Universities react to e-learning rules
Jul 09, 2020
The Government, through the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE), on Friday, issued tough guidelines requiring academic institutions to ascertain the ability of all students to participate in e-learning.
By Umaru Kashaka
The Government, through the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE), on Friday, issued tough guidelines requiring academic institutions to ascertain the ability of all students to participate in
e-learning.
The guidelines also require institutions to give mitigation measures to ensure that no student is left behind in the process.
The Government said the guidelines are part of measures to ensure that teaching in higher institutions of learning continues. Educational institutions were closed in March, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Makerere University Makerere University vice chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe told New Vision
yesterday that the guidelines are timely, but would take time to fulfil.
"Makerere already has some programmes in the college of health sciences and college of education and external studies completely online. These will immediately resume and continue," he said.
"We have been training staff in all the colleges on management of Prof. Kateregga Prof. Obua Mbarara University His counterpart at Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Prof Celestino Obua, said they would follow the guidelines.
"The designers of the guidelines consulted the stakeholders before the guidelines were passed," he said.
"It is now our responsibility to consult the teaching staff who are going to implement them and also, eventually, we will see how to bring on board the students," Obua added.
"You can now not begin to teach students what was not initially developed in the curriculum," he said
Obua said the university would engage the lecturers: "for them to understand what these guidelines are about and when they have understood, we will take them for training and we shall also bring on students to also understand what these guidelines entail".
KIU'S MPEZAMIHIGO SPEAKS OUT
Dr Mouhamad Mpezamihigo, the vice-chancellor of Kampala International University (KIU), also welcomed the guidelines, saying they are a step in the right direction toward online learning.
"We had already developed our own guidelines and even allowing students to access content online. So, we were already doing like 85%," Mpezamihigo said.
"I was impressed by the fact that NCHE allowed institutions that already had accredited programmes to
write to them stating that they are rolling out those programmes online," he said.
Mpezamihigo said this would save the time of online courses. So, we have made good progress there," Nawangwe added. He said the challenge now is with preparing the students psychologically, to enable them
adjust to learning online.
"We have the facilities to implement online programmes, including internet," Nawangwe said.
"We will partner with telecom companies to make our websites accessible to students. We are in talks with manufacturers to supply laptops to students and staff at affordable cost. We are, therefore, doing everything possible to move to online education in the shortest time possible," he added.