African Universities Responding to HIV/AIDS:

A Progress Report

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PHOTOS

The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Teaching and Learning in African Universities:

A Progress Report from the AWSE/SENCER Joint Project

Marion Field Fass

December 9, 2002

 

 

In October 2002 I traveled to Kenya and Tanzania as part of the Association of American Colleges and Universities SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities) collaboration with African Women in Science and Engineering (AWSE).  Together SENCER and AWSE are working on a project entitled African Universities Responding to HIV/AIDS. This work in funded by USAID, through ALO. This project ties together SENCER's focus on teaching science through the exploration of critical social issues, and AWSE's interest in promoting courses to confront the reality of an epidemic that threatens to devastate Africa. My role was as a consultant to this project.  My travel was sponsored by a grant from the Global Partners Project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and by the Professional Development committee of Beloit College. My salary was covered in part by my position as Visiting Scientist with the SENCER project.

 

This report is an attempt to summarize 3 weeks of visits to universities, talks with lecturers and administrators and students, and curriculum development workshops.

 

 

Background:

In 2000, African Women in Science and Engineering began a collaboration with SENCER to explore the potential to develop undergraduate core courses on HIV/AIDS at African universities. SENCER is an NSF-funded science curriculum reform dissemination project in the US.  The goal of the SENCER project is to promote the development of courses that teach science through engagement with complex civic issues such as global warming, tuberculosis, or HIV/AIDS.  Four leaders from AWSE attended the SENCER Summer Institute in San Jose, California in August 2001 to plan a project to bring new science teaching methods to African universities through teaching about the urgency of the AIDS epidemic.

 

In December 2001, AWSE sponsored a seminar in Nairobi entitled "African Universities Responding to HIV/AIDS" and invited SENCER to send a team.  The SENCER team included David Burns, SENCER PI, Karen Oates, Co-PI,  Monica Devanes,

Rutgers University, and Marion Field Fass,  Beloit College. Alan Bornbush and John Schoneboom of the Africa Office of American Association for the Advancement of Science also came from the US.  Teams from eight African universities and several research institutes attended the seminar. At this meeting, AWSE and SENCER asked the universities to develop proposals for the development of  an undergraduate core course on HIV/AIDS.  In March 2002,  proposals from 4 universities were selected and teams were invited to attend the SENCER Summer Institute in 2002.  Those selected had developed strong proposals for undergraduate courses to address HIV/AIDS using active learning strategies and community involvement.  Each team had an AWSE member (female scientist) and other faculty and administrators.  Teams selected to attend the SENCER Summer Institute were from Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro, Tanzania, Egerton University in Njoro, Kenya, Maseno University, outside Kisumu, Kenya, and Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya.  In addition, the Vice Chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology was invited to attend as an ÒadvanceÓ team member.

 

At the SENCER meeting in August 2002, Marion Field Fass from Beloit College, Alan Bornbush from AAAS, and Debra Meyer from Rand University in South Africa, worked closely with the teams from Kenya and Tanzania to help them develop their course plans. Team members also attended the SENCER workshops on teaching and learning, and developed collaboration with professors from other US universities.  Each of the African teams left with a more detailed proposal to develop and implement an undergraduate common course on HIV/AIDS at their university. 

 

 

October 2002 Activities

The Global Partners Project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, provides funds for professors from small, US, liberal arts colleges to establish collaborations with professors at African universities.  I was able to take advantage of this opportunity to finance a trip to Kenya and Tanzania during October 2002. I had traveled to Kenya in July 2000 with the Global Partners Project to attend a workshop on "East Africa in Transition" at the University of Nairobi.

 

The timing of my trip in October worked well for the participating AWSE/SENCER universities, because if gave them time to return from the SENCER Summer Institute, begin preliminary course planning, obtain support and establish planning and training meetings for participating lecturers.  They were able to schedule these meetings to coincide with my visit so that I could do some training as well as provide assistance with curriculum development and meet with administrators. 

I developed three training talks that I was able to present at the universities.  They were 1) Strategies for Civic Engagement and Active Learning,  2) The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Teaching and Learning, and 3) Small Changes and Big Changes: Building Interdisciplinary HIV/AIDS Education. Slides from these talks are available on this website.

 

My objective in these talks was to model active learning methods as I presented ideas about curriculum development and activities that built upon data about HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this way I hoped to illustrate activities that could be easily integrated into ongoing classes and to engage lecturers in conversations that demonstrated how to manage open discussions of challenging topics.  I frequently commented on the teaching methods that I was using, making explicit how these could be adapted to small and large classes.

 

 

Student poet at Egerton University recited "We are all positive until we've tested negative."

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to training and consultation, I was able to do an informal "process evaluation" of the project process at the five participating universities.  The questions I asked were:

Has the project received administrative support? I met with the Vice Chancellor and/or with several Deputy Vice Chancellors at all universities and they were aware of the project and impressed with its importance.  At 4 of 5 universities the VC is strongly behind the course concept.  At the 5th, the VC is hedging on financial matters, but there is strong support at other levels of administration. Deans and department heads were also supportive.  This is important because they will have to commit resources.

 

Is the SENCER team involved in course planning?  Yes, at all universities all or most of the team members continue to be involved in course planning.  Community members, who attended SENCER to facilitate linkages to projects in the communities, are generally less involved than lecturers.  Perhaps they will become more involved as students begin placements. 

 

Have other lecturers become involved?  Yes, at all universities lecturers were involved and interested in both mainstreaming information about HIV/AIDS where appropriate and in planning and supporting course progress. On several campuses, substantial work had been done prior to my visit, while at others individuals had been invited to participate but had not yet been fully informed about the project.

 

 

Have lecturers received training in active learning methods and "civic engagement" in science education?  Yes, at all 5 universities. Training/planning sessions ranged from 2 hours at Maseno University to 2 days at Egerton University.  Lecturers who had attended the SENCER meeting were hesitant to do staff training alone and were pleased to have my assistance.  I think that it takes more than one meeting for people to be able to internalize how to implement the types of curricular change advocated by SENCER.  At Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, the course development is being led by Professor Mabel Imbuga, who attended the SENCER Summer Institute in 2001, but there are no other SENCER-trained lecturers at the university.  The course planning at JKUAT was more traditional because lecturers had not been participants in SENCER discussions, but the commitment was high.

 

Is there a target date for implementation of core courses?  Egerton University is planning to pilot a course in May 2003. Four other universities are aiming for September 2003.

 

What progress has been made toward designing a course outline?  Kenyatta University has an existing course that will be modified, while Egerton, SUA and JKUAT designed an outline during workshops.  At Maseno, the planning team for course design has been identified and has been working on an outline.  Preliminary outlines can be found on this website.

 

Is there student input in the planning process? Students participated in planning meetings at Egerton, Maseno and Kenyatta Universities.  The format of the program at the other universities made student participation difficult.  At Sokoine University of Agriculture there is strong linkage with the peer-counseling program, although students were not involved in course planning.  At JKUAT, students have expressed interest in issues about HIV/AIDS, and more than 500 of 2000 students on campus attended an AIDS Awareness program during my visit, but linkages have not yet been made.

 

Are there linkages to community for student attachments?  This varies at the universities based on their location, ease of travel, and nature of the programs.  Maseno University has very strong linkages already identified, and has begun to place some students in community work with AIDS organizations.  Please look at the pictures from the community surrounding Maseno.

 

Are there books and research materials to support faculty development and student research?  SENCER was able to obtain donations of books on HIV/AIDS from Jones and Bartlett Publishers, from Blackwell Publishing, and from the American Public Health Association.  More than 400 books were given to the 5 universities at the SENCER Summer Institute.  Each university also received a CD of information on HIV/AIDS compiled by Marion Field Fass and Beloit College student Geni Werner from materials available on the internet. Without these donations, neither lecturers nor students would have easy access to up-to-date information about HIV/AIDS.

 

Is there computer support to facilitate student research and communication? Not really.  Kenyatta University has a strong computer infrastructure, but student access to computers for communication and research is limited at Kenyatta, and much more limited at other universities.  One outgrowth of this project is a proposal to NIH from Duke University to build collaborations and link students taking courses on HIV/AIDS at Duke and Egerton University.

 

Problems and pitfalls

Each of the SENCER teams needs to take these new courses through the process of curriculum review and approval.  Each faces hurdles in approval, and more importantly in scheduling and staffing.  Each university enrolls 1000 or more new students each year and must decide how to teach this course- whether they will continue to teach it in large lecturers or in smaller classes. Most of their core courses at present in these universities are taught in large lecture halls.

 

At Egerton University, course planners decided that they would like to propose sections of 50 students, but this will pose problems in scheduling, in finding lecturers and in financing.  I suspect that this part of the course will be modified as it goes through approval process.

 

I feel, also, that lecturers at each university will face challenges in developing active learning strategies.  Clearly many of the lecturers are interested in changing the way that they teach, but the system of examination may force them to opt for ÒcoverageÓ rather than in-depth discussion and problem solving.  Assessment of learner-centered education is difficult in the more open environment of the small US liberal arts college, but presents huge hurdles at the large African universities.

 

Access to books and materials remains a problem at each university.  Some of the universities gave donated books to individual lecturers, while others put them immediately in libraries.  Will students have access to these books or to other materials?  Many of the teaching approaches advocated by SENCER model courses depend on student research, and in the US, research is dependent on internet access.  At all of these universities, internet time is limited, and even access to computers to view CDs of articles may be limited.  Universities may deal with this by publishing lecture notes, but these again limit the information available to students. JKUAT has previously published student notes on HIV/AIDS, but these were focused on science only. 

 

Content is an issue as well. Any course on HIV/AIDS must bring up many difficult issues such as sexual behavior, cultural practices and condom use.  These are hard to deal with even with focused training.  There also is not uniformity of opinion on how to introduce them.  There is dissension about how to discuss condom use in the course and this may compromise how material is presented. 

 

Future needs

"African Universities Responding to HIV/AIDS" seems to have catalyzed a response to HIV/AIDS at the participating universities, but further support is necessary to train lecturers about HIV/AIDS and about teaching for civic engagement and to extend this project to other universities.  The lecturers who attended the SENCER Summer Institute in 2002 will need more input to sustain the level of energy to deal with the challenges of curricular change.

 

More funding is needed to:

 

Summary and conclusions

From this preliminary evaluation, African Universities Responding to HIV/AIDS appears to be a project on its way to success. African Women in Science and Engineering has developed a strong network and a program to respond to a real need. The training programs I led in October 2002 were well received, and 2 team leaders commented that they had really appreciated the fact that my presentations included so many examples from Africa and Kenya in particular. Each university is well on its way toward planning an interesting course with input from many disciplines. Administrative support at every university appears to be strong, but courses cost money and there is never enough.  Issues of cost and scheduling may create hurdles in the implementation of these courses.

 

At a personal level, this was a rewarding experience.  I enjoyed meeting so many committed educators, and seeing so many universities.  The hospitality extended to me was wonderful. I felt privileged to be able to work with AWSE and the teams from each university on such an important project.

 

This page was last updated on December 16, 2002 by Professor Marion Fass, Beloit College, USA, fassm@beloit.edu