Abstract
Research among doctoral students’ performance indicates that there is a strong need for financial, content, and networking support. Online solutions can bridge the gap in some of these challenges by providing quality education to doctoral students in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In this study, we examine engagement and a sense of belonging as factors that may lead to an increase in educational success, by researching the case of “Community of Learning for African PhD Students” (CoLA). CoLA is an open access online course learning platform and community, which offers support for Ph.D. fellows in SSA by enhancing their social science content and research skills. Using this case study, we evaluate the course offering on the CoLA platform between 2019 and 2020. In this time, the CoLA platform invested in a package of online courses and retention mechanisms. We perform exploratory research using mixed-methods data, by unpacking the incentives that lead doctoral students to engage in and finish online open access courses. Our findings mainly highlight that by adding course elements such as peer discussions and local context examples and scenarios during class sessions, we can increase the engagement and completion rates in online courses.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 21st Century: |
Subtitle of host publication | Pedagogy, Research and Community-Engagement |
Editors | Ben Kei Daniel, Ronald Bisaso |
Publisher | Springer |
Pages | 351-372 |
Number of pages | 22 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9789819932122 |
ISBN (Print) | 9789819932115 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2023 |
Keywords
- Doctoral education
- Mixed methods
- Online education
- Student’s belonging
- Sub-Saharan Africa