Why this sub-theme is important
Distance education has the potential to offer a transforming response, tailored to learners’ lives, where they can study and earn. Access to and quality of distance education in Africa is a topical issue in the education sector. The pandemic has created significant new opportunities in terms of how online learning is perceived and understood, and raised the technological skills of many teachers and potential learners. Furthermore, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other recent applications, need to be considered in how we develop distance education.
The issues facing those involved in distance education remain the same: the quality of assessment, the use of technology in facilitation, learners’ support, poor learning environments and delivery strategies that simply try to mimic face-to-face learning and teaching. This theme is particularly important because the pandemic provided a significant opportunity to test and learn, which needs to be captured. We hope that the papers in this sub-theme will capture some of that learning and contribute to understandings about the value of distance education and how we might re-vision technology as a tool to improve its quality, as well as look ahead to a future involving AI.
What kinds of papers are we encouraging
We welcome proposals which go beyond description and provide analysis, solutions and conceptualisation of the issues. These might include lessons from practice, and empirical research or theoretical or conceptual contributions. We hope that this theme will contribute to the knowledge-base of learning from the pandemic, and build a vision for a future in which distance education is mainstream. We want to demonstrate how technology can support
effective assessment policy and practice in distance education;
access to and delivery of high quality, relevant, distance education in Africa;
equitable Distance Education systems;
teaching and learning practices for effective distance education, which exploit recent learning technologies.
We hope that papers will draw on theoretical frameworks from education and IT to position distance education within the mainstream. We would like to receive papers about the role of technology in how distance education is experienced and enacted, and how appropriate policies might be developed. This may include contributions that focus on devices or on software, particularly the potential contribution of Artificial Intelligence.
What are we looking forward to
We are looking forward to the opportunity to develop understandings of distance education and the contribution that technology can make to improving equity and quality for all students. We look forward to submissions that capture the student perspective, the teacher perspective and/or the institutional perspective.
Looking across all submissions, we hope that this theme can ultimately contribute to learning from the pandemic and provide a vision for distance education in the future.
Dr Emmanuel Arthur Nyarko and Dr Kris Stutchbury
Submit your abstract by Monday, 29th May 2023 through https://www.icerdaafrica.org/abstract-submission