Academic Scholars Perception of Online Education Initiatives in

Somalia

Mohamud Mohamed Hassan

and Husein Osman Abdullahi

Zamzam University of Science and Technology, Mogadishu, Somalia

Simad University, Mogadishu, Somalia

Keywords: Online Learning and Teaching, MOOC, Higher Education, e-Learning.

Abstract: This paper examines the Perception of the academic community in Somalia on implementation of online

teaching and learning methods during the covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic created a significant challenge

for the universities in Somalia. The paper implements a modified version of the open, online, flexible and

technology enhanced (OOFAT) methodology with three main categories: content delivery, flexibility impact

and platform adaptation. The data has been collected through online questionnaires and interviews involving

70 university educators in Somalia. The study found that instructors who had low degree of content delivery

online with flexibility applications weakened the process of teaching and learning. In addition, the study

suggested that the instructors lacked adequate knowledge on basic ICT literacy and showed a higher level of

barrier of adaptation on online learning and teaching tools. The author argues that the higher education

intuitions responsibility to build the capacity of academic staff regarding ICT literacy and provide a scholarly

communication platform to enhance their knowledge and technology awareness and exposure.

1 INTRODUCTION

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared

coronavirus disease as a “Pandemic” toward the end

of 2019 (COVID-19). This pandemic will have a

profound effect on different aspects of our lives

including economy, health care, food security and

education (Basilaia & Kvavadze, 2020). The

UNESCO estimated that 107 countries had

implemented national school closures related to

COVID-19, affecting 862 million children and young

people, roughly half the global student population

(Viner et al., 2020).

The Somali ministry of Health and Medical

communities recommended avoiding any gatherings,

all public places including all primary, secondary

schools, and universities have been closed and

expected to re-open depending on how the pandemic

evolves (UNESCO, 2020). The decision was

implemented as a preventive measure to flatten the

curve of the spread of the virus.

In a situation where the students may not go to

physical classes, the alternative was to move from

traditional to online education (Basilaia & Kvavadze,

2020). Hence, thousands of universities and academic

institutions have been encouraging social distancing

measures and thus limit the spread of the virus. The

HEI started using online platforms to continue the

teaching and learning.

Figure 1: Countries that have shut down or localized the

educational institutions in the world (UNESCO Report).

The Open Online learning and teaching platforms

gained popularity in recent years, this new

educational platform aims to share and provide

endless access through the web (De Freitas, Morgan,

& Gibson, 2015). Recently, Open Online learning and

teaching platforms has become a global, major digital

tools for academic institutions, because of its ability

to provide interactive support between students and

Hassan, M. and Abdullahi, H.

Academic Scholars Perception of Online Education Initiatives in Somalia.

DOI: 10.5220/0010366401430147

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2021) - Volume 2, pages 143-147

ISBN: 978-989-758-502-9

143

instructors (Fagbohun et al., 2018). Mogadishu is the

principal city in the country with a high population

where there is a great need for online education.

This paper examines the academic scholar’s

perception towards online teaching and learning in

higher educational institutions in Somalia during the

coronavirus pandemic. The paper analyzes the insights

of the digitalization methodologies and tools to deliver

content, its flexibility, and platform adaptation on

online education. This paper is structured under

headings that include literature review, methodology,

results, discussion, and conclusion.

1.1 Purpose

1. To examine the scholar’s perception twards the

inistitions of higher education’s online transition of

teaching and learning.

2. To find out the challenges of the academic

scholars in adopting Online education platforms.

2 RELATED WORK

Higher Education Institutions (HEI) has been

recognized as the primary engine for creating future

workforce and disseminating knowledge through

research. In Somalia context the higher education

institutions with all basic institutions were

disseminated by the 1990 civil war. Since 1997 Somali

scholars started restoring Higher Education Institutions

by building private formal institutions. However, the

Universities had a limited education budget with no

government grants. Universities relied on student

tuition fees and foreign aid. The lack of funding and

budget shortage forced HEI to adopt the recovering

war-torn nation and build institutions that are resilient

to the hardship, Unfortunately, certain aspects of

academic services have been compromised including

educational quality, ICT infrastructure and scholar

development (Adam, Elmutalib, & Mohamed, 2019).

Many studies are carried out on the adaptation of

technology in the administrative level and in the

classrooms during this coronavirus pandemic. The

Somali government does not have the capacity to

invest in higher education institutions to support

academic quality with modern technologies. Oyo and

Kamema suggested that the sustainability of online

education in developing countries depends on the

soundness of its financial, operational, and

technological (Oyo & Kalema, 2014). Due to the

country's struggling economy, higher education

institutions are unable to meet all ICT infrastructure

requirements (Li et al., 2012).

Idrissi Jouicha and his coauthors suggested that

technology become more used as we continuously

developing. The study found that online teaching and

learning for instance became a part of the education

sector and aids the knowledge delivery to be extended

to larger audiences and facilitate the access to

information (Idrissi Jouicha et al., 2020).

Most universities in the country introduced

various solutions to continue the education process

during the pandemic. For Example, developing

countries reported implementing low technology

solutions to support online instruction, including

narrated PowerPoint presentations and freeware, such

as Skype, Zoom, Google Classroom, Moodle, and

WhatsApp (Mulenga & Marbán, 2020). They can

engage their students with the resources available, so

that the impact on learning is minimized where

possible. According to study performed by G.

Basilaia (2020), the first week of the transitioning

from the traditional to the online education systems at

the school was successful.

However, the scholars carried the weight of

dealing with students with different levels of

economic classes. This forced the lecturers to have

necessary flexibility to deliver lecture content.

Students who are from low-income families cannot

avoid capable devices, thus they use low quality

devices with low quality technologies. In this

circumstance good applications of ICT in learning

and teaching involve integration of technology,

subject matter, and learning online culture in

education contexts (Li et al., 2012).

These researches offer a broad perspective of the

use of modern technology in education. However,

these studies did not provide detailed analysis

regarding the perception of the lecturers and scholars

of the higher education institutions in Somalia, which

is the focus of this study. Therefore, a modified

version of open, online, flexible and technology

enhanced (OOFAT) model is used to examine the

perception of the HEI scholars regarding the

transition to online teaching and learning methods.

3 METHODOLOGY

In order to structure this study, a conceptual model

was introduced. This model adopts the open, online,

flexible and technology enhanced (OOFAT) model

developed by the International Council for Open and

Distance Education. The following are three central

processes: Content development, Delivery of learning

and Recognition (Orr, Weller, & Farrow, 2018).

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144

The introduced model uses three core processes for

academic provision: content delivery, impact of

flexibility and platform adaptation as shown in figure

2. Using this principal model analysis and implements

the perception of the scholars using the three central

processes and by what role flexibility and platform

adaptation play in execution and content delivery.

Figure 2: The open, online, flexible and technology

enhanced (OOFAT) conceptual model (Orr et al., 2018).

3.1 Survey Design

Survey Questionnaire used was based on the

conceptual model developed for open, online, flexible

and technology-enhanced (OOFAT) in higher

education context (Orr et al., 2018). The main aim for

the online survey was to gather data while practicing

social distancing. The authors conducted 100 random

selections sufficient for understanding the perception

of the academicians in higher education intuitions.

The selected participants were faculty members from

15 different universities in Mogadishu Somalia from

various disciplines. Google app technologies were

used to gather and organize data.

3.2 Reliability Testing

The table 1 below indicates that the reliability of 19

items in the questionnaire has been tested with

Cronbachs’ alpha (Cronbach, 1951). Cronbach alpha

reliability coefficient is 0.887 which is exceeding the

suggested level of 0.70 (Nunnally, 1978). This shows

that the data in this questionnaire is consistent and

reliable, therefore this data can be used for further

analysis.

Table 1: Reliability testing using Cronbachs’ alpha.

4 RESULT & DISCUSSION

From the figure below illustrates the demographic of

the participants based on discipline of their study,

with 25% from Agriculture and Veterinary, followed

by 16% Education, Medicine and Health Science

respectively, followed by 14% Law, 11%

Management Sciences, followed by 7% for both ICT

and Social Science and finally 4% Natural & Applied

Sciences. All the responses were academicians from

different disciplines. Descriptive statistical analysis

was employed to analyze the results. A mean and

standard deviations of the responses.

The responders preferred Zoom video

conferencing application to be their primary

communication channel were more than 70% of the

instructors use zoom application for suitability and

class control, whereas Google meet preferred for the

ecosystem integration with google apps such as

Gmail, classroom and calendar. The Somali Research

Education Network (SomaliREN) member

universities embraced a SomaliREN developed an

online communication solution.

Figure 3: comparison of the Preferred Online Learning

communication solutions.

4.1 Content Deliverability

The strategy of going online was unavoidable for a

time of COVID-19. Since the course contents are

designed for live audience on physical classes, the

higher education instructors face a challenge in

Source of Variatio

SS df MS F P-value F crit

Rows

392.052 69 5.682 8.835 2.84593E-68 1.3071274

Columns

42.367 18 2.354 3.660 3.62282E-07 1.6121641

Error

798.791 1242 0.643

Total

1233.210 1329

0.887

ANOVA

Cronbach alpha :

Others

SomaliREN

Google Meet

Zoom

0204060

Preferred Online Learning Method

Academic Scholars Perception of Online Education Initiatives in Somalia

145

managing the transitioning process. the data showed

that the instructors struggled in reaching the learning

objectives of the course. 38% strongly agree while

41% agree that the content was not designed to

deliver through online. Another main factor that

affect the content delivery was the lack of access to

digital libraries for both teachers and students to

reference and cite. It’s not yet known why higher

education embracing the open access which became

the driving force for the global open knowledge.

4.2 Impact of Flexibility

The inadequacy of higher education’s ICT

infrastructure failed to facilitate the smooth delivery

of transforming online education. The study

discovered that the absence of proper ICT

infrastructure imposed the HEI to implement loose

and flexible policies. This policy increased the

difficulty in student teacher engagement in online

activities. Online learning requires a very high degree

of self-motivation, which is found to be lacking

among our learners (Bojuwon & Ahmed, 2013). The

figure below shows the academic scholars

perspective on the drawback that too much flexibility

has on delivering the courses.

Figure 4: Comparison of the Preferred Online Learning

communication solutions.

4.3 Platform Adaptation

The use of devices, apps and multimedia tools help to

make teaching and learning a more interactive and

enjoyable prospect. However, the study found out that

the majority of Somali scholars had the difficulty of

communicating online due to lack of familiarity of the

tools as well as teaching techniques (57%). For the

exception of computer Science and Information

Technology scholars who had the unfair advantage of

being in the field of technology. The adaptation was

not easy specifically for senior scholars whom first

time was required to teach online. The results show

that the main concern for the scholars is the lack of

effective capacity building programs towards

MOOC, as 54% of the responders expressed. With

this in mind, this could be caused by the fact that

many universities do not over regular online courses.

5 CONCLUSIONS AND

RECOMMENDATIONS

Online Teaching and learning have been growing in

recent years and is likely to continue to grow as more

institutions adopt technology enabled methodologies.

The results of the study showed that the immediate

transition to online education was challenging due to

lack of computer literacy among the scholars,

especially the tools that enable the online education.

The study concludes that this unprecedented

situation brought by the COVID-19 showed

vulnerabilities of HEIs in Somalia in that they are

unpreparedness and ill-equipped to deliver higher

quality content with flexible academic staff and

adoptable learning tools.

As the HEIs around the world are evolving in

technologically, the Somali universities should adopt

new strategies to increase the teaching staff literacy

in technology. Thus, the findings of this study form a

basis for universities and HE associations to offer

technology literacy trainings to enhance scholar’s

capacity in education applications, and in along with

scholarly communication platforms to exchange

ideas and advance their skills and careers. The

scholarly communication platforms can be positively

beneficial to technophobic educators to adapt to new

technology more comfortable and to help them

advance in their teaching and research obligations.

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