The news arrived from Kyambogo University that they would soon embrace e-learning.
According to the acting vice chancellor at Kyambogo, Prof Eli Katunguka, the university would start e-learning in various programmes, from the next semester. Earlier, we had heard the same gospel from Kampala International University.
Already the Uganda Technology and Management University (Utamu) is on the same path – offering lessons online. Makerere University and its affiliate Makerere University Business School (Mubs) are also looking to start e-learning next year. There are indications that over time, e-learning will become a buzzword and a standard way of imparting education across the country.
Everyone from primary schools to universities should be looking toward e-learning. The advantages of this form of education are numerous. Learners will be able to learn at their own pace. Many more will also be able to access learning, as the technology improves to allow for students in varied places to get the same content.
While the costs of setting up the e-learning platforms will be high in the interim, as Utamu now shows, it will eventually get cheaper for education institutions to impart learning.
However, there are serious concerns to be considered. For starters, computer scientists have complained for some time now that despite advances in technology, teachers at all levels are still poorly equipped to determine how e-learning should happen.
There have been advances in simulations of scientific experiments, access to information (what we see as notes today), and teaching styles using computers. However, all these seem to have passed the teachers by.
To make e-learning possible, teachers and their supervisors will have to be brought on board, so they can bring with them their expertise in pedagogy, to go with the latest in computer technology.
Someone will have to develop the teaching content, to make it possible for online learning to happen. Without the instructor, the learner is lost in the wilderness.
school@observer.ug