Radical Solutions For Education In Africa

This book explores the state of open education in terms of self-directed learning on the African continent. Through a combination of conceptual, systematic literature review and empirical chapters, readers will get a research-based impression of these aspects in this area. Apart from presenting existing wider trends regarding open education, this book also reports on effective open practices in support of self-directed learning.

This book explores the state of open education in terms of self-directed learning on the African continent. Through a combination of conceptual, systematic literature review and empirical chapters, readers will get a research-based impression of these aspects in this area. Apart from presenting existing wider trends regarding open education, this book also reports on effective open practices in support of self-directed learning.

This book presents how to keep working on education in contexts of crisis, such as emergencies, zones of conflict, wars and health pandemics such as COVID-19. Specifically, this work shows a number of strategies to support global learning and teaching in online settings. Particularly, it first presents how to facilitate knowledge sharing and raising awareness about a specific crisis, to increase people’s safety, including educators and learners. The book then discusses various techniques, mechanisms and services that could be implemented to provide effective learning support for learners, especially in learning environments that they do not daily use, such as physical classrooms. Further, the work presents how to teach and support online educators, no matter if they are school teachers, university lecturers, youth social workers, vocational training facilitators or of any other kind. Finally, it describes worldwide case studies that have applied practical steps to keep education running during a crisis. This book provides readers with insights and guidelines on how to maintain learning undisrupted during contexts of crisis. It also provides basic and practical recommendations to the various stakeholders in educational contexts (students, content providers, technology services, policy makers, school teachers, university lecturers, academic managers, and others) about flexible, personalised and effective education in the context of crisis.

Educational Technology is the right couple to a radical innovation. Thanks to the appropriate technology in the right context with the best fit to the target audience, education can be drastically improved, meaning a better performance, competence achievement, match with the user’s expectations and with the market needs. Serious games, Virtual reality, Augmented reality, Remote labs, Online learning, Blockchain, Mobile learning and many other key technologies allow for a better explanation of so many subjects, and even more: for a complete student involvement and a full teacher engagement into the educational system. Technology gives another angle to the same content, provides the user with a personalised experience and pushes the limits of knowledge a little further, every time. This book presents a number of radical innovations through technology, from experienced cases studies, to be replicated and inspired by; a powerful resource handbook for cutting-edge education.

This book covers original research on the implementation of open educational practices through the use of open educational resources at the university level. The emphasis on open education in this book is on contextualising resources, supporting student agency and fostering self-directed learning specifically within a South African milieu. The envisaged chapters cover conceptual and review research and empirical work focussing on open educational practices and the use of renewable assessments. The work starts off with an overview of an institutional-wide open education project that prompted the research followed by research on open education in terms of various modules in the health science, music education, law, philosophy, dietetics, anthropology, French language learning, journalism and political science. There is a clear gap in the literature on open education in terms of open educational practices, specifically in terms of contextualising resources, supporting student agency and fostering self-directed learning in a South African context. Despite the existence of some general works on open education in terms of policy, social justice and open textbooks, this book will be unique in exploring the intersections of openness, specifically with contextualisation, student agency and self-directedness.

Learning Analytics become the key for Personalised Learning and Teaching thanks to the storage, categorisation and smart retrieval of Big Data. Thousands of user data can be tracked online via Learning Management Systems, instant messaging channels, social networks and other ways of communication. Always with the explicit authorisation from the end user, being a student, a teacher, a manager or a persona in a different role, an instructional designer can design a way to produce a practical dashboard that helps him improve that very user’s performance, interaction, motivation or just grading. This book provides a thorough approach on how education, as such, from teaching to learning through management, is improved by a smart analysis of available data, making visible and useful behaviours, predictions and patterns that are hinder to the regular eye without the process of massive data.

The present book addresses the following challenge: How do we create and sustain a teacher community? For practitioners, the main question in this handbook is: How do we build and facilitate teacher communities? The different chapters discuss teacher interaction for learning and professional development in light of three constructs: the group, the community, and the network. There is a wealth of literature, especially on theoretical frameworks, success factors, and barriers to participation in teacher communities. However, this book addresses the need for a step-by-step guide with valuable suggestions for those who want to create (from scratch) and support a community of teachers brought together to deal with specific issues and, importantly, mediated by educational technology

Self-directed learning (SDL) is considered a core concept in problem-based learning (PBL) and student-centered learning. More importantly, the current face-to-face model of curriculum implementation faces many challenges that seem to question its dominance over other models. The violent nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has again vindicated SDL practitioners and research enthusiasts to continue seeking solutions that will enhance skills to cope in a rapidly changing technological, globalized world. However, the higher education sector is challenged when promoting SDL due to a slow pace of digital integration since the education system is not fully transformed. This has necessitated an urgent need for global discourse on how universities globally are implementing SDL strategies to enhance the quality of curriculum delivery. Advancing Self-Directed Learning in Higher Education provides insight into various strategic approaches that could be adopted for the successful implementation of SDL in higher education. It is written for professionals who want to improve their understanding of how to improve student teaching and learning and the quality of curriculum implementation in higher education. In this realm, this book provides ideas to its readers about the approaches pertaining to strategy and innovative measures, practical implementations, and tools in the field of curriculum and SDL. Covering topics such as educational technology, intentional education practice theory, and student experience, this premier reference source is an essential resource for teachers, policymakers, lecturers, research scholars, students of higher education, administrators, librarians, academicians, and researchers.