Developing Models for African Tertiary Education’s Response to COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Emergencies: Adapting Existing Systems, Infrastructure and Practices for Online Teaching

Abstract

It is very important to address the need to adapt the existing structure to meet the demands of the emergency situation that has been placed on tertiary institutions globally and with specific emphasis on the African institutions. In the face of the emergency situations such as the one that has been created by the global pandemic covid-19; it is impractical to start building de novo systems to address this challenge. Hence, the practical and logical response to these will simply be to reposition the existing systems in ways that they can be used to achieve optimal results. This paper is an attempt to provide guidance and models for African tertiary institutions in the ongoing attempts to achieve such adaptations with optimum results. One of the realities and effects of the covid-19 is implementation of the social distancing policy and practices in many countries of the world, consequently many schools have either started running virtually or planning to do the same. What this would imply for many African institutions whose curricula are conventional and significantly premised on learning theories that make use of contact instructional methods such as lectures, seminars, group discussions and demonstrations among others would be confronted with the need to transition to the online virtual environment which has a different approach to teaching and learning. There will also be a need to align the new methods of teaching to the learning theories that support the curriculum. Since it would be impractical to develop new curricula immediately, the new methods would rather have to be aligned with the existing curricula. This has to be most properly done as there is the tendency to create misalignment between curricular philosophies and implementation and this would most likely influence the learning and program outcomes. Adaptation is therefore very crucial. Furthermore, while the current scenario has been caused by the covid-19 this guide, the currently proposed models and methods might be useful and applicable in other emergency situations. In order to achieve effective adaptation, we believe that four major factors should be given critical consideration. These include: [1]. Pedagogies and Resources [2]. Instructional Design Adaptation for Online Teaching [3]. Infrastructure: LMS, ICT, System and Connectivity [4]. Implementation and sustainability. This article provides guidance and models for proper adaptations in light of these.