The Department of Information Science at the University of Pretoria, with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, has for the past six years offered a fully funded specialised two-year coursework degree at Masters level in Information Technology (M.IT degree) for academic librarians selected from the Carnegie-affiliated countries in Africa, namely Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. This programme is unique in that it created a strategic partnership between the local sponsoring academic institution and the three international partner universities, namely Makerere University, Uganda, the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, USA and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as local industry partners.
This program made use of a blended learning approach by offering classes through face-to-face lectures and technology-mediated distance education. Face-to-face lectures took place in two to three week block periods over four semesters at partner universities. Technology-mediated distance education consisted of audio-conferencing using our Learning Management System Blackboard Collaborate. Lecturers also made use of various social media technologies such as Wikis to enhance their academic offering. The presentation will discuss the technological and teaching methodologies as well as the unique advantages and challenges of collaboration between four partner institutions on two continents as well as local industry partners in offering a blended learning program to students from six different countries. Although the Carnegie funded-programme has come to an end, the Masters degree is continuing in 2017 as a self-funded programme without the face-to-face lectures, only utilising technology-mediated distance education. The presentation will also discuss how it is possible for the continuing programme to compensate for the lack of face-to-face lectures and site visits by means of technology.
