The COVID-19 pandemic proved that online and hybrid learning was a viable model for South Africa, but schools and universities appear to have taken a step backwards as pandemic restrictions eased.
This is according to Clement Mtetwa, Acting CIO at the Department of Science and Technology, who was speaking ahead of an education-focused AWS Cloud Technology 2022 forum to be held later this month.
“When COVID-19 hit, most institutions went completely to cloud. It is unfortunate that institutions of higher learning now seem to be going back to the old way of doing things,” he says.
“Remote and hybrid learning enabled by the cloud offers an important solution to the challenge of access to education. In South Africa, there may be around one million students enrolled in institutions of higher learning, but up to five times as many could not secure a place at an institution. With cloud-enabled education, resources such as lecturers could support far more students," he says.
“Our research also shows that the cloud overcomes a lot of the pain points we see in tertiary institutions, such as storage space, compute capacity for data-heavy shared research and hosting of content such as recorded lectures. The cloud is infinitely scalable and can be configured to be very cost-effective,” Mtetwa says.
However, he notes that skills, access and mindset are major hurdles in the way of optimal cloud use in education.
According to the AWS white paper on 'Emerging Trends in the New World of Education', cloud technology makes it possible for education to scale and offer flexible, stackable learning. This is something that cloud technologies can enable, which would otherwise be very difficult to scale in a traditional environment.
Agnat Max Makgoale, Senior Account Manager at AWS, says there's a need to explore solutions such as zero-rated access, free hotspots or subsidised data to ensure all students are able to access remote classes and hosted content. “We also need to bring in training and change management to ensure that employees at tertiary institutions are equipped to optimise the use of cloud technologies."
Mtetwa’s views echo those of participants in last year’s AWS Cloud Technology Series education forum, where experts said the cost of access and unique local challenges such as load-shedding and riots had hampered online education for many students.
According to Mtetwa, digital and cloud skills development programmes such as AWS Academy should be added to university courses to upskill students and AWS training and certification offered to the staff of tertiary institutions to help fast-track cloud adoption. “One reason for hybrid and remote education taking a step back into the ‘old normal’ since COVID-19 is that educators themselves may not be comfortable using cloud tools,” he says. “Those working in the IT industry may see them as simple and intuitive, but if a lecturer is battling with something like switching to a link or admitting students to a virtual class, they will find it frustrating and revert to in-person classes,” he says. “For IT staff, provisioning and managing cloud services could be a challenge if they have not been trained.”
This is a challenge that institutions such as Wits University has overcome through targeted training of both academic and IT staff.
AWS Cloud Computing for Education offers a broad portfolio of tools to help education institutions, with over 14 000 institutions worldwide using them to improve efficiency and reduce costs, enable remote and hybrid learning and improve security, agility and innovation.
“Tools such as these can help institutions optimise the cloud, and public-private partnerships can help overcome hurdles such as a lack of cloud skills in institutions and in the broader environment,” said Mtetwa.
Makgoale added: "The growth in the adoption of the AWS Cloud is reliant on closing the cloud skills gap and AWS Training and Certification offers a broad set of material and resources for organisations to upskill and reskill existing staff. These cloud skills allow them to access the benefits of cloud and empower them to leverage cutting-edge tools with confidence and credibility.”
Mtetwa will be among the industry experts addressing the 'Innovation for technology-enabled education executive forum' hosted by AWS on 13 September in Johannesburg. The event will also feature Agnat Max Makgoale, senior Account Manager for the education sector at AWS, Eiffel Corp Chief Commercial Officer Stefan du Plessis, and Kwena Mokgohloa, Acting Director Infrastructure and Operations at Unisa, who will discuss equipping the country’s current and future workforce to meet the demands of the digital era and how technology enables education and research.
For more information and to register for the virtual event, go to: http://ad.itweb.co.za/adclick.php?bannerid=51755&zoneid=0&source=&dest=https://www.itweb.co.za/event/aws-innovation-for-technology-enabled-education
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