What eDegree is engaged in

eDegree has years of experience in delivering blended and eLearning content across Africa, from academic qualifications to corporate training course delivery. We have come to understand the difficulties of designing for and delivering in typical scenarios on the continent rather well. Our presentation will focus on examples of content and models that we have developed for these circumstances. We will share best practices as well as highlight some of the typical mistakes that we have made in the practice of delivering learning.

Defining "critical success factors"

Simply put, "critical success factors" are factors that need be in place or addressed in order for the implementation of a learning programme to be successful. Some of these are very obvious, like the fact that students need to know how to use the LMS, but others are unexpected or less obvious and, in some cases, difficult to manage. Examples of this would be the necessity for a culture of support for online students or the need for an LMS to map to the administrative system of an institution.

We have seen programmes stumble because of minor and unexpected hiccups and have documented various factors of importance in different contexts. We mapped these to a change management strategy to address them when designing, developing, and implementing a course. Furthermore, we compiled a number of checklists and guidelines that can be used for implementation and management of the success factors relevant to the implementation of eLearning or blended learning.

The kind of model eDegree uses for capacity building


To start of with we use a typical project life cycle as suggested by the ADDIE model, but we use the implementation phase as our point of departure. For implementation to be successful, certain things need to come together and then coincide from that point onwards - the learner following an instructional path through content with corresponding facilitation, etc. But there are also capacities that need to be put in place before the implementation commences. These need be developed pro-actively during specific phases of the ADDIE process for subsequent processes to launch successfully.

This is the basis of our model. If I'm currently in the Ruthoring and development phase, what other capacities need be developed that do not necessarily pertain to this phase but must strategically be in place later? We find these to be mostly operational in nature and, once integrated into the "to do" list of the project manager, quite straightforward to manage.

The context now and in the future

What an interesting world we live in! Obviously there will be many changes in the African context in terms of the availability of broadband and other (mobile) technologies to integrate into the learning environment. To this extent, blended learning is the ideal vehicle: it readily lends itself to adaptation for the inclusion of new media and approaches into the blend being used to facilitate knowledge acquisition.

The trick is to stay abreast of these changes and to be ready with workable strategies on how to include them once they go mainstream. Also the context for applying these technologies and trends in Africa differs from what's being done elsewhere. As always, the challenge is to have a scope wide enough to accommodate to both conservative and cutting-edge users. Not an easy task, but certainly interesting.

Other interesting changes in terms of the approach to teaching and instruction itself are sometimes even more exciting. How long before we fully include culture-specific games and the oral tradition into the blend again? About time, I think. Our understanding of facilitating learning is sufficient to state that the electronic component of the blended learning mix clearly benefits from human interaction and that we again shift the focus to bringing humans together through technology.