Digitalisation is presenting various teaching and learning challenges as well as opportunities to schools and other educational institutions around the globe. Challenges such as determining the digital competencies of staff members in each organisation and their capabilities to offer online educational services. 

Additionally, institutions are expected to design, implement and evaluate digital strategies, policies, plans and dissemination mechanisms of online learning materials or subject content. The opportunities range from showcasing creative and innovative skills by both management and staff members to come up with solutions. The purpose is to ensure that a favourable digital learning environment is created and does not naturally discriminate or favour any individual or organisation or system or probably any process. 

Having been in the education sector for over 17 years as a computer studies teacher at various secondary schools, ICT lecturer and consultant, trainer and researcher at university level, my cumulative experience in educational technologies assisted me to develop what I call: Shihomeka’s Virtual Learning Environment: e-Teaching and Online Learning Strategy Formulation Process Flow Framework. The framework consists of eight core steps/components (1. School/organisational digital SWOT analysis; 2. Staff digital competencies and digital readiness; 3.  Categorisation of learners/participants; 4. Externalities on e-teaching and e-learning; 5. Design and formulate an online implementation strategy; 6. Rolling out online strategy; 7. Monitoring and evaluation; 8. Dissemination and reporting.)that need to be followed logically to ensure that your institution or school develop an e-teaching and online learning implementation strategy which is inclusive flexible, adaptable, culture sensitive and user friendly. It was developed through rigorous studies, researches and training I have conducted as an educational technology specialist and researcher.  

Shihomeka’s framework is developed as a tool that can be adopted by institutions, be it schools/colleges or universities to formulate or develop a bullet-proof online learning implementation strategy. The awakening call and necessity for this framework have come into reality especially during the Covid-19 outbreak as most schools, organisations and universities are trying to haphazardly implement and craft unpolished and not well-thought out online learning strategies. It is evidently clear that, in some institutions, management does not even know the difference between an online strategy, e-learning policy, digital/online learning plan and a digital SWOT analysis. This clearly tells us that as a nation we still need aggressive digital literacy training to sharpen our management skills on e-teaching and e-learning functionality.  

There are several factors that have contributed to oversight and unfriendly rushed-through e-learning models in various organisations such as: management over-ambitious about online learning; brand image competitive ego; underestimation of the power of digital literacy; treating digital literacy as any other literacy programs; taking for granted that being a university graduate you can facilitate online courses, lack of practical repositioning of management digital skills in online learning and unfriendly ambitious plans in various institutions. However, e-learning is the way to go. 

There is no way we can run away from it. What I am saying is that we should lay the foundation and ensure that we have all the ingredients needed for our full transitioning to online learning and teaching. Our institutions should be digital ready for this endeavour. Digital divide, acute shortage of network connectivity, poor radio frequency and television signals should be minimised or removed to avoid a further expansion of digital inequalities which currently prevail in our society. 

Pandemics and outbreaks are now our best teachers. And as educational leaders we should not rush and panic if an outbreak comes up. We need to take our time to craft realistic and attainable strategies without causing any digital causality to our clients. 

In this shortened article, I would like to bring to your attention some elements or issues that need to be considered seriously if you are designing an online implementation strategy for your school/college/university. Take note that my focus is on strategy. These are: a) Appoint/nominate ICT strategic team per school/circuit/region/campus/department/unit/section: this is critical, and usually team members do not necessarily need to have an academic qualification in ICT. What matter here is their interest and passion in ICT. Anyway, it is proven that, in most cases the best ICT personnel we have, are self-taught, since they learnt by doing. b) Appoint/nominate national executive team: with this you need to make sure that at national level you have an energetic and passionate team that will ensure that your ideas, plans and strategy are executed. You need to make sure that these people are well briefed and they understand the entire process. c) Stakeholder management plan: the executive team should draft this plan by identifying, contacting and involving all the stakeholders such as parents of the learners or students, learners/students themselves, key government employees from line ministries and agencies. This is well informed by the digital SWOT analysis developed in step number one of Shihomeka’s framework. d) Communication plan: how do you intend to communicate this internally and externally, the tools/media to be used e.g. e-mails, online meetings, social media platforms and soon. e) Collaborative and full engagement: this needs to be a collaborative exercise and should be inclusive as much as possible. And finally, f) Remove institutional politics from the process: internal politics is the reason why most organisations are struggling to implement strategies or policies. Hence, if not controlled online learning will remain a cyclic-dream with evangelists preaching a wrong digital message.

Failure to craft a proper implementation online learning strategy, you are likely to cause chaos, frustration, confusion, disagreements, displeasure, hallucination, blame-shifting, lies, increase in absenteeism due to the fear of being tasked with responsibilities that you do not understand or are not capable of executing or to some extent resignations or early retirements. An online learning implementation strategy needs to be handled with care and it requires patience, diplomacy, solidarity, maturity, ethics, professionalism, inclusivity, dedication and effective communication. Some of these elements are lacking in our institutions and therefore, online service or online learning will remain a dream until such a time we will have institutional knowledge workers/officers being assisted by the digital literacy team to implement it. We need to be aware of our cultural diversity, our learning speed and interests, our social acceptance of technologies, and our level of digital exposure. We should not guess or assume or force the strategy onto the workers or our clients as it can be more tragic than your anticipation. 

* Dr Sadrag Panduleni Shihomeka holds a PhD in Media and Communication from Erasmus University Rotterdam. He writes in his own capacity as a researcher. He can be reached at sshihomeka@yahoo.com.