Subsequently Matogo made a de-briefing presentation at the SU Research Day on 6th June at the university dubbed 'E-learning a solution to Africa's education challenges: opportunities for participation'.

Matogo said his participation was particularly on exploring challenges and opportunities for building sustainable open source solutions for Africa. Open source is a concept in software development where the original code of programmes is accessible to programmers. This means the programmers can make changes to the software and avail the changes to others.

'Open source approach is very relevant to Africa as it lowers barriers of entry to use of IT by reducing initial costs of applications. It also helps built indigenous capacities as it gives local programmers an opportunity to participate in applications development. This could also lead to innovations.

"The fact that source code is accessible means applications can be customized to local needs. Thus, it is easy to have an e-learning platform in, say, Kiswahili," Matogo said.

However, there are many challenges. "E-learning awareness is still low. The platforms should also be more user-friendly,” Matogo added.

Matogo revealed that although SU has an e-learning platform, the university has not fully grasped the e-learning approach. “Ideally, e-learning should be interactive. In the days gone by, teachers were the only source of knowledge. That is no longer the case. Today, students get knowledge from many sources

"In e-learning environment, teachers should be facilitators – guiding students in the use of the knowledge they acquire. This does not mean e-learning will replace teachers. What is needed is for teachers to be re-trained in the use of e-learning.

"The push to re-tool teachers is being necessitated by the attitude of teachers. Since students can access knowledge from other sources, teachers are being challenged by the students to justify their position in front of the class. There is a big need to train teachers on how to develop e-learning content and use it," Matogo observed

Africa can also use e-learning to bridge not only the digital but also the knowledge divide. And with an increasing population and limited resources to train teachers, e-learning could play a crucial role in meeting the Education for All millennium development goal.

For more views on this see: http://allafrica.com/stories/200706070961.html