This archive report was first published on 20 June 2020.
As we celebrate the government's efforts to integrate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in our primary schools, it's hard not to feel a sense of irony. The laptop project has been a significant investment, with billions of shillings spent to equip our young pupils with the tools they need to succeed in the digital age.
However, as these students progress to secondary school and eventually university, they are likely to experience a 'walk-into-the-past' moment. The level of ICT integration in our tertiary institutions is woefully inadequate, and it's a problem that needs to be addressed urgently.
The Kenya Education Network (KENET) has been working tirelessly to provide affordable Internet connectivity for tertiary institutions, but despite their efforts, there is still a long way to go. Universities need to invest in internal infrastructure and capacity in order to fully exploit the benefits of Internet connectivity.
University administrators are partly to blame for this lack of progress. They often commit scant budgetary resources to enhancing ICT capabilities, leaving lecturers and students without the necessary workstations or computer labs to take advantage of Internet resources.
Even if lecturers were to buy their own devices, they may find that they cannot use them in lecture halls that lack basic amenities like power sockets or LCD-projectors. Many local universities still cling to a 'chalk and talk' approach, where the lecturer acts as the single source of knowledge, and this outdated approach is holding back the country's education system.
Today's lecture halls should be highly ICT-integrated, enabling lecturers to deliver a highly digitised learning experience to students. The lecturer is no longer the single source of knowledge, but a facilitator and guide to the up-to-date knowledge reservoir known as the Internet.
Unless and until tertiary institutions understand this and make deliberate efforts to invest in digital learning frameworks and platforms, our students may graduate with a mentality that is out of sync with the modern world.
It's high time we embraced technology in teaching at our institutions of higher learning. The future of our country depends on it.
