ict integration in south african fet colleges
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An approach to the use of ICT in South African FET Colleges:
Lessons from ExperienceGreig Krull and Maryla Bialobrzeska
SaideNorth-South VET ICT Conference
25 – 27 September 2012
Agenda
• Context – Motivators and Constraints• ICT Integration in the FET Areas
– Teaching, Administration, Communication
• Challenges and Opportunities– Environment, Institution, People, Technology, Learning
• Case Study: Approach to ICT Integration• Discussion
Overarching Context in FET
Improve quality of teaching and learning to promote student success rates and employability
Significantly increased participation
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 FET Areas
CommunicationComm Tools, Social Networking
TeachingVLEs, eContent, eAssessment,
Support
AdministrationRecords, Finance, Management
Top 100 Tools for Learning in 2011
© 2012 Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies
Note:• Number of web apps• Number of “non-
educational” apps• Number of Social
networking tools
What are your most useful tools…?
Types of Challenges
Environment Institutions
People Technology
Teaching and Learning
EnvironmentOpportunitiesPartnerships between institutions, governments and businesses
Articulate a vision and a strategic framework for harnessing the potential of ICTs to address a country's development challenges
Overarching and guiding national telecommunications and ICT policies, particularly as they relate to ICTs in education
ChallengesLimited Regional Infrastructure- Electricity- Access to resources
Sustainability
Policy Implementation
People
OpportunitiesOn-going Professional Development Provide prior training when introducing ICTs
Implement incentive systems that promote the use of ICTs
Provide support and training for students
Develop internal capacity in the use of ICT
ChallengesICT Literacy of Lecturers and Readiness
Extra effort and time involved in using technologies
Lack of readiness of students to use technologiesShortage of people with technical skills to maintain ICT systems
InstitutionsOpportunities• Vision and commitment of the leadership to
deploying ICTs • Included in strategic and operational plansRequire strong institutional policy and planning (resource allocation)
• National/Provincial approach for joint negotiations on the cost of bandwidth
• Identify ways in which ICTs will significantly enhance admin and teaching capabilities
Look for freely available resources e.g. Open Education Resources
Centralised units
ChallengesICT Integration
Major financial investment needed
High cost of acquiring and maintaining ICTs
High cost of content
Consistency across campuses and colleges
TechnologyOpportunities• Create a technology plan (includes long term
budget)• Funds and staff available to sustain investments
in ICT infrastructure and support systems
• Piloting (test the efficacy of a technology)• Possible sharing or coordination of ICT usage
with other institutionsUnderstand total ownership cost (acquisition, installation, power supply, maintenance, replacement, training etc)Enhance bandwidth/connectivity through the acquisition of suitable infrastructure
ChallengesReliability and Security
System / Data Integration
Inexperience in procuring appropriate ICT
Limited bandwidth
Teaching, Learning & Student Support
OpportunitiesAcademic and Technical Support
• Shift to resource based learning• Focus on good quality learning resources• College Collaboration Access to OER
Flexible delivery methods – online, blended, distance
ChallengesStudent Readiness
Constrained Staff Capacity
Quality Resources
Programme Delivery
Case Study: Approach to Integration
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”
Strategic objectives :• Support initiatives that integrate educational technology• Promote collaborative knowledge creation and dissemination• Refine institutional systems to more directly support teaching• Research and report on educational technology activity
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)
26 distinct sub-projects across 7 HEIs over 3 years
Project Examples
POLICIES
ePortfolios
26 ProjectsICT and Elearning Policies, 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 SystemsResearch Papers: Gender ICT Perceptions, Elearning Adoption
OERs
Educational materials that have been designed for use in teaching and
learning that are openly licensed
Examples: curriculum maps, course materials,
textbooks, videos, podcasts
Find: International OER Repositories or search
Google (term + creative commons)
Some OER (depending on the license type) can be reworked or remixed to
your local context
Lessons Learnt Rigid hierarchies hamper communication and implementation
Capacity development is a key need
Lack of institutionalised incentives to engage with ICT
Limited ICT infrastructure remains a major barrier
Encourage inter-institutional collaboration
Need for sound financial and pedagogical planning
See the results: www.oerafrica.org (follow links to the PHEA Educational Technology Initiative)
ConclusionsBasic 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 FET
Summary
Capacity Building
Look to add
Value
Adaptive to
Change
Collaboration
Adequate Infrastructure
OpenEducationResources
Thank you
greigk_za
Greig Krull
Discussion
www.saide.org.zawww.oerafrica.org
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Maryla Bialobrzeska
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• http://c4lpt.co.uk/top-100-tools-for-learning-2011/ • Tony Mays, Saide, 2012, Recapping OER Presentation