29 new students to mark a central step in driving clean energy education in East Africa
By Kai Forster, 13 March
Transforming Energy Acceess – Learning Partnership (TEA-LP) recently sat down with Dr Xavier Francis Ochieng of Jomo Kenyatta University of Technology and Agriculture (JKUAT), Kenya, who recently saw their first cohort of the TEA-LP designed course, titled “Local Solutions for Energy Access”. The cohort attracted 29 students in the Master of Science (MSc) in Energy Technology programme. Dr Ochieng has worked with TEA-LP not only to develop and adapt the Local Solutions for Energy Access course at JKUAT, but also recently served as a content expert for TEA-LP’s upcoming Continuing Professional Development course on energy analytics, titled Integrated Demand Energy Assessment (IDEA).
Dr Ochieng was responsible for several aspects of the development and implementation of the course at JKUAT, including a conceptualisation of how the course could be delivered in a localised context and what could be achieved through including the course in the existing Master’s programme. Additionally, Dr Ochieng was responsible for ensuring that the course was successfully adapted to fit the local and regional contexts, ensuring students were exposed to the most relevant knowledge to equip them to successfully contribute to clean energy access in their country. Lastly, Dr Ochieng was also behind the implementation and monitoring of the programme, ensuring that everything went according to plan and that the course met all of TEA-LP’s guidelines and criteria.
One of the key criteria that TEA-LP highlighted in the delivery of the course was to ensure that it was localised to the make it relevant to the students’ country and region. This would help to adequately prepare the graduates to contribute to clean energy access in their home countries. In order to localise the Local Solutions for Energy Access course at JKUAT, Dr Ochieng explained that the curriculum was first carefully “analysed to determine the local and non-local components of the curriculum. The implication and implemented consequences of the non-local content on the learners and teachers” was assessed, before looking at the available solutions and gaps that were present for localising the curriculum. Lastly, resources and funding also needed to be considered when adapting the course to the local context at JKUAT.
The implementation of the course and its localisation to the Kenyan and East-African context did not come without its challenges. Since the course aimed to adopt a blended learning, and in order to implement this, activities had to be formulated and funded for the course. In particular, setting up training rigs and laboratories required formulation and funding, which was also made somewhat challenging due to limited resources. Additionally, Dr Ochieng reported that they received 160 applicants to their MSc in Energy Technology programme after the introduction of the TEA-LP course, and a further 170 applicants for the September 2024 cohort. Given the optimum teacher to student ratio of 1 to 40 at JKUAT, it has made it impossible to accept all applicants to the course, adding a challenge in that the successful applicants need to carefully be considered for entrance into the programme.
Asked about the main benefits that JKUAT and the students stood to gain from offering the Local Solutions for Energy Access course to students, Dr Ochieng suggested that the introduction of the course had led to increased applications and enrolments from prospective students, suggesting that there is a high demand for the course. Through the workshops, collaborations, and networking opportunities within the TEA-LP network, Dr Ochieng believes that the overall delivery of the Master’s programme at JKUAT has been improved, through enhanced teaching, research, and laboratory equipment. The TEA-LP network has increased the networking opportunities for students and teaching staff at JKUAT and has opened the door to better opportunities for publications for scholars. Dr Ochieng believes that the modules being taught offer students a valuable, relevant learning experience, with notable diversification and modernisation of the course being implemented. Students stand to gain industry and energy sector exposure through increased internship opportunities, market-scoping studies, and actual job placements, as well as improved, more relevant research areas and thematic formation of research groups.
TEA-LP strongly encourages a ‘flipped classroom’ approach, where students are given a greater level of responsibility in their learning, in teaching one another, and in collaborating through group work. Dr Ochieng reported that JKUAT has a similar system that they are aiming to put in place, known as Competency-Based Learning (CBL), which shares a very similar vision and goal to TEA-LP’s flipped classroom approach. Moreover, this has offered JKUAT the opportunity to start implementing CBL ‘softly’, with notable changes in some of their courses being offered.
Dr Ochieng reported that the students could stand to gain the following benefits from the flipped classroom approach:
- “The students are now encouraged to take a more active role in their learning, both in reading, group work, peer review of each other’s work and in assignment/tasks collaboration.
- In addition, support from CLASP (a local NGO partnering with TEA-LP) will further enable the students, as a collaborating group to undertake market scoping studies. Later in May, it is hoped that the Mini-grid training will enable them to develop these competencies further.
- It should be noted that unlike with previous curricula, the modified curriculum for the adopted TEA-LP courses is allowing us to shift from students remembering things in order to pass exams to students now gaining competencies, being able to leverage on that knowledge in solving problems.
- The benefits enjoined by this new approach have allowed students to demonstrate more creativity in class, as well as bringing relevance in the course contents. Significantly it is open, albeit slowly an academic-industry liaison that has been very limited in the past.”
Dr Ochieng reported that the biggest challenge with the implementation of the CBL is ‘the lack of apposite facilities for undertaking experiments and research’.
One of TEA-LP’s primary aims is to promote equality, diversity, and inclusivity in the energy and off-grid energy sectors. Amongst these aims, is to promote gender inclusivity. At JKUAT and within the JKUAT Institute of Energy and Environmental Technology (IEET), gender inclusivity is espoused and held in high regard. This is reflected in the fact that almost 40% of the 29 students in the first cohort are women. This is significantly higher than the percentage of women that make up the energy sector in Africa (~20%), so JKUAT is taking positive steps in the right direction in reducing the gender gap in the sector. Dr Ochieng indicated that they are aiming to increase this proportion for the next cohort beginning in September 2024.