An African Experience in Providing a Digital Library Service: the African Virtual University Example

An African Experience in Providing a Digital Library Service: the African Virtual University Example

Abstract
This paper will share the African Virtual University’s experience in making digital learning resources easily accessible to its partner institutions across Africa in the most cost-effective way. The first lesson we have learnt is that there is currently inadequate bandwidth to support access to these digital resources. This is supported by a number of studies that have been carried out in the course of the last three years. The studies further show the negative impact these low bandwidth levels have had on the overall access, utilization and usefulness of the digital resources to the learner and faculty in African universities. In addition this has directly impacted on the level of basic information literacy in a modern electronic environment which most of the Africa students for the first time when they join tertiary education.

A discussion about how the AVU is investing in alternative creative solutions in response to these access problems will be presented. This includes a project to expand bandwidth through VSAT deployment in the partner institutions at an affordable cost by aggregating demand. In addition to this, the paper will discuss how local servers are being used to store and make available digital content that would otherwise require huge bandwidth if they were to be made available online, thus making it possible to easily access targeted sets of resources in ways that are both pedagogically effective and cost-effective.

The proliferation of digital information content has definite benefits to the higher education landscape. More specifically, the growth of OERs (Open Educational Resources) being spearheaded by such institutions like MIT are very relevant to African Higher institutions where the cost of accessing learning materials is on the rise. Regrettably, Africa is still struggling with fundamental technological challenges such as very limited bandwidth and inadequate IT infrastructure critical to successful exploitation of these education resources. If nothing is done, the digital gap will continue to widen and Africa will never be able to compete globally. Fortunately, certain initiatives are beginning to mobilize resources within Africa tertiary institutions in efforts to improve the current status.

The African Virtual University, in cognizance of the importance of good internet connection on Open, Distance and e-learning has taken up the challenge and is currently engaged in initiatives that attempt to overcome the bandwidth challenge on the continent.

The African Virtual University is a pan-African educational network established in 1997 as a World Bank project to serve the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2002, after a successful pilot phase, the AVU has become an independent Inter Governmental Organization based in Nairobi, Kenya. It is an innovative educational organization established to serve the higher educational needs of African countries. The AVU currently operates in 27 countries and is physically located in 57 learning centres within the African partner institutions which constitute its network.

The African Virtual University has adopted a learning architecture that establishes the framework for the program development model, instructional design model, pedagogical model, delivery model and technology model. Within this framework, the learner is considered as an independent learner who takes control of the learning process while the lecturer takes the role of a facilitator. To achieve this high level of autonomy, the learner should have all the learning support at his/her disposal and in particular access to information resources. The role of the library support and learning resources thus take a central place in the learning process. Further, the learning architecture is premised on the principle of “just in time” learning. This recognizes the various learning opportunities from different sources being available to the learner whenever he/she needs, wherever he or she may be and however he/she is able to access them effectively. The learning architecture therefore advocates for appropriateness and flexibility in the way technology is used to support these programs taking into consideration the diverse technological contexts across the African continent.

The digital library is a vital academic support tool for the AVU students. The remote locations from which our students operate was the prime motivation for the creation of the library. It was found necessary that an academic resource that cuts across boundaries be employed to support all the students uniformly and hence the digital library came to meet this need.

The AVU students are varied and have unique characteristics which distinguish them from conventional library users. Being distant learners, majority of them happen to be part-time students who are engaged in other activities during day time. They come together at an agreed time to meet with their facilitators and are only able to use library facilities during their free time. With the digital library, it is easy to provide these students who are remotely located in 27 African countries with quality, current and relevant information resources uniformly. They have access to the world's scholarly publications available electronically. Because this resource is shared across all our learning centers, it is not necessary to provide similar resources physically in each of the individual centers and thus cuts down on costs of material acquisitions and administration.

It should also be noted that the cost of printed textbooks is too high for majority of African students to afford. For instance, a degree program requires access to textbooks worth an average of the cost of US$200 per student. The provision of e-book databases helps to reduce the pressure of the high costs of the textbooks on individual students.

Besides providing access to AVU students, the library is heavily used by the African universities' researchers and thus supplementing the existing libraries most of which have serious scarcity of current research information such as journal articles. In so doing, AVU makes a contribution towards uplifting the standard of learning and research in Africa. Currently, the library holds over 4000 full-text journals and 8000 e-books in both English and French languages. It is presented as a web interface with links to the resources being hosted in a server (http://library.avu.org).

Development of this collection has been done in partnership with development agencies that already exist to provide affordable research resources in form of electronic books and journals. Also, the library has some paid subscriptions from leading international electronic information providers.

Along with the development of digital libraries there has been a proliferation of other Open Education Resources (OERs) which are often in digital formats. This presents the AVU with the opportunity to exploit the potential the OERs have on the development of Open, Distance and e-Learning (ODeL) programs and indeed participate in their creation, organization, dissemination and use to the benefit of African Higher education. As with the digital library, it becomes clear that the AVU has been very keen on the influence bandwidth has on the success of the usefulness of these OERs. The sheer variety and richness possible in the design and development of OERs requires adequate internet connectivity if they are to be utilized effectively.

We have carried out two different surveys that have revealed certain crucial facts about the digital library in relation to access, the awareness and usage. The Gap Analysis (The African Virtual University, 2005) which had a global coverage of the status of distance learning activities in all of our African participating institutions revealed that low bandwidth contributed to the limited usage of the electronic resources in all these universities. According to this survey, it is not uncommon to have a journal article fail to load at all as the amount required to download a resource depends on the time of the day and the day of the week. In general, this survey established the fact that poor internet connectivity affects the general awareness of the existence of the digital resources at the PIs leading to very low usage.

We also carried out a similar survey (The African Virtual University, 2005) that was more targeted to the utilization of the AVU digital library in selected AVU learning centers where there has been some efforts to increase the bandwidth. The findings were not very different from those of the GAP analysis survey. Out of the students interviewed, only 8% of them said they had very good accessibility. 22% had adequate accessibility while 32% had very poor accessibility.

These two surveys clearly show that there is a relationship between library access, awareness and usage. The fact that the internet connection affects usage means that it has not been easy to create an awareness of the resources. Similarly, it has not been easy to train users on basic access methods.

But how bad is the connectivity problem in these institutions? The ATICS survey (2004) on the existence of the bandwidth in Higher Education institutions in Africa concluded that the internet connectivity in these institutions is “too little, too expensive and poorly managed”. To put this characterization into context, the survey went further to explain that “an average African university has bandwidth capacity equivalent to a broadband residential connection in Europe, pays 50 times more for their bandwidth than their educational counterparts in the rest of the world and fails to monitor, let alone manage, the existing bandwidth….” What this survey also revealed was a significant lack of knowledge about bandwidth quality and management. Most of the institutions surveyed (66%) did not have a Committed Information Rate (CIR) for their connectivity or did not even know what CIR is. Such ended up paying more for their bandwidth. The same goes for bandwidth management. Luckily some organizations such as the INASP have addressed this challenge by conducting bandwidth management and optimization workshops.

In line with the recommendations of the report, the AVU took lead in consolidating bandwidth requirements in the PIs through the formation of a bandwidth consortium. Aggregating the bandwidth demand in most of the PIs meant that it would be easy to negotiate for lower bandwidth costs and thus improve connectivity.

Through the consortium, the AVU has started providing connectivity to 16 PIs in Africa at significantly reduced cost, our aim is to bring down the costs further to $1.50 kbps. In addition, the AVU has also facilitated the installation of the VSAT equipment in all the member institutions in a package that includes: installation, configuration, commissioning and activation of the network; necessary training to handle the VSAT network; and technical support to the sites (24 x 7 all year round).

As an incentive, the AVU also provides free equipment for all institutions undertaking the AVU Degree/Diploma programs with financial support from the World Bank and CIDA. Typical equipment (2.4m dish system) costs US $28,000.

Along with the AVU VSAT initiative, we have continued to play a key role in the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa Bandwidth Consolidation Project. This initiative consisting of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have pooled their resources to support a number of African universities.

The AVU is the host institution for the Bandwidth Consortium consisting of 10 universities and 2 institutions and has managed to bring down the cost of bandwidth significantly. Members of the consortium include:

A very cost-effective and reliable approach that is increasingly gaining popularity in large institutions such as universities is to make as much of internet based resources as possible available at a low cost by using a large local information store on their local area networks. Bandwidth in these networks is free since the institutions own the equipment. Massive storage devices containing digital content can then be plugged into these networks and be shared simultaneously at high speeds. The AVU is currently piloting two initiatives with the aim of supplementing the available bandwidth.

The now widely published MIT OCW offers a free and open website of high quality teaching and learning materials that have been organized as courses. These have been created by the MIT faculty for their own classroom teaching and then offered freely for worldwide publication on the OCW. Each of the courses contains the course's subject matter and pedagogy and the complete set of all the materials used in the course. Anyone in the world can use these courses to teach or learn. The OCW was initiated in 2001 and now contains 1,100 MIT courses including video materials for about 75 courses. It is therefore quite clear that the content requires adequate bandwidth for effective use, which sadly implies that the rich and openly available education content is not effectively accessed by those who have poor internet connection, mainly the sub-Saharan African universities as reflected in the table below.

This year, the AVU partnered with MIT to provide access to the OCW to our African Partner Institutions through mirror servers that “mirror' OCW by providing a copy of the entire OCW content. This has so far been piloted in at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia and University of Nairobi, Kenya, with an overwhelmingly positive feedback. Faculty and students who have participated in this pilot project have reported increased awareness of the importance of the OCW in their teaching and learning activities.

In conclusion, it is important to note that bandwidth story in Africa will change drastically when all regions have been linked via the high speed undersea fiber networks. Before this has happened, satellite bandwidth is the most efficient means of obtaining connectivity for our institutions. It is our hope that most of our institutions will join existing bandwidth consortiums so that most of them can benefit from cheaper connectivity. Other innovative solutions like those discussed in this paper must be considered. If more of the OERs and other information resources can be made available in the institutions local networks, chances of them being more useful and consequently having greater impact on the learning process will be enhanced, albeit this approach denies the distant learner the possibility of remote access. However, such an arrangement is better than having nothing at all.