Online learning offers fully baked graduates
Kenyan employers have always reproached academia for half baked graduates who come out of school without the practical know-how required in the job market.
The classroom has been stuck in instructive theory far removed from everyday life and hands-on experience.
The problem may be magnified by changing technologies which are being revolutionised each minute and by the time a curriculum gets altered, decades of technological advancements have already been made.
One of the key challenges has been bridging industry and the classroom. Very few schools have been able to successfully organize a school trip to industry or a lecture from executives due to timing and cost constraints.
However technology especially during this coronavirus pandemic may bridge this gap.
For instance, 550 University students from undergraduate, graduates to PhD students recently got front seat access to Huawei Kenya CEO, Mr Will Meng, and Huawei Kenya Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Mr Steven Zheng thanks to the newly set up UniTech Talk.
The executives gave a presentation on ICT Industry Trends and Insights on how ICT is helping fight the pandemic and stimulate economic recovery amongst different industries to 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud, Edge Computing, and ecosystem development.
The talk elicited a lot of response on 5G technology which shows that learners are usually ahead of regular curricular and are exposed to new technologies.
Through such initiatives as Huawei Kenya’s UniTech Talk offering regular lecture series for University lecturers, students and tech enthusiasts, the future of learning may just have found a way to connect the class with the industry.
It will help share the latest technologies, industry trends, development policies and insights and position the Kenyan ICT industry to take advantage of the latest technologies, providing more awareness, knowledge and insights on where the opportunities are and the technical capabilities to grasp them.
The series complements the ICT Academy program that partners with universities and training institutes to provide advanced, in-depth globally certified programs to hundreds of lecturers and thousands of students in Kenya alone.
