About the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program e-Learning Initiative

The Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) caused disruptions in the higher education industry. The challenges higher education institutions faced provided an opportunity to rethink the models of higher education instructional delivery, research production, and dissemination. These models have started shaping how universities deliver public service and engagement, innovation and entrepreneurship, and generally the business model of the academic front.

The Initiative is meant to address this disruption. USIU-Africa together with Arizona State University (ASU) came together under Mastercard Foundation to develop and support the Scholars Program eLearning Initiative. The initiative focuses on online instruction for partner universities to be implemented through instructional design, online pedagogy, content development, and acquisition for online teaching.

The Initiative’s first phase is projected to benefit around 95,000 higher education students though indirectly through improved pedagogy. Through the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, the lead universities will come up with innovations for scaling the existing eLearning platforms to strengthen online teaching. The Program seeks to draw tertiary institutions’ attention to online learning through strengthening supportive infrastructure at the institution’s level.

This project will:

  1. Build capacity to support institutional change and policy focused on e-Learning through workshops and other activities;
  2. Help institutions build internal expertise in e-Learning by providing advanced certification of faculty and instructors at Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program partner institutions through training, content development support, and mentoring;
  3. Create system-level support and expertise through a distributed center of excellence that will guide participating institutions on the evolution of their e-Learning resource centers and also provide continuous support services to participating institutions;
  4. Assess and measure the progress of e-Learning readiness and adoption.

Participating Institutions include:

  1. United States International University - Africa
  2. African Institute for Mathematical Sciences
  3. American University in Beirut
  4. Ashesi University
  5. EARTH University
  6. Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
  7. Makerere University
  8. University of Abomey-Calavi
  9. University of Gondar
  10. University of Rwanda

Read the Press Release for the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program e-Learning Initiative.

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