Kyambogo to adopt e-learning in lecture rooms

Lecturers at Kyambogo University will start teaching students using e-learning methods in lecture rooms to enable students gain more knowledge in the area of Information Communications Technology (ICT) so that they move at the same pace with students across the world in this era of technological advancements.

Currently, 90% of teaching at the institution is still traditional, where either the lecturer stands in front of students and dictates notes as they write or writes on the black board and they copy notes.

This was revealed by Dr. George Wilson Kasule, a senior lecturer at the Department of Educational Planning and Management, who said the traditional method of teaching is teacher-centred, has limitations on how much content a teacher can cover, voice projection and also promotes laziness among students as they over rely on teachers for information.

He was speaking during the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) induction workshop programme for teacher educators of Kyambogo University.

The training was organized by the university in partnership with the Open University of UK.  

Kasule said through different ICT training, lecturers at the university have been equipped with skills in new forms of technology like e-learning, open-distance learning and open-resource which they will start implementing in lecture rooms soon.

"This is a knowledge explosion era where new technologies of teaching are emerging every day, and we cannot remain backward. We must encourage our learners to embrace technology so as to improve the quality of education and be at the same level with the rest of the world," he said.

"Embracing ICT in the instruction process has multiple effects; a lecturer can direct students on what topics to research about without entirely depending and waiting for lecturers. It also lessens the lecturers work because the students can search different websites, links for study topics saving lecturers burden of reading several text books for teaching purposes," he added.

Issues raised by lecturers

Caroline Nakidde Kavuma, lecturer at the institution said e-learning may be tricky for some students especially those from rural backgrounds, who have never touched and fear using a keyboard, and think the process is unfair.

She however said, such students have to continuously be encouraged to utilize the university ICT laboratories, gain knowledge in how to communicate online via mail, how to download e-learning study materials, answer course works and send via mail.

 "We cannot use skills of yesterday to transact today's business; we must empower our learners to use ICT in learning. This works if the lecturers are interested in the technological changes," she said.

The director online distance learning, Kyambogo University, Dr. Steven Ndaula said he is optimistic e-learning will work as long as challenges like mind-set change towards ICT use especially among aged lecturers, the ratio of students to computers (5000 students per 100 computers) are addressed.

The Acting Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs, Prof Aaron Wanyama said many lecturers are still rigid and prefer using traditional ways of teaching.

He however said if they do not want to retrain in ICT use, they will be left behind and likely to be irrelevant in the next ten years, urging lecturers in all universities to acquire ICT skills.

He said embracing new technologies in higher education is the way to go, because in the next ten years, e-learning will contribute to 30% of education provision.

"When lecturers acquire ICT skills, and equip students with such skills, we shall provide quality and adequate education, thus producing students with high skills that can satisfy the market demand, and Uganda will never be the same," he said.