Recently, the MSc in Digital Education has been fortunate enough to receive funding from the British Council to support 16 students from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa under the project titled Digital Education for Change Makers in Sub-Saharan Africa. These students will be studying for two years, beginning in January 2023. The project will develop hybrid teaching models to support online study, regional networking and collaboration, as well as an intensive face-to-face workshop in Accra, Ghana in 2024 on doing research in digital education, and further knowledge exchange activity in the UK in 2025.
Working in tandem with the British Council and the Ministry of Education in each of the four countries, we are currently in the process of selecting these students based on their current position (many within the Ministries of Education), their aspirations in this field, and their capacity to meaningfully apply this education in their educational contexts for positive impact. The goal here is to help these students make a positive, critically-informed and creative impact on their communities in both digital education policy and practice.
Starting in early December, we will be welcoming these students to our programme via an extensive onboarding programme of activity with sessions ranging on how to study online, the UK higher education system, technology we use on the programme, getting to know the larger cohort, and more. In preparation for this group, we have worked to make the programme much more mobile-friendly; indeed some of this onboarding activity will help students set up mobile access to the core programme spaces via their mobile devices.
- Dr Michael Gallagher, Senior Lecturer in Digital Education