Ephraim Mhlanga

Saide has always committed itself to both student access and to student success. Student success is not only about students passing but about offering a quality learning experience. Saide therefore accepted the Commonwealth of Learning (COL)’s request to support a quality enhancement initiative at the University of Buea in Cameroon writes Saide’s Ephraim Mhlanga. 

The initiative consisted of facilitating a five-day virtual workshop for twenty-two members of staff, mainly from the Distance Education Unit in the Faculty of Education. This workshop was held on 12 – 16 October 2020 and it focused on quality assurance of distance education provision.

As part of the quality enhancement initiative, Saide supported the University in developing a set of quality guidelines for distance education and a quality assurance implementation plan. The University had developed eight teacher education courses that are to be offered through distance learning. Saide also supported the University of Buea to review the courses using the quality standards. 

Workshop 

The workshop concentrated on:

• appraising participants on international developments in quality assurance in higher education generally and in distance education in particular
• helping participants conduct a contextual analysis in order to identify factors constraining quality provision in the university, and initiating the process of developing relevant quality assurance guidelines
• supporting the university to develop a quality assurance implementation plan so the quality assurance policy that was developed in 2016 and the quality assurance guidelines developed through the current initiative are given expression in institutional practices
• helping staff in the Distance Education Unit evaluate eight courses using quality guidelines they develop through the project.

Although the workshop was virtual, participants gathered at a common venue organised by the Head of the Distance Education Unit. They connected to Zoom using their individual laptops but physically moved into groups for group-work activities.  The selected workshop venue was away from campus in order as to avoid any interruptions. Participants were provided with university modems to use for accessing the internet.

Screenshot for Day Four of the workshop

Workshop achievements

Participants were extremely excited about the workshop and there was admirable engagement with issues that were dealt with during the five days. Although a few experienced challenges with joining the Zoom meeting in the first two days, no serious constraining challenges were faced thereafter.

The workshops produced a near-complete draft of a quality guidelines document whilst group inputs on the implementation plan were also complete and submitted to the workshop facilitator for integration and refinement. Course reviewers were also selected before the end of the workshop and timelines for completing all project deliverables were also agreed upon. To date, both the quality guidelines and implementation plan have been submitted to COL. The review of courses is at an advanced stage and will be availed to the facilitator for checking before submitting to COL.

The workshop’s closing ceremony organised by the Head of the Distance Education Unit was attended by the Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Ngomo Manga, the Dean of the Faculty of Education, Dr Peter Tambi and the UNESCO Chair, Emeritus Professor Therese Tchombe, to demonstrate how seriously the University took this workshop and its commitment to enhancing quality.

At the request of participants, COL prepared certificates of attendance that were issued to jubilant participants at the closing ceremony. 

Conclusion

The Buea initiative is one of the many examples of how Saide is supporting access and quality in higher education in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to supporting capacity development in these initiatives, Saide also makes recommendations for institutions to improve on any identified weaknesses. During the course of the five-day workshop, it was disturbing to note that University of Buea does not have a functional Learning Management System yet, in spite of its plans to expand its remote teaching strategy, including professional development of teachers already working in the school system throughout the country. 

Therefore, one of the main recommendations in the workshop reports was for management to secure a Learning Management System like Moodle to facilitate better support of students remotely. Due to lack of a LMS, the eight courses developed by the Distance Education Unit are currently paper-based. Resources permitting, COL should support the University by giving them a Moodle shell which the institution can customise for its purposes. This would enable the Distance Education Unit to put their courses online.