(Strategic Context) African universities, IGO’s, and INGO’s are key stakeholders in the technological progress of African countries. Unfortunately, faculty, students, and administrators working in African universities face complex fiscal and infrastructure constraints, resulting in academic environments poorly suited to their educational and research goals. These constraints hinder adequate training in the critical fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM.) In recent history, the growth in African universities enrollment wasn’t accompanied by concomitant increases in per pupil expenditure. University administrators, in some cases following recommendations from international government organizations, responded to this decrease in per capita expenditure by channeling a disproportionate number students into the less expensive ‘soft’ disciplines, disciplines away from the hard sciences that typically encourage experimentation; thereby requiring relatively higher per pupil expenditure. (Major Challenge) Today, the primary challenge facing African universities, IGO’s and INGO’s, is providing national leadership in STEM capacity development that is designed to enable Africans to participate in the knowledge economy, while still operating in environments of fiscal and infrastructural constraints. Unfortunately, many African universities cannot effectively support their currently enrolled students; nor are they prepared to adequately support projected enrollment over the next ten years. (Critical response) Multi-stakeholder networks (IGO’s, INGO’s, collaborating Universities) must be orchestrated in the context of an innovation framework that emphasizes, open education, open innovation, open platforms designed to provide the most operationally efficient, scalable, and cost-effective pedagogical approach for developing STEM capacity building.
In this talk, I present a Biomedical Engineering Capacity project at Makerere University in the form of a case study. I described the challenges and opportunities in appropriating online educational content tailored to BME capacity needs. And, delivering online educational content in a blended learning program that incorporates class lab work most suitable for cost-effective BME education with massive enrollment reach.
