Migrants arriving in a country are not always welcome. Similarly, the arrival of new technologies can be perceived as a blot on the familiar landscape of established educational practices. This paper seeks a productive synergy between migrants' educational requirements with respect to learning the language of their host society; their valuable and…

This paper critiques the rise and impact of the open education movement, focusing in particular on Higher Education. It considers the impact of adopting more open practices on learning, teaching and research. In terms of the impact on learning it describes three aspects: Open Educational Resources, e-textbooks and Massive Open Online Courses. In…

Contemporary educational institutions are experiencing disruptions to their "modus operandi" from a variety of sources. A changing student demographic across the higher education sector, along with their changing educational needs is driving much of this disruption. Other drivers are the need for different kinds of skill sets required in…

Successful and appropriate informal digital learning can help individuals and communities build sustainable and meaningful livelihoods, strengthen social cohesion and resilience, preserve and enhance cultural traditions and engage constructively and robustly with the wider world. Building digital learning that embodies participative and…

Developing sustainable and scalable educational initiatives is a key challenge in low-income countries where donor-funded short-term projects are limited by both contextual factors and programme design. In this commentary we examine some of the issues related to in-service teacher development in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, grounded…

Education for All has been a concept at the heart of international development since 1990 and has found its latest instantiation within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as SDG 4, "Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all". Open education, in the form of resources and…

Leading change in higher education has been a major challenge in countries of limited resources, such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most African universities have struggled with this transition mainly due to lack of the requisite information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, inadequate expertise for online pedagogies and…

Mobile learning has moved in the last decade from being a small, scattered research interest to being viewed by many international agencies as a way of delivering their humanitarian missions to the developing contexts of the global South. This paper explores and documents fundamental concepts and concerns that characterize or perhaps jeopardise…

The female population in Kenya was reported at 50.05% in 2011, according to a World Bank report published in 2012. Despite this slightly higher percentage over males, women in Kenya are not well represented in education and training compared to their male counterparts (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2012). The need to empower girls and women…

The following article examines the issues of open, distance and technology-based informal learning and non-formal education for individual and community development. It argues that these two modes of education, which are estimated to constitute 70-90% of lifelong learning, are insufficiently represented in the literature of open and distance…

This paper documents the experience and lessons from implementing an e-learning program aimed at creating multidisciplinary research capacity. It presents a case study of bringing together a multidisciplinary group of professionals on-line to learn the skills needed to be a successful researcher in the context of HIV/AIDS and food security…