IT leaders played a critical role in emergency learning

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has not only fast-tracked digital transformation across the African higher education landscape, but also confirmed the critical role that ICT and IT directorates played to ensure the continuity of learning. These units spearheaded the setting up of infrastructure, imparted skills to academics and students and addressed cyber-security threats.

The Association of African Universities (AAU), a network of over 400 universities across Africa, on 8 October convened a virtual meeting with ICT directors from different universities to reflect on the critical role of ICT departments in shifting to online pedagogies, and to consider how they can rebrand and reposition themselves to effectively implement blended learning and teaching models.

Lessons from West Africa

Lucas Chigabatia, the chief information technology officer at the University of Ghana, stated that before the pandemic, online learning and infrastructure were restricted to 10 000 distance learners at the institution, which has 52 000 enrolled students. There was a reluctance by academics to adapt to online learning.

The pandemic brought on the closure of educational institutions and a shift to remote learning. The ICT directorate was tasked to increase processing capacity to accommodate thousands of additional learners and to provide training for academic staff and students to enable them to use learning applications.

Despite making headway in digital learning, difficulties persisted in accommodating practical courses such as applied sciences, medicine and engineering, as there was inadequate capacity for installed resources such as plagiarism software and storage.

Faculty members and learners still needed more training as they had limited skills in using online platforms, which was compounded by the lack of connectivity, the high cost of data and poor telecommunications infrastructure in some locations.

Chigabatia highlighted the need for African institutions to invest in technology infrastructure to make online learning more accessible for students, to institute professional development programmes for teaching staff and to take advantage of opportunities to co-teach and collaborate with other global learning institutions.

Cybersecurity threats

Andre le Roux, the director of enterprise infrastructure services at the University of Cape Town, reflected on the consequences of remote working for students and faculty members. He mentioned the increased risks, such as the possible loss of information assets and the breach of intellectual property through social engineering attacks.

Some of the growing concerns for ICT directorates were the use of home networks and routers, increased use of personal devices, insecure use of video conferencing tools, and publishing mechanisms that could be easily compromised by malware if they were not frequently updated and configured. The loss of devices used for learning from theft also contributed to data leaks and security breaches which would negatively impact the reputation of institutions.

Le Roux stated that with increasing cases of hacktivism and of state-sponsored and organised crime for financial gain, ICT communities should continuously raise awareness, offer training and guidance to students and staff on cybersecurity issues, threats and how to secure home networks and devices. He also advocated for a zero trust model so that institutions verify devices connecting to the university servers and networks, with strict authorisation and authentication backed by policies and standards.

He stated that universities had become more vulnerable to the loss of control in cyber assets in the chaos and uncertainty created by the pandemic, with challenges in finding a balance between preserving the freedom of academia and the need to secure information assets. Universities were prone to cyber attacks as they largely share, exchange and publish information online.

Learning content remains important

According to Adelle Lotter from the North-West University in South Africa, blended learning was inevitably the best learning practice as it offered "seamless integration of online and face-to-face teaching".

She stated that while the method of teaching was important, the real value remained the learning content and the achievement of outcomes. Furthermore, learning communities needed to be maintained because "education is a social process".

Nodumo Dhlamini, ICT services and management director for the AAU, said the pandemic presented an opportunity to “connect the unconnected”, develop and strengthen a network of ICT directorates in African universities which would galvanise support in national research efforts, mobilise resources for procurement of ICT products and services, and provide skills for ICT teams.