eLearning in Africa

Yesterday I had a pleasure of reading Dr Lwoga’s paper, ‘critical success factors for adoption of web-based learning management system in Tanzania’. The paper had intention of examining the use of web based learning in Tanzania. Auspiciously, today while reading the news I came across an article in Guardian that heads, ‘e-learning makes further education a reality for tens of thousands’. These two articles inspired me to blog on e-learning in Africa for two reasons, First as a novice of information systems with particular interest on social media it’s good to share my views with public and second inspiration come from my interest in education for development.

It is widely portrayed that eLearning is solution to education provision in marginalised communities; the truth is far from reality. One day I was discussing with my sister Aikande on how organisations such as Ubongo Kids and Shule Direct come with eLearning initiatives to help the delivery of education to students especially the ones who lack teachers or learning material. Then after our long discussion of praise we came to unfortunate reality that such initiatives ends up benefiting the students who are well off (it’s not bad benefiting them) than the intended marginalised students. The reasons for such a conclusion were such as lack of electricity, poor Internet connection and perhaps lack of computers or electronic application to access the materials. These issues pose a strong hindrance for marginalised communities to access the affordance of eLearning.

Dr Lwoga’s research offers more insight to challenges that face eLearning in Tanzania. Lwoga’s research uses the technological acceptance model to explore the use of web-based learning. Though her research was conducted in Muhimbili university with first year only, a sample which is small to generalize for Tanzania and Africa but her research still offers some important insight. Muhimbili University has introduced web-based learning facilities but students don’t use them as expected. One of the reasons that Lwoga’s research highlights is the perceived gratification that the students think of web-based learning. Many students won’t use the eLearning facilities if they don’t really perceive the gratification that they can obtain.  Lwoga’s observation can inform us that the use of eLearning will still face a challenge in marginalised communities if they won’t understand the gratification that will be obtained from eLearning.  One of the solutions to such a problem is to establish a support service, but how can support be provided with deficiency of resource? The idea of eLearning as a low cost can be refuted here when support services are incorporated on the cost.

Finally, I recommend that people should social be prepared with introduction of eLearning so as to make it efficient and effective. When I was in secondary school we had computers that had Encarta encyclopaedia that could be very useful if we were allowed access to the computer lab, unfortunate our teachers denied us access or they could limit our time to use the computer perhaps they had a phobia or worries but all in all there was lot of resistance and especially when recommendation of setting internet, all in all this hindered us a lot from benefiting eLearning.