For the FATES of Africa:socially-just ecosystems and life cycles in online learning for Sub-Saharan Africa

McIntyre, Nora (2025) For the FATES of Africa:socially-just ecosystems and life cycles in online learning for Sub-Saharan Africa. CIES 2025: Envisioning Education in a Digital Society, , Chicago, United States. 22 - 26 Mar 2025.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Other)

Abstract

Online learning is widely celebrated as the gateway to universal educational access. Yet, the opposite is more often true, with online learning found to exacerbate rather than alleviate societal divides. This pattern pervades every level of analysis — even at the macro-level across countries (McIntyre, 2022, Ed & Inf Tech).

Therefore, we propose a symposium that focuses attention on a population that is vast on a global scale, yet is often left behind: namely, online learners in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This happens in three main ways (e.g., Rodrigo, 2023; UNESCO, 2023). The design process for online learning typically overlooks the learning journeys and requirements in Sub-Saharan Africa. The delivery of online learning rarely starts with the Sub-Saharan African population, if ever. Finally, decisions too often neglect the interests of learners in SSA. Even high-profile calls for AI in Education (AIED) research overlooks under-privileged populations entirely (e.g., Hwang et al., 2020).

Our symposium will comprise of presenting authors from an ongoing research programme that is focused on response AI for online learning and funded by the UK Research Council (bit.ly/FATESofAfrica). Together, our group comprises representative and proven actors within the ecosystem for the design, delivery, and decision-making of online learning in Sub-Saharan Africa. Within this, relevant expertise is represented to enable rigorous societal considerations to be made which are technically sound.

Specifically, our research group will start with at the ecosystem-level, reporting the research method and insights ongoingly being made from a systematic consultation project for responsible AI in African online learning (McIntyre). We report state-of-art openings in the world of GenAI and large-language-models for socially-just online learning development (Li). We provide guidance on how technically-sound innovations in online learning can be protected through a multifaceted paradigm that is protected by risk estimates as built-in checks and balances (Mwaura). Related, we report on our framework for conducting equitable research in this area as our research group’s pioneering contribution to the research community (Koge). We offer a showcase of existing empirical work that enacts the ethos that our research group endorses, with a focus on the teacher population in particular, and in the region of remote Kenya (Ayere). Finally, we offer a critical discussion of our own work thus far, and of that in the international community, regarding the gains made and steps still to be taken towards equitable research insights into truly equitable and empowering online learning for resource-constrained Africa (Botha).

This record has no associated files available for download.