Technical Efficiency of Blended Learning Infrastructure in Influencing Quality of Education in Kenya’s Public Universities

Abstract

Globally, developed countries have made huge investments in their education sectors especially in adoption of technology on how education is delivered. In the digital 21 st century era and emergence of Covid-19, these investments are on digitizing education content to match the adoption of self-guided learning and student centered pedagogies. Graduates from such education systems increases that country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In Kenya, universities have adopted blended learning (the fusion of technology in the traditional lecture) as a new pedagogy as envisioned in the Kenya's development blueprint, Kenya Vision 2030. This has been accelerated by the emergence of Covid 19 in the year 2020 where all education institutions were closed and learning was to be done online. To check on the technical efficiency of blended learning infrastructure, the study sought to look at the devices used in online classes and how they are acquired by both the students and lecturers, the internet spread, provision and availability of diesel generators. The study adopted a descriptive crosssectional survey research design and was built on Human Capital Theory. The target population was university students, lecturers and directors of Open Distance and e-Learning (ODeL) centers. The study used Cluster sampling and stratified sampling to get respondents from students and lecturers while purposive sampling was used for directors of ODeLs. The study used questionnaires and an interview schedule as research instruments. Data analysis from SPSS version 25 was presented in frequency tables, percentages and pie charts. The study collected data from 29 out of the 31 public universities in Kenya where 384 students, 354 lecturers and 29 directors of digital schools or their representatives responded. The study found that students used smart phones to access online classes and laptops for lecturers that were acquired on Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy. All the public universities had backup generators although a number of them were not working and the students indicated that they were not used at all. Internet accessibility was available in both Wi-Fi in various hotspots and by Local Area Network (LAN) cables for those using laptops and desktops. The study recommended more budgetary allocations to improve on ICT infrastructure, improvement on the bandwidth of the internet accessibility and new partnerships to ensure students and lecturers get more high end devices to access their classes.