Constructivist Approach for E-Learning Effectiveness in African Higher Education Contexts

Abstract

There is a spurt in online learning worldwide, particularly in Asian and African countries, after the COVID-19 pandemic. Outcomes Based Education (OBE), the new paradigm in Africa, India and elsewhere in the world promotes e-Learning as part of its Lifelong learning attribute. Design of such e-Learning system should incorporate features of autonomous learner’s characteristics (like African higher education students) for their preparedness and progression phases of e-Learning. This is due to the fact that the learning environment and learner characteristics, may differ from place to place and cultures. As per literature, principles of constructivist theory have been successfully adapted for e-Learning. Meta-cognition is a new addition to the OBE paradigm besides cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains, that plays important role in e-Learning. This paper attempts to construct metrics for meta-cognition using constructivist’s learning parameters, for analyzing three phases of e-Learning. Literatures are limited on meta-cognitive studies of e-Learner characteristics. The novelty of the paper is the adaptation of certain principles of ecological system on meta-cognition with literature support. Inductive research with appropriate methodology is applied for studying the effectiveness of e-Learning. Ecological factors in the meta-cognition aspects of the constructivist’s theory have been considered. Two parts are treated by the paper: i. Comparative study between Indian and African scenario; ii. Detailed study of selective African countries on the preparedness and progression phases of e-Learning. Survey methods have been chosen for obtaining feedbacks on scientifically designed questionnaire. Three hypotheses on the meta-cognitive aspects of self-regulation and a null hypothesis for the comparative study, have been constructed. Observations on the three phases of e-Learning have been documented and inferences drawn. Conclusions made out our research study along with the results presented will be of immense use to e-Learning system designers, particularly for the African scenario.