On July 6, 2023, the National Assembly approved the request by the Cabinet Secretary for Education for the establishment of the Open University of Kenya.
The decision marked a critical juncture in the quest of the country to have an open University.
The importance of an open university can be gleaned from the slogan for the Open University of the UK, which seeks to be “open to people, open to places; open to methods, and open to ideas.”
Making education open and thus accessible is the hallmark of any open university.
The Universities Act has a provision recognising that Kenya needs an open university as a specialised institution offering programmes through distance and e-learning modes.
However, since the enactment of this law in 2012, this provision has never been operationalised. This is despite the stated intention to do so in previous policy documents and efforts by a committee appointed for that purpose.
In January, this year the Cabinet Secretary for Education appointed a Technical Working Committee to help actualise this desire by the country.
I had the privilege of serving as a member of the team that designed the kind of open university that Kenya needs, developed its constitutive documents and instruments, designed the initial programmes and also led the accreditation process.
The process revealed the innovations that university education will require to respond to the digital era.
First is the nature of learning. From a lecturer-focused approach, where the teacher is king, the world is moving to a learner-centred approach.
The second is the adoption of the flipped-classroom pedagogical model, where materials are introduced outside the formal classrooms with the class being the space for application, deeper interrogation and inquiry.
The deployment of technology in the learning process is critical. We spent a lot of time developing learning modules and digitising the content to enable their application and utilisation in the e-learning model.
This should be distinguished from what a lot of institutions adopted following the Covid-19 pandemic, which is more about emergency remote learning where we apply technology to essentially deliver physical classes.
The Open University seeks to have a truly online experience.
It sets the stage for fundamental change in university education. Changes that call for greater innovation and adaptation. One such area will be in ensuring quality.
Despite the experience with online learning for three years now, there are still concerns about quality assurance. Mechanisms to guarantee integrity, especially of assessment are limited and expensive.
A way out may be to borrow from the competence-based curriculum, which requires a move away from examinations to assessments.
The writer is a law professor at the University of Nairobi.
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