The University of Ghana Distance Education Programme was not spared from the disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Management of the Department needed to make a radical move to shift from its hybrid system of delivery to a full-fledged online delivery. In spite of the limited time for this move, a lot of creative planning had to go into this, which led to a virtual training of 340 tutors, through four modules, to prepare them adequately for the task. Aside from assessing the planning and the virtual training aforementioned, this reflective paper also delves into other important issues such as the rolling out of a virtual/online academic and counselling support and architecture for monitoring of all the 228 courses that were moved onto the online space. This paper has implications for both policy and institutions that might be faced with similar circumstances, and it makes suggestions for exploration of other useful tools for delivery and monitoring that would contribute to better online engagements.

No abstract

Technological innovations are altering the lives of the poor, rich, nation‘s economics, and education globally. Hence, Ghana‘s commitment to formulate the ICT for Accelerated Development (ICT4AD) Policy in 2003 to achieve the transformative vision of competing favorably in the knowledge economy in addition to the introduction of ICT- related subjects in the Ghanaian schools to develop the human resources for indigenous knowledge development is laudable. However, instructional technologists feared that the Ghanaian ICT curriculum from basic to tertiary level might be too generic and lacking curriculum-specific integration literacy, thereby likely to widen the digital divide. To support Ghana‘s vision for ICT integration into higher education lessons, the current study sought to predict university graduates‘ integration literacy from cognitive constructs using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach. The measurements and structural model fit indices were tested with SmartPLS Version 3. The results showed that students‘‘goal-setting and need for achievement significantly predicted over 15% (R2 = .155) of ICT integrate skills. However, self-efficacy was not an important predictor (t = 1.74, p > .05) for students ICT integration literacy in the Ghanaian setting. We concluded that whilst graduates‘goal-setting and need for achievement traits motivate them to acquire technology skills in the Ghanaian public universities, certainly, 85% of latent variables such as pedagogy, lecturers‘ computer integration competencies, and access remain unaccounted for per our structural model. The study recommends that career counsellors could design cognitive interventions to improve students‘ self-efficacy traits and educational administrators should encourage formative assessment by ICT instructors in their schools to enhance skills developments.

Gender advocates have bemoaned the diatribe about women inequality at the neglect of males’ vulnerability in abstract narratives. We propose that achievement of female empowerment will be complimented by empirically exploring men’s vulnerability themes wrapped in “masculinity” with cultural differences. This study documented views on male vulnerability in the Ghanaian environment using mixed-method design with 189 respondents conveniently. Chi square goodness-of-fit test, and thick descriptions were applied to the open-ended questionnaire items. Indeed, 74% of the participants agreed that Ghanaian males were vulnerable with 26% expressing contrary views. With nine overarching themes generated, gender was not a significant factor in categorising male vulnerability (Σ2 (8) = 10.836, p > .05). We concluded that both sexes appear to have shared views on Ghanaian males’ vulnerability issues and recommended for gender advocates to expand the equality discourse to cover males’ vulnerability. Implications for adult education and guidance and counselling practices are indicated.

The study sought to investigate educational application of the Internet by basic school pupils in Effutu Municipal Assembly: The guidance and counselling implications. This study examined the use of the Internet among basic school pupils in Effutu Municipal Assembly. A descriptive survey approach was used to select forty-five (45) basic school pupils for the study. Snowball sampling technique was adopted which aided in the data collection. The study used an independent-samples t-test and one-way ANOVA to test Hypothesis 1 and Hypotheses 2 (null hypotheses) respectively. The result of the study reveals that educational use of the Internet is not the foremost priority of the basic school pupils but rather entertainment. The study also found that, sex is a significant factor in predicting Internet use among basic school pupils. Further studies could be carried out using a depth-interview schedule to further explore, whether basic school teachers guide their pupils use of the Internet for academic reasons.