ICT Integration in Higher Education:

Challenges and OpportunitiesGreig Krull

Saide15 August 2012

Agenda

• Context – Motivators and Constraints• ICT Integration in the areas of Higher Education

– Research, Teaching, Administration

• Challenges and Opportunities– Environmental, Institutional, People, Technology, Learning

• Case Studies– Partnership for Higher Education– OER Africa

• Discussion

People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to

Technologies used are increasingly cloud-based, and notions of IT support are decentralised

World of work is increasingly collaborative, driving changes in the way student projects are structured

Abundance of resources / relationships via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators

Shifting education paradigms to include online learning, hybrid learning and collaborative models

New emphasis on more challenge-based and active learning

Key Trends in Higher Education

The NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition

Economic pressures and new models of education are bringing greater competition to higher education

Appropriate metrics of evaluation lag the emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching

Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline

Institutional barriers present formidable challenges to moving forward with emerging technologies

Challenges for libraries and university collections: how scholarship is documented, and the business models to support these activities

Significant Challenges

The NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition

Context

1. What is your biggest motivator to integrate ICT into your teaching and learning?

2. What is your biggest constraint to integrate ICT into your teaching and learning?

Motivators and Constraints

ICTs in Higher Education Areas

Research Teaching

Administration

How do you use ICT in?

1. Research 2. Teaching

3. Administration

ICTs in Higher Education

Types of Challenges

Environment Institutions

People Technology

Learning

Environmental Challenges

• People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to

• Limited Regional Infrastructure– Electricity– Access to resources

• High cost of bandwidth• Sustainability• Lack of national development, education and ICT policies

Environmental Interventions

• Articulate a vision and a strategic framework for harnessing the potential of ICTs to address a country's development challenges

• Government focus on overarching and guiding national telecommunications and ICT policies, particularly as they relate to ICTs in education

• Increase access to broadband • Partnerships between institutions, governments and

businesses

People Challenges

• Not all staff are ICT literate and can teach using ICT tools• Extra effort and time involved in using technologies• Lack of readiness of students to use technologies• Shortage of people with technical skills to maintain ICT

systems

People Interventions

• Develop internal capacity in the use of ICT • Staff

– Implement incentive systems that promote the use of ICTs– Provide prior training for faculty when introducing ICTs

• Students– Provide support and training for students

Institutional Challenges

• Major financial investment needed• High cost of acquiring and maintaining ICTs• High cost of content (e-journals, digital libraries)• Some substitution of capital costs for labour• Consistency across departments

Institutional Interventions

• Vision and commitment of the leadership to deploying ICTs • Require strong institutional policy (resource allocation)• Regional approach for joint negotiations on the cost of

bandwidth• Promote collaboration among higher education institutions in

all ICT-related activities• Identify ways in which the application of ICTs will significantly

enhance the research and teaching capabilities• Look for freely available resources e.g. e-journals

Technology Challenges

• Reliability and Security• System / Data Integration• Limited bandwidth• Inexperience in procuring appropriate ICT products and

services • Use of unlicensed software can be very problematic

Technology Interventions

• Create a technology plan that includes long term budgeting• Funds and staff available to sustain investments in ICT

infrastructure and support systems• Enhance bandwidth/connectivity through the acquisition of

suitable infrastructure• Understand total ownership cost (acquisition, installation,

power supply, maintenance, replacement, training etc)• Piloting (test the efficacy of a technology)• Possible sharing or coordination of ICT usage with other

institutions

Learning Challenges

• Delivery methods – online, blended etc• Learning technology that is not used effectively• “Dumping” content • Content not adapted to the technology and context• Limited interaction between students and teachers/tutors

Learning Interventions

• Review student needs, technology and content availability • Customise learning content appropriately• Produce high quality content with sound instructional design• Effective interaction of students with content, fellow students

and teachers/tutors during the learning process

Summary

• HEIs should integrate emerging technologies into their policies and programmes

• Identify the specific roles of ICT in enhancing research and learning capabilities

• Provide for adequate infrastructure backed by capacity building

• Enhance ICT though inter-institutional collaboration • Success depends on sound financial and pedagogical planning• Wide adoption of ICTs calls for mindsets and skill sets that are

adaptive to change

Case Studies

Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA)Educational Technology Initiative (ETI)

Project Objective“To support interventions in universities to make increasingly

effective use of educational technology to address some of the underlying educational challenges facing the higher educational

sector in Africa”

The strategic objectives of the PHEA ETI are to:• Support teaching and learning initiatives that integrate educational

technology• Promote collaborative knowledge creation and dissemination• Refine institutional systems so that they support teaching and learning

more directly• Research and report on educational technology activity in African

universities

Universities Involved

Catholic University of Mozambique

University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania)

Kenyatta University (Kenya)University of Jos

(Nigeria)

University of Education

Winneba (Ghana)

University of Ibadan (Nigeria)

Makerere University (Uganda)

Project Examples• ICT and Elearning Policies• Implementation of Moodle VLE• Online courses and interactive e-content • Portfolios• Digitisation of Exam Papers and Theses• Migration of courses from Blackboard to Moodle• Open Courseware• Video and Audio Lectures• Executive Information Systems• Research Papers: Gender ICT Perceptions, Elearning Adoption

Achievements• Institutional commitments to ICT growing – has led to policies

at some institutions• Strong focus on deployment of ICT to tackle teaching and

learning challenges:• All institutions using Moodle• Some deployment of other technologies (mobile, radio, e-portfolios)• Extensive growth in number of online courses produced • Growing use of online courses on campuses

• Research via case studies and external evaluation

Lessons Learnt • Working through rigid hierarchies creates problems in

communication and implementation• Often Educational Technology units are marginalised • Capacity development is a key need, including ability to design

projects • Lack of institutionalised incentives for academic staff to engage

with educational technology• Limited ICT infrastructure remains a major barrier• Institutional commitment to ICT needed through presence of

supportive ICT policies and ICT Funding

Conclusions• Basic problems such as limited bandwidth and intermittent

electricity place significant limitations on the potential for growth

• However…• Telecommunications capacity is growing rapidly• Expanding range of devices at reducing costs• Explosion of available quality content online that educators

and students can link to• Need governments and institutions to continue investment

and focus on ICT use in higher education

See the results: www.oerafrica.org (follow links to the PHEA Educational Technology Initiative)

Open Educational Resources

A resource

Citation: Tony Mays 2011

An Educational Resource

• What is the name of the bird in the foreground of the picture?

• Can you name 3 other varieties of this kind of bird?

Citation: Tony Mays 2011

An OER

• What is the name of the bird in the foreground of the picture?

• Can you name 3 other varieties of this kind of bird?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

Citation: Tony Mays 2011

A remixed OER

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

Citation: John Doe 2012Photo: Tony Mays 2011

• The yellow hornbill shown left is one of four varieties of hornbills common across sub-Saharan Africa. The other varieties are the grey- and red- hornbills and the much larger ground hornbill.

• As the name suggests, the large horny bill is the key characteristic of the species. What does this suggest about their typical diet?

Definition

“Open educational resources are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly

for anyone to use and under some licenses to remix, improve and redistribute.”

Wikipedia: OER, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources

MIT OpenCourseWare, http://ocw.mit.edu/

OER has the Potential to1. Increase availability of high quality, relevant and need-

targeted learning materials2. Reduce the cost of accessing educational materials3. Allow adaptation of materials and possibly contribute to

enabling learners to be active participants in educational processes

4. Achieve collaborative partnership of people working in communities of practice

5. Provide educators with access, at low or no cost, to the tools and content required to produce high quality educational materials

Creative Commons Licenses

A spectrum of rights

least restrictive most restrictive

Public Domain

All Rights ReservedXXX

Challenges

Licensing and

Copyright Clearance

Finding relevant / quality resources

Adapting or remixing resources

Policy implications for ICT and Intellectual

Property

Summary• Technology must be seen as a supportive tool• The use of technology needs to add value• Adequate infrastructure is needed• Capacity building is a key focus• Collaborate with others and learn from experience• Emergence of OERs can support the trend to introduce elearning • Become adaptive to change

Thank you

greigk@saide.org.za

greigk_za

Greig Krull

Discussion

www.saide.org.zawww.oerafrica.org

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

References• Johnson, L, Adams, S, and Cummins, M (2012). The NMC Horizon Report:

2012 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.• Isaacs, S and Hollow, D, (eds) 2012. The eLearning Africa 2012 Report,

ICWE: Germany.• Commonwealth of Learning. 2009. ICTs

for higher education: background paper from the Commonwealth of Learning. World Conference on Higher Education, Paris.

• OER Africa: http://www.oerafrica.org/ • PHEA ETI: http://

www.oerafrica.org/phea/PHEAETIProjectHome/tabid/170/Default.aspx• Tony Mays, Saide, 2012, Recapping OER Presentation • Catherine Ngugi, OER Africa, 2012, Introduction to OER Africa

Presentation