Capacity building for digital education

Introduction

Building capacity for digital education can be a daunting prospect because digital education – also known as technology-enhanced learning or TEL – is a complex system. Such systems are difficult to model because of the ways in which their different elements – including people, technologies, and resources – relate to each other and depend upon each other. In the context of Higher Education, this complex includes interconnected information technology resources that can function as a unit, digital content, various forms of student feedback, not forgetting the various technologies and human actors involved. In this special collection, we argue that managing the growth of this complex system with all its interdependencies is crucial to its success. Through mapping these interdependencies, essential processes become clearer. These, in turn, illustrate how information/data is transferred between different parts of the ecosystem. This mapping should also reveal which parts of the system are not connected and therefore unable to exchange knowledge/data. One of the salient findings from work on ‘Covid challenges and opportunities driving the research agenda’ (Whitelock et al., 2021) was the need for specialised introductions to new devices and pedagogies, resulting in capacity building initiatives leading to managed growth.

Capacity building has been defined by the UN as:

the process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources that organizations and communities need to survive, adapt, and thrive in a fast-changing world. An essential ingredient in capacity building is transformation that is generated and sustained over time from within; transformation of this kind goes beyond performing tasks to changing mindsets and attitudes. https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/capacity building

This special collection looks at some of the lessons that can be learned from putting capacity building into practice in different Higher Education contexts. In the following sections, we examine a decade of HE capacity building projects undertaken around the world by our own institution, The Open University (OU), showing how they highlight different facets of the complex system that is digital education.

The TEL complex

A decade ago, the UK Beyond Prototypes project investigated why it is that so many innovations in digital learning/TEL seem so promising when trialled, yet rarely make the transition into long-term, impactful changes. Through engaging with multiple initiatives and studies around the world, the project identified that TEL is a complex system, made up of practices, technologies and communities that are all informed by the theory and practice of teaching and learning (Scanlon et al., 2013). This complex is very stable – disruption to one or two elements of it will not last for long if no change is made to other elements.

The successful innovation that capacity building is designed to support is driven by a vision (Ferguson, 2019). In the case of the projects introduced in this special collection, that vision involves the scaling up of provision for digital education in an institution, region, or country. To achieve that vision, those involved need to decide on the pedagogies – the approaches to learning and teaching – that are appropriate, and the technologies that will support those pedagogies.

However, changes to technology and pedagogy cannot produce long-term change by themselves. Change involves many communities – learners, educators, support staff, managers, and the wider community. From the perspective of capacity building, support staff, educators and managers all need support to engage successfully with the project and, ideally, will have been engaged in contributing to the vision. Part of the capacity building project needs to consider the practicalities of the context – from national policies related to infrastructure, funding, and educational aspirations, to the day-to-day practicalities of maintaining technology, and timetabling access to resources.

An important aspect of changing a complex system like this is reflection. What progress has been made towards the vision? What is blocking change? Where has capacity building been successful and where is it still needed? In a research project, evaluation can answer some of these questions, but the communities involved need to be fully involved in reflecting on progress and deciding on next steps.

Capacity building

Capacity building may be used with reference to individuals, to groups of varying organisational scale and coherence, or to the structures and operation of the enabling environment. Building capacity may involve strengthening existing capacities but, because it takes place in a complex system, will often result in a re-building of capacity in response to the change and transformation that activities precipitate. When capacity building is approached in terms of the local, national, or global public good then its conception and performance will be interwoven with aspirations for addressing societal challenges and achieving sustainable development.

The OU-led TESS-India programme and associated follow-on project provides an example of delivering capacity strengthening and capacity transformation at scale. The programme provided an innovative, practical, and scalable approach to pre- and in-service teacher education, with an emphasis on inclusive, participatory child-centred pedagogy. With a focus on strengthening existing government state educational systems, it reached over a million teachers across seven states in India (Wolfenden, Adinolfi, et al., 2017). Factors contributing to its success included its engagement with different aspects of the educational complex. This work included active engagement and adaption of resources with local stakeholders, embedding practice in local education systems, building strategic teams, effective evaluation and expansion planning, social media, mentor support, and use of digital technologies, including a massive open online course (MOOC) completed by more than 25,000 teachers (Cross et al., 2019). At this scale, attention was given to the social organisation and scaling of stakeholders’ successful capacity building, as well as to influencing the normative views underpinning existing approaches in order to promote shifts from cascade models of training to a focus on the empowerment and continuous professional development and learning of teachers in their classrooms. Subsequent projects have enabled the project team to further support capacity building through new research and knowledge utilisation.

A key stage in capacity building is understanding context. This is a crucial part of the complex educational system, which cannot be fully understood without local knowledge. This was the focus of the International Distance Education and Africa Students (IDEAS) project which focused on reviewing equality of access to, and quality of international distance education in, four African countries. Using specially prepared country reports, insight from learners and training on a version of the Open University Learning Design Initiative approach (Cross et al., 2012), the project supported IDE providers in recognising the need for and supporting the building of capacity (Mittelmeier et al., 2018).

Universities can play a leading role in supporting digital education projects by developing strategic programmes and financial frameworks that support impact and change through capacity building. In 2022, The OU launched its Open Societal Challenges programme which includes a digital collaboration platform for creating, catalysing and supporting OU research challenges. Orientated towards UN Sustainable Development Goals, which include ‘Quality Education’, this programme aims to promote inclusive practices by valuing ‘community-driven, bottom-up ideation and enhancing collaboration’ (Open Societal Challenges Programme, 2024).

Skills for prosperity (Kenya)

Skills for Prosperity (Kenya) was a capacity building project involving the editors of this special issue that aimed to develop and strengthen the knowledge, skills and expertise of Higher Education staff in Kenya to deliver quality online and blended education (Goshtasbpour et al., 2022). It was completed during the COVID-19 pandemic when capacity development was crucial to address the gap in staff expertise and to facilitate the continuation of education during the closure of public universities.

For this project, the OU partnered with Kenya Ministry of Education and the country’s 37 public universities. It considered the various elements of the TEL complex and did not focus only on learners and educators. Instead, it offered a two-stage capacity building programme to introduce staff in a variety of roles to the principles of effective, inclusive, and accessible online and blended education. The programme was co-designed with partners, based on the OU’s Supported Open Learning model, and adopted several existing openly licenced courses. It benefited from a number of specific design and implementation considerations, including flexible scheduling through a self-paced delivery to enable staff to engage with the programme at their own pace, accessible learning resources in multiple format, a distributed award system of specialised digital badges, certificate of completion and local support.

The two stages were offered almost concurrently, yet at different levels. In the first stage (Baseline capacity development), staff from 29 public universities engaged with an eight-session self-study online course (30 study hours) supported by wraparound webinars and an online community of practice. In the second stage, which lasted for 18 months, eight universities selected by the Ministry of Education completed a more comprehensive programme (Mastery capacity development). This included a postgraduate-level microcredential course for selected educational leaders, an eight-block online self-study course (72 study hours) with moderated discussions, expert and support webinars, a mentoring scheme, a practical project and an online community of practice.

Over 300 staff engaged with the two stages of the capacity development and more than 230 of these completed one of the stages and became digital education thought leaders or champions at their institutions. Some went on to contribute to the formation of the Open University of Kenya. The impact of the programme was evaluated over 18 months and at several stages through surveys, interviews with individuals and focus groups with university teams (Goshtasbpour et al., 2023).

Applying King’s (2014) professional development impact evaluation framework, showed that the programme had positive immediate and short-term impact on staff in terms of new conceptual knowledge and skills, or enhancement of the existing one(s), and created change and transformation in areas related to different aspects of the TEL complex, including processes (for example, teaching, assessment and creating learning material), products (including digital content, new policies, partnerships) and staff outcomes (including perception change, critical use of educational technology, and new forms of collaboration). The longer-term impact of the programme will be evaluated in 2024.

Capacity building projects

Core to successful capacity building projects is a deep understanding of the current terrain, practices and needs of different stakeholders, and how these ecosystems interconnect. This research underpins and is central to recent capacity building projects based at the OU.

The Skills for Prosperity (Kenya) project outlined above began with work to understand participant needs and interconnected ecosystems within the context of Kenyan Higher Education. Understanding the barriers to digital education from a variety of Higher Education staff perspectives, as well as their perception of student challenges, provided a complex picture of the environment and context in which change would be taking place, and the challenges faced by different groups of staff when implementing effective digital education. Centring the voice of participants was core to the project and provided insights into possible solutions to identified challenges. This approach enabled an understanding of existing institutional structures and identified where connections could be strengthened, created and amplified, both inside and outside individual institutions, while highlighting the need for a holistic, inclusive approach (Goshtasbpour et al., 2023). Additional studies on the impact of the project’s digital education capacity building across different staff groups were led by participating institutions within Kenya, ensuring that progress was assessed by the stakeholders themselves (Ngatia et al., 2022).

Including and amplifying the experiences and priorities of those often excluded from discussion, and thus contributing to a rebalancing of systems has been a feature of other recent capacity building initiatives. Dawadi and Wolfenden (2022) centred the voices of school headteachers in their exploration of whether and how inclusion features within capacity building initiatives in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nepal. Inclusion has also been a feature of the work of Bossu and Willems (2017) who present the case for centring inclusivity when developing capacity building materials, in this instance using Open Educational Resources (OER) in Australian universities. Sustaining a system while encouraging and supporting changes in pedagogical practices was also an outcome of the TESS-India project (Wolfenden, Cross, et al., 2017). As with Skills for Prosperity (Kenya), all these capacity building projects exist within and reflect complex and systems, from the government-level policies and initiatives (or lack of) that guide them to their focus on understanding the similarities and differences between the different systems (national, institutional etc.) within them.

Special collection

The Open University has been particularly engaged, over the last decade, in multiple capacity building projects, some of which have been outlined above. It has provided support with the teaching of digital skills for both staff and students, especially during the Covid lockdown period. Change was inevitable in the post-lockdown landscape when transforming the digital systems of Higher Education became critical to adapt quickly to student needs. This has meant understanding the importance of innovation, creativity, and agility. Resistance to change is often regarded as leading to stagnation for any enterprise. Covid prompted a ‘pivot’ towards digital education, meaning resources and investment are currently required in staff capacity building ventures. The papers published in this special collection illustrate how this has been achieved in different countries, often making use of research funding.

The first paper in this special issue by Rafique (2024) highlights not only the role of professional development opportunities but their impact during Covid for 25 Higher Education teachers of English in Bangladesh. The following research questions were addressed by adopting a qualitative interpretative paradigm with an online qualitative survey.

1. What opportunities of online professional development did the university teachers in Bangladesh have during the COVID-19 pandemic?

2. How did engaging in online professional development support their online teaching and professional learning during the pandemic?

The subsequent thematic data analysis followed the practice of Clarke and Braun (2017), revealing that even though online professional learning opportunities were limited in Bangladesh during the pandemic, they took the form of either institutional support or Open Educational Resources (OERs). The findings also suggested that online teaching was more effective for teachers’ engagement with Online Professional Development (OPD) activities and boosted their confidence. Since online professional development is an underexplored area of research in Bangladesh, further research is recommended to assess the benefits of OPD and capture good practice.

A different and more bespoke approach is taken by Dissanayeke et al. (2024) to the capacity building of digital skills. They designed an innovative group work assignment in order to address this important skill required by employers. The work was undertaken by the Biological Sciences Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, who found that their virtual collaborative assessment with high student engagement supported the development of transferable skills such as teamwork, digital literacy, and communication. More importantly it was introduced to students at the beginning of their studies and they were therefore able to build upon these skills in future courses.

Open Educational Resources proved to be important when digital skills were urgently required during Covid as described by Rafique above, but what competencies are required for educators to use these resources? Nascimbeni et al. (2024) have addressed this question through developing a framework of competencies that educators in Higher Education should acquire in order to engage in good Open Educational Practices. This work project points the way towards creating a rigorous profile of an Open Educator and provides a systematic and rigorous description of the salient digital skills required to enact a capacity building platform for change.

The penultimate paper by Scott and Smith (2024) and funded by a European project, consisted of capacity building staff members’ digital skills for innovation in teaching English in Palestinian Higher Education Institutions. The products of which included, the redesign of curricula, the design and use of interactive textbooks and developing expertise in the design and use of Open Educational Resources. They also developed a model for digital teacher innovation, which starts with personal need and then moves to the collaborative level, culminating in community discourse which can result in organisational change.

Lessons learned from these four papers include processes and competencies in the use of Open Educational Resources and Practices that can encourage transferable digital skills which can help universities to develop a roadmap from their vision for digital pedagogy, which includes leveraging data to drive change with stakeholders’ insights while emphasising the role of staff capacity building training and at the same time embracing a culture of innovation.

The final contribution by Trimarco (2024) recommends a number of key reference books that assist with keeping up to speed in this fast-moving field. The important feature of these recommendations is the criteria she used to make her selections. These include relevance to ODL, an interdisciplinary perspective and practical applicability. Great ingredients for a good read!