It’s no doubt the coronavirus has gripped the whole world. Hundreds of thousands of cases and deaths have been reported leaving many students, educators in academic institutions and employees in companies running back to their homes to save their dear lives from the very deadly virus. Law enforcers and authorities have recommended social distancing as an effective measure to curb the spread of the COVID-19. Governments have put strict laws to curtail unnecessary movements of its citizens with many countries issuing total lockdowns. Kenya has 50 confirmed cases and 1 death. President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered the closure of schools three weeks ago, a 7 PM to 5 AM curfew, among many other measures meant to save the panicking country.
What I, however, don’t understand is the closure of Kenyan universities that purport to be riding on technology in their mottos and slogans. Just how can a university offering marketable technology courses close and send the entire students home without offering an alternative? This includes the fourth years that are supposed to graduate this year and are only remaining with simple assignments like handing over their research and industrial attachments reports.
It’s regrettably happening in tertiary Kenyan learning institutions in the 21st century when a primary school – Olerai in Ongata Rongai is offering remote learning for its standard five to eight pupils. It beats logic, it’s a shame, and it’s a sad state of affairs. What happened to the technology these universities claim to be teaching? Yesterday, a parent to a standard eight student requested me to help her daughter reset her Microsoft Team’s password. Immediately I generated the new password and logged her in, she proceeded to attend her scheduled LIVE online class.
Teams is Microsoft’s Office 365 collaborative hub that integrates people, content, and tools needed to be more engaged and work or learn effectively from anywhere. Over the last few weeks, more people have been turning to Microsoft Teams for their online meetings, classes, and works. In just a month, Team’s daily active users jumped from 32 million to 44 million, becoming the company’s fastest-growing business application thanks to coronavirus. Slack, another collaboration tool, on the other hand, revealed that it has hit new user records, also thanks to the demand surge for remote working tools during this crisis. On March 10th, Slack surpassed the 10 million users mark it had in October 2019 and on March 26th Slack had hit 12.5 million daily active users.
As the global health pandemic continues to impact every organization, one would expect universities to have learning alternatives. There are many institutions across the world that have turned to remote learning by using various collaborative tools available to interact and deliver their learning resources to the students. I expect Kenyan higher education to embrace all these technologies if they have to pride themselves as leaders in technology and innovation.
What Kenya is experiencing right now as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented and with the highest degrees of uncertainties. What if learning will not have resumed in the next three months? You can imagine the severe damages this will have on our education system and the learners. Universities need to go beyond, rethink their models and provide alternatives for their students. Universities are always considered incubators and facilitators of technology ideas and research, by providing more flexibility and new learning alternatives for students when not physically present, they will impact millions of people. It’s the right time to live up to that purpose.
Read Also: Coronavirus pandemic must force us to explore remote learning.
