There is a spurt in online learning worldwide, particularly in Asian and African countries, after the COVID-19 pandemic. Outcomes Based Education (OBE), the new paradigm in Africa, India and elsewhere in the world promotes e-Learning as part of its Lifelong learning attribute. Design of such e-Learning system should incorporate features of autonomous learner’s characteristics (like African higher education students) for their preparedness and progression phases of e-Learning. This is due to the fact that the learning environment and learner characteristics, may differ from place to place and cultures. As per literature, principles of constructivist theory have been successfully adapted for e-Learning. Meta-cognition is a new addition to the OBE paradigm besides cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains, that plays important role in e-Learning. This paper attempts to construct metrics for meta-cognition using constructivist’s learning parameters, for analyzing three phases of e-Learning. Literatures are limited on meta-cognitive studies of e-Learner characteristics. The novelty of the paper is the adaptation of certain principles of ecological system on meta-cognition with literature support. Inductive research with appropriate methodology is applied for studying the effectiveness of e-Learning. Ecological factors in the meta-cognition aspects of the constructivist’s theory have been considered. Two parts are treated by the paper: i. Comparative study between Indian and African scenario; ii. Detailed study of selective African countries on the preparedness and progression phases of e-Learning. Survey methods have been chosen for obtaining feedbacks on scientifically designed questionnaire. Three hypotheses on the meta-cognitive aspects of self-regulation and a null hypothesis for the comparative study, have been constructed. Observations on the three phases of e-Learning have been documented and inferences drawn. Conclusions made out our research study along with the results presented will be of immense use to e-Learning system designers, particularly for the African scenario.

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Instructional strategies for e-content development have to be entirely different from that for traditional printed materials, such as text books and manuals. This is due to the fact that, technically and socially both have different instructional processes. Due to the advent of ICT development in recent times, many Computer Technology subject contents are being uploaded in e-learning modes. Training imparted through e-modes has increased in recent times specifically in India. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of our suggestion on Real World Problem centric Instructional approach. Specific issues on the e-mode have been inferred through a social study conducted on Indian learners (respondents). The paper justifies the adaptation of ‘First Principles of Instruction’ through our experimental study. Due to reasons elaborated in the paper this proven Instructional approach using ‘First Principles of Instruction’ would be well suited for e-content development of Computer Science and Engineering subjects.

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Higher education globally, particularly the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) in India is shifting to Outcome Based Education (OBE) which is an educational philosophy/theory that stresses on what a student would be able to do after an educational experience. Learning Outcomes (LOs), an important component of OBE are the actual measurable outcomes of any instructional event. Skill and attitudinal LOs are needed to be imbibed into domain dependent subject specific content, as per the principles of OBE. The paper elaborates experimental procedures in demonstrating techniques for imbibing 'Ethics', 'Engineer and Society' and 'Problem solving' the three delimited abilities as LOs. They are three of the 12 standards formulated by the Washington accord, as graduate attributes. The main objective of the paper is to demonstrate techniques for imbibing the three chosen competencies. Experimental methodologies were adopted and survey methods were used for validation of the studies. The domain considered for the experiments is 'Operating System', an important course of the CSE. Cognitive structure, a schema with mental constructs (pedagogical aspect), that uses knowledge structures which are logically organized instructional contents, is demonstrated by the experiments. Instructionally proved terms/phrases of chosen LOs along with the chosen domain dependent terms are integrated that imbibed the required skill and attitudinal competencies. Survey methods were adapted for executing the experiments with experimental group of student respondents and validated with teacher respondents. Conclusions are drawn, which will be of immense use to CSE educators and researchers.