E-Learning Initiative

About The Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program E-Learning Initiative

The Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) caused disruptions in the higher education industry. The challenges higher education institutions faced provided an opportunity to rethink the models of higher education instructional delivery, research production, and dissemination. These models have started shaping how universities deliver public service and engagement, innovation and entrepreneurship, and generally the business model of the academic front.

The Initiative is meant to address this disruption. USIU-Africa together with Arizona State University (ASU) came together under Mastercard Foundation to develop and support the Scholars Program eLearning Initiative. The initiative focuses on online instruction for partner universities to be implemented through instructional design, online pedagogy, content development, and acquisition for online teaching.

Impact

The Initiative’s first phase is projected to benefit around 95,000 higher education students though indirectly through improved pedagogy. Through the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, the lead universities will come up with innovations for scaling the existing eLearning platforms to strengthen online teaching. The Program seeks to draw tertiary institutions’ attention to online learning through strengthening supportive infrastructure at the institution’s level.

Aim of The Project

  1. Build capacity to support institutional change and policy focused on e-Learning through workshops and other activities;
  2. Help institutions build internal expertise in e-Learning by providing advanced certification of faculty and instructors at Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program partner institutions through training, content development support, and mentoring;
  3. Create system-level support and expertise through a distributed center of excellence that will guide participating institutions on the evolution of their e-Learning resource centers and also provide continuous support services to participating institutions;
  4. Assess and measure the progress of e-Learning readiness and adoption.

Participating Institutions

E-Learning Initiative Activities

The Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program eLearning Initiative is a joint effort between USIU-Africa, Arizona State University (ASU) and the Mastercard Foundation through the Center for Innovative Technology and Learning (CITL). The objective of the e-Learning Initiative is to support institutions in the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program network to develop capabilities and resilience to deliver high-quality and inclusive e-learning and related support services so as to enable all students, including those who face additional barriers, to successfully pursue their studies from anywhere.

It aims to strengthen participating institutions’ e-learning resource centers so that they deliver high quality and inclusive e-learning to all their students.

Activities

E-Learning Initiative Activities

The Initiative will be implemented in two phases.

  • Phase 1: Instructional design and Online pedagogy
  • Phase 2: Content Management. This program will fulfil its mandate through implementing four e-Learning activities.

This activity will be built through a series of facilitated engagements among the university leadership level, the e-learning operations level at each participating institution (African institutions, American University of Beirut (AUB) and EARTH University) and the external stakeholder level including policymakers, accreditors and others critical to the adoption of e-learning across the continent.

This activity will provide advanced certification for 100 trainees, who will be faculty and staff nominated by participating institutions. Through training, mentoring, peer networking and content development support, the trainees will become e-Learning champions at their local institutions.

This activity will contribute to establishing governance, inclusion, policy, technology infrastructure, data privacy and systems integration for scale. It will also include guiding the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program network member institutions on the establishment of their e-Learning resource centers, business models and accreditation pursuits.

This activity will focus on assessing and measuring the process and progress of e-learning readiness and adoption at the individual, institutional and national levels, including policy and accreditation. It will be a participatory activity across the network with a particular focus on the process and outcomes of Activity 2 (i.e. Training & Knowledge Mobilization).