With new terminology beginning with e-this and e-that; we have for example, e-commerce, e-transactions, e-news, e-legislature, e-learning and ultimately e-government to mention a few.
The Government embarked on an e-government implementation strategy sometime in 2004. Some achievements have been realised such as the development of the ministerial and departmental websites and hiring of ICT officers to manage them.
In particular, the Ministry of Education has taken up the challenge by among others, incorporating ICT in its operations. It has formulated an ICT policy for education, whose objective is to modernise teaching and learning.
The question that begs answers then is: What strategies have been put in place to have the teachers retrained in the integration of technology in teaching and learning?
Integrating ICT in teaching and learning requires total change of pedagogy. This is because of a paradigm shift, where the teacher is no longer the custodian of knowledge while the learners mere recipients. And this requires change of attitude and approaches. The teachers will have to enhance their technological skills sand competencies in the various subjects.
What is the role of the universities in this? Have they re-oriented their teaching, programme and operations to address these emerging realities? How much in terms of linkages currently exist between the policy formulation agencies within ministries and the universities? How are the universities prepared to lead the march towards e-governance?
Clearly, the universities should be thinking, planning and implementing their programmes geared towards the achievement of the e-objectives.
However, are the universities themselves e-ready and incorporating ICT in their teaching and research programmes? My answer to this question is a resounding no. I wonder how many heads of departments, for example, are computer literate and have computers on their desks with Internet connections?
Available information indicates that is not the case, which means the challenge of modernising university education is still a far cry.
The universities should be already having programmes in the integration of ICT in teaching and learning. They will, for example, be required to retrain all the 235,000 public school and college teachers in the country if the e-objectives of the different government initiatives are to be met.
It would not be surprising that some top university managers may not be aware of the current education policies such as the sessional paper No. 1 of 2005 on a Framework on Education, Training and Research and its implementation plan; the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP).
The documents may be in the offices of the vice-chancellors, but not available to the faculty. In fact, even some deans of education faculty and heads of education departmental heads in the faculties and schools of education may not at all be aware of these documents.
There is, therefore, an urgent need for Education ministry and that of Science and Technology to provide the required leadership so that the universities are made aware of the current policies and how they should re-shape their programmes to contribute towards achieving them. There is no doubt that the country can achieve a lot through the use of ICT. China and India are very practical examples of how development can be achieved through ICT.
It is also possible that a nation can altogether skip industrialisation and move into the knowledge economy and hence the information age. The ambition for industrialisation should, therefore, be re-valuated if it is still being pursued.
Mr Onguko is a lecturer at the Aga Khan University-Institute for Educational development, Eastern Africa in Tanzania.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Brown Onguko
Quelle/Source: AllAfrica, 21.03.2007
