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Education Technology
BLENDED & E-LEARNING AS A SOLUTION TO ACCESSIBILITY
IN EDUCATION
DAVIS WAITHAKA
Let us start with the biggest issue in education for all stakeholders : cost . Almost every issue canvassed , discussed or debated comes down to matters closely related to cost . We can also expand the meaning of cost to include all resources such as time , money , human resources , space , equipment and infrastructure . To add to this debate , there is always a significant discussion of who bears what cost , how much of it and why .
In many cases , whatever comes of the cost debate or the attendant discussions , the final figures are divided up among student populations of several hundred per school . Whether apparent or not , this significantly reduces the unit cost per student for every teacher , equipment or infrastructure employed to deliver education services . We can surmise that the students enjoy positive economies of scale .
Unfortunately , this is not the case for learners with accessibility issues such as those with learning difficulties , physical disabilities and other social or psychological challenges . Information from the Kenya Institute of the Blind website , for instance , estimates about 750,000 learners who are visually impaired and 100,000 being legally blind . It is also estimated that approximately 5 % of all learners have hearing impairment in the country .
Because these learners are distributed across the country , each school will enroll a small number of them . The government policy is that all schools should provide and facilitate learning for all learners enrolled in an integrated manner . The main challenge here , under the traditional learning setup , then becomes the lack of economies of scale earlier demonstrated .
However , e-learning and blended learning , leveraging on emerging digital technology can help the education systems beat the scale challenge . In a country where we have hundreds of thousands of learners with various learning difficulties , available digital platforms can help bring those students under one virtual roof . By bringing all these learners together digitally , we dramatically reduce the cost of delivering education per student .
For instance , it would be a tall order to post deaf instructors to all schools that have deaf students for all subjects and all classes . Nonetheless , these instructors can be facilitated to log in via a pre-set schedule onto a learning platform where the students can follow . The more the students are enrolled into the platforms , the lower the cost per student and the higher the likelihood that all subjects will be covered .
Access to school will then mean provision of the special smartphones , computers and devices needed for the learners to participate in the special classes . It will also mean that the learners go through normal childhood socialization in school while attending carefully crafted lessons within the same school . When they are all under one roof , it is possible to have full classes by students joining from across the country . This alone , could bring down the unit cost of delivering
EdSource Quarterly | Oct-Dec l 2021