31 Teaching Strategies And Improvisation For Global E-Learning: Special Focus On Developing Economies

Abstract

Global learning provides opportunities for learners to be exposed to local and international issues in order to be equipped to understand, appreciate and engage these issues and solve associated problems. Those who participate in global learning acquire skills necessary to value diversity, and address prejudice, and they become global citizens. Conventionally, global learning occurs in a multicultural school or classroom environment where learners from diverse background collaborate in the instructional process. Although some developed economies such as America, United Kingdom and Canada have attained some level of multiculturalism, especially, in some of their higher institutions, the situation is different in the majority of the developing economies. With the schools drawing almost all their students and teachers from their locality, the conventional face-to-face approach to global learning is unsuitable in countries with developing economies. The schools in this area also face enormous challenges such as poor quality teachers and inadequate internet connectivity. For schools in developing economies to participate in global learning, improvisation in technology and teaching strategy is critical. The paper suggested specific instances of improvisation to ensure global e-learning in developing economies.

Keywords: Global learning, e-learning, developing economies, improvisation,             teaching strategy.

Introduction

The 21st century is expected to throw up some challenges in education, and the role of educational communications technology in addressing them. It has become increasingly necessary that learners are educated to be relevant locally and globally. To achieve this goal, learners are to be provided opportunities for global learning, in which international issues are to be integrated with local ones and presented to the learners.

The developing economies have enormous challenges that make their educational system less effective and efficient. These challenges which also bedevil global learning include lack of multiculturalism in schools, inadequate educational communications technology and poor quality educational inputs.

This paper discussed how improvisation in technology and teaching strategy can address these challenges and raises the capacity of schools in developing economies to provide global e-learning.

Global Learning

Education is traditionally provided in a local context. By its design in respect of the philosophy, curriculum, methodology, pedagogy, instructional materials and the supply of learners and teachers, education has continued to be localized. The curriculum provides for major local contents, especially in the Arts and Social Sciences, while the majority of the students and teachers are from the locality. The consequence is the production of graduates with limited capacity to perceive, understand and appreciate global issues, and solve global problems. Such graduates are local champions at best, who do not have much to offer beyond their environment.

For education to produce people who can understand local and international issues, and solve associated problems, global learning is necessary. Development education or global learning is an approach in which international and local issues are integrated into the content of education, and presented in such a manner that the learners perceive and understand their connections, interdependencies and interrelationships, in order to be equipped sufficiently to make impact on local and international scenes. According to Global Foot Print (2019), global learning is the exploration of issues around the world and relating them to the experiences of the learners. The links between local and global issues are identified and explored, and these provide the learners rare opportunities to examine their values, and acquire skills necessary to value diversity and address injustice, prejudice and discrimination. The interconnections between local learners and their international counterparts are explored for the benefit of both, who are equipped with knowledge, attitude and skills to make impact on these issues.

Global learning promotes global citizenship. This is possible because it provides people from diverse background the opportunity to examine issues and problems that transcend boarders. Florida International University Office of Global Learning Initiatives (2019) identified three major learning outcomes students are empowered to achieve through global learning. They include global perspectives of, global awareness of, and global engagement in local, international and intercultural issues and problem solving. The achievement of these outcomes is possible because critical examination of global issues which have been incorporated into the curriculum is presented in a collaborative manner. Learning becomes interesting and fun, because it is based on real-world contexts, and learners appreciate the role they are expected to play in the global community, apart from developing social sensitivities skills such as fairness and respect.

Global learning provides an avenue for possible connections between local and international issues to be identified, mapped and used in instruction. These links can be in form of subjects, contents and experiences. Subjects offered at primary and secondary schools, and courses at tertiary institutions provide the framework for global learning. The global issues that can be examined include religious fundamentalism, child abuse, environmental degradation, elections, democracy, agriculture, culture and the like. These are examined within the appropriate subjects that are in the curriculum. No need for a special subject for global learning. This means that the monotony of the curriculum structured along national culture is broken by extending opportunities for learning experiences to other cultures. The interdependence of different cultures is promoted and their diversity appreciated for sustainable development at different places. Consequently, students develop spiritually, morally, socially and culturally (Ofsted Inspection Report, 2014).

Therefore, global learning is the application of development education by the stakeholders. The Historical Association (2019) defined development education or global learning as an approach to learning about global issues through linking the lives of people throughout the world. It depends on critical examination of these issues and the impact individual learners can make on them. According to the Association, it started in the late 1970s with volunteers and aid workers who returned from oversea placements and wanted to change how people learned about development and developing economies. This change has become necessary for people at different places and time to understand themselves, appreciate one another’s culture and develop critical thinking skills needed to engage local and global issues and problems.

Conventionally, global learning takes place in multicultural classrooms. This presents opportunities for learners from different cultures to meet in schools, colleges or universities to exchange ideas. It is hoped that this will make such learners more competent to appreciate and address not only those issues in their communities, but also in other communities, having been exposed to them. Attempts have been made in different countries to promote multiculturalism in the classrooms and educational institutions. For instance, the Federal Government of Nigeria established unity schools for this purpose. Government policies have also favoured exchange programmes in higher institutions, sending students to study abroad, and encouraging universities to have international or foreign students. There is also a policy against in-breeding in Nigerian universities. However, given the peculiar circumstances of many developing countries, such as lack of political will, inadequate funding of education and insecurity, institutions have been populated by students and teachers from the local environment. The consequence is that education in these institutions has been localized, with limited opportunity for global learning in its traditional form. There are some developing countries that have made some progress in getting students from different background. They include South Africa, Ghana and some Asian countries.

The situation in many developed countries is different. The United States of America, United Kingdom and Canada have made tremendous progress in bringing together people from diverse cultural background as students and teachers, especially in higher institutions. These and other countries that have multicultural classrooms, can and do practice global learning. For other countries that have been unable to bring together students from diverse cultures in their institutions, the only option left for them is the use of e-learning. This is even more compelling given that global learning is both local and global, self-directed, iterative and spiraled, social and digital, and driven by new actuators (Heick, 2019).

E-learning

Global learning can be presented through the conventional or e-learning approach. The conventional approach consists of methods and strategies that make learning possible through face-to-face interaction between the learners and teachers, and other instructional media that are made available to the learners in the classroom. On the other hand, e-learning is a generic term referring to the use of electronic media in instruction. Due to the features of these media, they can be used in the classroom or outside the classroom by the learners. They bring experiences from near, far and wide to the learners. Electronic media can be made available and used in the classroom, or made available elsewhere such as in the internet, and used by the learners in or outside the classroom. When they are uploaded on the internet, they become ubiquitous, and can be used in different places at the same time. They are self-instructional media that can be used without the teacher. However, the most important feature of electronic media is that they bring experience from far, wide and remote to the learners irrespective of their location, in the presence or absence of the teacher.

Electronic media (e-media) make possible digital encoding and decoding of information and data. There are different types of e-media, such as radio, television, CD, DVD, CD-ROM, internet, mobile phone, computer, tablet, laptop and other handheld devices. These media facilitate instruction and provide wide range of experiences, both proximate and remote, to the learners. These media make possible e-learning.

Different conceptualizations of e-learning abound in literature. Generally speaking, it is the type of education provided through electronic media outside the conventional classroom. Current conceptualizations refer to e-learning as educational opportunities provided through internet or internet-based media, to learners who are not involved in conventional classroom activities. In other words, it is an online platform for the provision of learning experiences, which is an alternative to the conventional face-to-face approach. The North Carolina e-learning organization (2019) defined it as learning obtained by the use of electronic technologies to access curriculum outside the traditional classroom. It noted that e-learning is in most cases referred to as the delivery of a course, or programme completely online or via the internet to learners in places rather than the classroom where the teacher is teaching. These definitions which emphasize the use of electronic media outside the classroom is more or less classical conceptualizations of e-learning. A more liberal and productive conceptualization of e-learning includes the use of electronic media, such as CD-ROMS, audio and video cassettes in the classroom to facilitate exercises or activities the learners are to engage in before, during or after the lesson; these activities complement that provided in the conventional classroom.

The more embracing conceptualization of e-learning provides the basis for the different models of blended or e-learning, for which the use of electronic media in conventional classroom is at one end, and the delivery of instruction completely via the internet is at the other end of a continuum. The classical model of e-learning as represented in the site of elearningnc.gov, is learning that is online and presented over the internet in which the Classroom Management System (CMS), namely Blackboard, Moodle and Vista are utilized. Students can log in from anywhere in the world using the CMS and a web browser to access course materials such as syllabus, instructional materials, such as video and audio, and whiteboard screen on which the lesson is presented. It permits interaction with other learners, and with the instructor. This model of e-learning is a replica of what obtains in the traditional classroom, except that learning is completely over the internet. Hence, this model of e-learning is seen as an alternative to the traditional classroom.

The second model is the use of internet and online electronic media to bring in far and remote experiences to the learners to supplement learning experiences provided in the classroom. This is the internet blended with the classroom model. The first and second model may not be suitable in places where internet facilities are inadequate.

The third model is offline electronic media blended with the traditional classroom. The electronic instructional media in form of audio and video can be locally produced or improvised to suit the peculiarities and requirements of the environment. This model is particularly useful where internet facilities are lacking.

The forth model of e-learning is the use of offline electronic media to facilitate instruction outside the traditional classroom. The third and fourth models of e-learning appear to be ideal for most areas in developing economies.

Developing Economies and Electronic Technologies

It is difficult to define the concept of developing economies. There may be difficulty in defining it in an objective way. However, Kuepper (2019) reported a number of economic and social criteria, such as per capital income, life expectancy and literacy rates used in classifying economies.

Therefore, there are some indicators of developing economy. These include: poor industrial base, low standard of living, rising population due to high birthrates, high death rates, high unemployment rate, reliance on natural resources for making money, infrastructural deficit, sectarian or ethnic conflicts, low average income, labour-intensive agriculture, poor export diversification, and low standard of education. Therefore, a developing economy has low indicators of socio-economic development and human development index ratings.

There are about 137 countries classified as developing economies as against 31 developed economies (World Population Review, 2019), with the developing economies constituting the bulk of the world population. It is projected that the largest population increase will take place in the developing economies of the world. The unfortunate aspect of the situation is that while the population of developing economies is increasing, poverty is also increasing, with a high percent of students in these countries lacking facilities for their education.

A comparative analysis of access to electronic technologies in developed and developing economies indicates the obvious, electronic technology divide. In addition to internet backbone, there are electronic media, devices and facilities that ensure e-learning. These include broadband, desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone and other handheld devices. The developed economies have more access to these electronic technologies. For instance, recent statistics presented by Department of Education (2019) indicated that 46% and 49% of students aged 5 – 15 years in England, corresponding to students in primary and secondary schools in Nigeria, have their own smartphones and tablets respectively. However, at least 500 schools in England experience slow internet, with about 100 operating at average download speeds as low as 1 – 2 mbps.

The situation in America is better. Kennedy (2017), citing reports from a non-profit organization, Education super Highway’s 2017 state of the states, showed that 94% of school districts meet FCC minimum standards for internet connectivity of at least 100kbps of internet bandwidth per student; 88% of schools self-report that they have sufficient Wi-Fi in their classrooms; Nine states have 100% of their school districts meet the FCC minimum standards; nearly 40m American Kids have access to digital opportunities. However, more than 9,400 schools fall short of the minimum bandwidth, more than 2000 schools with more than ¾ in the rural areas lack fiber connections, 21m students lack adequate broadband connections in their classrooms, while 6.5m attend school in under-connected facilities that fail to meet FCC standards.

In developing economies, the situation is more worrisome. Although there is no reliable data on internet access in most developing economies, it is believed that in Africa access to the internet is very poor. The International Telecommunications Union as reported by Internet Society (2017) showed that more than a quarter of African population had access to the Internet in 2016, over half of the population has access to mobile phones, many African countries have witnessed in the last decade improved broadband connectivity at national levels, through national backbone, and internationally through submarine cables on the Western and Eastern Coasts of the continent. It also noted the establishment of school net projects, and National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), equipping selected schools with computer labs, and in some cases, learning materials and teacher training. Despite all these efforts, the report noted that there has been limited success in the roll out of ICTs and internet in African schools, except probably in countries like Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Morroco, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia. This is due mainly to high communication costs, low bandwidth, low penetration of smartphones and lack of locally relevant applications on mobile devices.

While internet and electronic technology access has been substantially attained in majority of developed economies, this cannot be said of developing economies. In 2012, it was estimated that less than 5% of schools in some African Countries had basic internet access (Internet Society, 2017). It was also noted that even though internet access in the majority of European and OCED Countries has been universally achieved, it has remained less than 10% in some of the developing economies, including Latin America, the Carribean, Asia and Africa (Trucano, 2014). With these regions experiencing high rate of population increase compared to the developed economies, the gap in internet access will continue to widen at the detriment of the developing economies. These regions also face challenges such as poor quality teachers, and inadequate facilities.

The role of the internet in the provision of quality education in such regions cannot be overemphasized. It provides access to information in a variety of sources such as people, open educational resources, virtual labs, videos, lessons, textbooks and journals. However, with developing economies lagging behind in internet connectivity to educational institutions, the quality and quantity of educational provisions in the 21st century will be greatly compromised. This is so because internet-enabled technologies, such as classroom technologies or digital tools, which bridge the education gaps by providing digitally facilitated learning experience, will not be effectively used. To ensure that learners in developing economies, and others who do not have adequate internet connectivity benefit from internet-enabled technologies, the need arises for improvisation bearing in mind that a World Bank 2016 study as reported by Shelton (2017) indicated that 60% of the World’s people are offline.

Improvisation in Global E-Learning

The developing economies are disadvantaged in the provision of global e-learning, due mainly to inadequate internet facilities. In many places, internet is not available, and where it is available, users witness interruptions, outages and low speed. There is inadequate bandwidth. In such situations, a complete reliance on the use of internet will make it difficult for the objectives of global e-learning to be attained. This calls for devising, or creating alternatives to the internet as it is conventionally known and presented. That is, there is need for improvisation of internet as a result of the inadequate provision of internet connectivity in many homes and schools in developing economies. For according to Trucano (2014), if internet connectivity is simply not available, then other forms of connecting should be explored. This is improvisation.

Therefore improvisation becomes necessary when the original material or facility is not available, accessible, useable or affordable, and the creative potential of the teacher is activated and deployed in developing an alternative from available resources, that has the capacity to facilitate global e-learning. Therefore, to improvise is to create a new device, idea or system which is an alternative to the origin one that is not handy, and which is comparable to or better than the original one in providing enriched experiences to the learner. Improvisation is, therefore, innovative in nature. It is a process of development and use of innovative materials or methods to make learning more effective and efficient. Improvisation begets innovation.

Improvisation of teaching strategies is also necessary if the objectives of global e-learning are to be achieved. Teaching strategies refer to how the teacher intends to get the students to learn. Although used interchangeably with method, technique or model of teaching, these concepts may have different meanings in different situations. For the purpose of this presentation, teaching strategies are more or less specific teacher behaviors providing an environment where certain learner behaviors are permissible in the classroom. It organizes the environment to allow for certain learner activities in the instructional process.

Some teaching strategies are teacher-centered, in which the students are less active; while some others are learner-centered, in which the students are more active. The teacher-centred strategies are the traditional easy-to-adopt behaviours of the teacher which limit the active participation of the learner in the instructional process. Consequently, they are limited in effecting attainment of objectives especially in the affective and psychomotor domains which are the major concerns of global learning. This has necessitated improvisation in teaching methodologies in which more learner-centred strategies have been devised, created or developed to provide education in which the learner is not just active, but involved in collaboration and problem solving with others.

Improvisation is a creative way of managing instruction. Sawyer (2004) noted that conceiving teaching as improvisation is a creative art that emphasizes the use of collaborative, constructivist, inquiry-based methods. Collaborating this view, Sullivan (2011) posited that improvisation entails expanding teachers’ repertoires to include active learning strategies that challenge students to take full responsibility for their learning. Also, Shem-Tov (2011) noted that theatrical improvisation is a joyful, creative and playful activity made available to students through discovery and spontaneous instructional process. On the part of students involved in improvisational learning, Martin (1996) observed that they have the opportunity to create and learn from successes and mistakes.

It can be seen that improvisation in teaching strategies are innovative learner-centered strategies. These innovative strategies are numerous and have continued to increase as new challenges emerge in education. However, improvisation is content and context specific to a great extent (Holdhus, Hoisaeter, Maeland, Vangsnes, Engelsen, Espeland & Espeland, 2016).

Therefore, when global e-learning in developing economies is the concern, the improvisation in media and strategies will be such that circumvent, as much as possible, the inadequacies in internet facilities, poor electric power supply, poor quality teaching staff and other inputs, homogeneous grouping of culturally similar learners, that bedevil education in the region.

Suggested Teaching Strategies and Media for Global E-Learning

Given the circumstances of learners in developing economies, the following media and facilities are suggested

1. Solar powered computers and handheld devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones.
2. Potable internet connectivity devices
3. Caching of contents, instructional materials, lessons, etc. on local servers.
4. Catching of contents on portable drives.
5. Mobile broadband (3G and 4G) providers can be encouraged through policy to provide high speed, reliable, affordable and robust internet connectivity to schools. More than half of the total web traffic in developing economies is through mobile devices.
6. Development and use of interactive video and audio.

The following are suggested teaching strategies.

1. Small and mixed group cooperative learning
2. Gamification
3. Simulation, drama, theatre, role play
4. Mistake
5. Learning by doing
6. Peer teaching
7. Problem-solving, such as case study, brainstorming, inquiry and discovery
8. Organizers such as verbal and graphic
9. Pictorial analysis
10. Imagination and imagery
11. Annotation
12. Paraphrasing
13. Summarizing
14. Culturally-responsive teaching
15. Poem and poetry
16. Small group discussion
17. Etc

Conclusion

Improvisation in technology and teaching strategies is critical to the attainment of the objectives of global learning in developing economies. This is so because with poor internet connectivity, it will be counterproductive for practitioners to rely on the classical conceptualization of e-learning, as a complete reliance on internet-enabled technologies, in the provision of global learning. The adoption of other models of e-learning that permit the use of offline electronic media in or outside the traditional classroom, and learner-based teaching strategies will facilitate the attainment of the objectives of global learning. This is a way of ensuring global e-learning in developing economies.

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Correspondents can be directed to:

PROF. F.A. OKWO

FACULTY OF EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA NSUKKA