (and learning) while simultaneously increasing student enrolment.
MAKERERE SHOULD INVEST IN TURNING HER LECTURERS INTO GOOD UNIVERSITY TEACHERS [A SOUTH AFRICAN MODEL]
Traditionally, it has been assumed that, once an academic holds a Master’s degree or PhD in their discipline, they can share their knowledge and teach students effectively. Most, though, don’t have a teaching qualification, nor have they been offered any opportunities to develop as teachers while studying towards their advanced degree.
This means that many lecturers feel like they have been thrown into the deep end at the start of their teaching careers. There has been some work in this field and many universities now offer formal and informal academic staff development opportunities.
But there is far more to good university teaching than just being able to project your voice, prepare a good PowerPoint presentation or keep your students interested. Academics’ deeply held views about their students must be challenged. They need to question seriously how issues of identity, belonging, privilege, diversity, racism and sexism can be addressed explicitly in the classroom.
Who is best placed to shape university teachers who are more than just technically proficient? This work is done by academic developers in teaching and learning centres in most universities. However, we believe that to do this work well, academic developers themselves need to engage deeply with questions of teaching, curriculum design and transformation.
Academic development has changed
The field of academic development first emerged in South African higher education in the mid-1980s. Its initial purpose was to support the small numbers of black students who had been admitted to historically white, English-speaking universities earlier that decade.
This approach to academic development was in line with the view that students lacked some of the requisite skills and knowledge to learn successfully in their new contexts.
By the early 1990s it became clear that not only were students under-prepared for the university context, but that academics were ill-equipped to teach a rapidly growing and increasingly diverse student body to learn successfully. Academic development then also started to concern itself with curriculum and staff development.
Many academics have common sense views about student learning. They tend to believe, for instance, that if a student is failing a particular course this is a reflection only on the individual student’s abilities.
These and other normative views about teaching and learning need to be challenged. Those who have been in the field of academic development for a few decades have developed more nuanced conceptions of teaching and learning and have been instrumental in helping to build the now extensive knowledge base of the field.
Developing the developers
Worldwide there are ongoing and urgent calls from a number of quarters for the transformation of higher education. This discussion is happening alongside debates about how best to professionalize academic staff in universities. Each country brings a particular set of challenges or circumstances in its own higher education landscape to the table.
Case study: Rhodes University Centre for Higher Education Research
Rhodes University’s Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning offers a postgraduate diploma in higher education. There has been, in recent years, an increasing demand for the centre to organize academic staff development courses for a number of institutions in South Africa and on the continent.
Rhodes believes she would be more beneficial for the field if the centre worked with academic developers rather than directly with academic staff. This equips academic developers with the knowledge and skills they need to offer staff development courses to the lecturing staff in their own institutions.
Why this approach is feasible
The resulting postgraduate diploma for academic developers is, as far as we are aware, the first of its kind in the world. South Africa’s Department of Higher Education and Training funds bursaries for course participants, demonstrating the government’s commitment to improving higher education.
The diploma offers spaces for academic developers to have serious, intellectual conversations. Some of these are about the nitty-gritty of teaching. Other debates deal with the broader context referred to earlier. The course participants consider, for instance, how institutions, teachers, curricula and teaching need to change to contribute to enabling all students to access the “goods” of the university.
Once this work is done, academic developers can return to their own institutions armed with knowledge and skills that can be shared.
Makerere may want to look in this direction, with Rhodes University. A core staff may have to be sponsored to undergo this specialized graduate training and on return, establish a similar centre at Makerere for sustainability. As Makerere grapples with her complex financial problems, she could also do well to address the quality of the product it offers - teaching. How about interrogating the notion that one of the reasons Makerere is not making enough money is because it is not teaching well and therefore cannot attract more international students?
Useful Resources:
· “Top Ten Do’s and Don’ts for Blended Learning,” Babson College Curriculum Innovation and Technology Group. Accessed July 21, 2011, at <http://citg.babson.edu/innovation.aspx#/innovation.aspx?page=86&rid=2>.
· “Hybrid Courses: Frequently Asked Questions,” University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Learning Technology Center. Accessed July 20, 2011, at <http://www4.uwm.edu/ltc/hybrid/about_hybrid/index.cfm>.
· "Questions for Reflection on Creating Hybrid Courses," University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Learning Technology Center. Accessed July 20, 2011, at <http://www4.uwm.edu/ltc/hybrid/faculty_resources/questions.cfm>.
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