our roots

Factors affecting scholarly activity
for academic staff in Kenya
By Brenda Wambua and Clayton Peel
The life of an academic in Kenya can be
compared to a match stick in a box full of
matches: much potential, and the hope that
soon it will flame – but with so little room
to manoeuvre until the flaming. Even so,
the flaming match stick will itself burn out
–washed out, regressed under a deluge of
work.
In institutions of higher learning in
Kenya, that is universities, academic staff
(whether Tutorial fellows or professors) are
required to take part in academic activity.
Academic activity involves research, writing
papers for conferences and presenting
them, publishing either original or reviewed
articles in peer reviewed journals, publishing
books or chapters in textbooks, participating
in colloquia, just to mention a few. All these
activities contribute to new knowledge and
implementation of fresh ideas in the teaching
strategies. Academic staff are expected to
indulge in all these activities over and above
their class work: actual class interaction
with students, class preparation, setting of
examinations, assignments and continuous
assessment tests, administering the
exams, marking and processing of grades,
mentoring, supervising theses, as well as
administrative duties.
With the advent f technology, the
dynamics of teaching have changed. In
order to keep abreast with the latest
developments in teaching, lecturers have to
incorporate technology into their teaching.
Basic presentation skills such as the use
of power point slides make teaching much
easier, both to the students and to the
lecturer. The use of online teaching platforms
such as moodle, blackboard, google + and
the like, make teaching interesting and
interactive. The innovation of smartphones
has brought the classroom to the students’
palm meaning that learning can go on far
beyond the confines of a classroom and for
24 hours a day. It is flexible and adaptable to
differentiated learning. However, in as much
as this may sound interesting and like it is the
way to go for every lecturer, a few challenges
emerge.
In the first place, not every lecturer is
techsavvy so a lot of time has to be spent
in learning the ropes of using technology
in the classroom. It takes much longer for
those who do not have the interest. I know
of universities in Kenya where each and
every lecturer has to use an online teaching
platform. Now, the time spent uploading
learning material, as some argue, could
have been spent writing an article for this
journal or for that conference. I am not in
any way implying that using technology is
a waste of time. No! The point I am making
is that it takes quite some good chunk of
tome to learn how to use technology in the
classroom. However, once one learns how
to go about it, it becomes the easiest way
to reach out to the students and it exposes
students to new, authentic and meaningful
learning experiences.
Secondly, there has been a lot of talk
from the Education Cabinet Secretary, Prof.
Jacob Kaimenyi, about technology interfering
with learning, the learning of languages
especially. What he forgets is that use f
technology adequately prepares students to
meet the demands of the 21st century. The
negative overtures discourage academic staff
from trying new methods of teaching and
academic activity is crippled to a great extent.
What do I mean? The use of technology in
the classroom is innovation and academic
activity is about creativity, liberation and
transformation. With the entry of technology
into education, education is no longer about
grades and academic certificates.
In most universities, both private and
public, there is a specific number of hours
that a lecturer must teach within an academic
year. This constitutes the lecturer’s workload.
It could be six hours, eight hours or even
twelve hours. In addition to these hours,
there is administrative work which takes
quite a toll on the academic staff’s time. By
the end of a week of attending to the said
tasks, the lecturer is too exhausted to think of
conference papers or book chapters.
The concept of ‘moonlighting’ is not
new among university academic staff in
Kenya. This is the practice of teaching part
time classes, especially evening classes, in
different universities. Most lecturers indulge
in this practice in spite of holding a full time
job. One may ask, why do three jobs at a time
and still claim to have no time to publish? It
is paradoxical, I know. Here we are talking
about remuneration. Taking three or two jobs
is a way of making ends meet. If the lecturer’’
salary was enough to bring the ends closer
(if not together), it would be much easier
for him or her to do research and attend
conferences.
Suffice it to say, in spite of the challenges
faced above, some lecturers still go ahead
and write conference papers and submit.
Then in comes the ‘elephant in the room’:
funding. These are cases where academic
staff have missed conferences because they
could not get an air ticket, or simply the
conference fees. The same monster rears
its ugly head when it comes to furthering
studies. Scholarships in Kenya are few and
far in between. Remember the remuneration
challenge? Now, couple that with self
sponsored studies! In other cases, the
creative mind of a lecturer will design a rather
viable, interesting and attractive project
but the absence of funding pours cold
water on it. The resulting product will be an
overworked and demotivated academic staff.
However, academic staff in Kenya are a
resilient lot! The challenges notwithstanding,
they still publish, innovate new strategies of
teaching, further their studies, implement
new and incorporate new ideas into their
teaching and daily improve themselves.
Greater innovation and creativity would be
unearthed though, if the issues raised here
and others were addressed.
DaystarConnect 2015 • 25