Best practices: e-learning in Kenya

What does e-learning mean if students cannot get access to the learning resources? In Kenya, in one of the poor counties, we work with North Coast Medical training College in the Nuffic funded Orange Knowledge Programme: Development of Skills for Health Professions Education in East Africa.

The Kenyan national government decided in early March to close all schools to prevent the spread of Covid-19. In general, schools and universities were not prepared to make the switch to online education. This however was not the case with NCMTC, as they had invested in an e-learning platform 2 years ago. The unforeseen variant was that the students were forced to work from home. They could not use the computers at school, nor the wifi to connect to the internet.

NCMTC realised this and took swift action:

• They managed to negotiate with Safaricom (telecommunication provider) to reduce the costs of bundles for those IP addresses connected to the School e-learning platform.
• They started a rent-to-buy device plan so that students can pay small monthly amounts to be able to use a smartphone or tablet for schoolwork.
• BUKU (https://buku.io/nl/#) has offered their only library till the end of the month for free for students and staff.

Please see here for a short video impression of the story so far.