Adoption of Blended Learning Technologies in Selected Secondary Schools in Cameroon and Nigeria: Challenges in Disability Inclusion

Introduction

Due to increasing development and employment of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in various sectors of society, this age could be described as that of an information revolution. This age has facilitated teaching and learning, and with the development of e-learning means students can access learning materials from anywhere and at anytime when they have access to the required technologies. This, by design should improve the learning ability of students since accessibility of learning resources is high. In its much wider implementation, access to such resources could also be made available on mobile devices. This does not necessarily have to come in the form of a mobile app (application) which may be restricted to a particular device but in the form of mobile Web pages since most popular mobile devices have browsers.

Also, the perpetual development and integration of ICT in various facets of society has meant individuals and organizations are forced to continually adjust to newer approaches of teaching and learning. It is expected that such newer approaches will also be found in institutions of learning. Africa, and in particular Sub-Saharan Africa, has been found to be among the least digital (Heeks, 2009) due to the effects of the digital divide (ITU, 2005). This implies less use of such technologies even in the educational sector. In such societies, the rural areas tend to be most disadvantaged.

However, Africa was identified as one of the fastest growing continents in terms of adoption and use of mobile phones (ITU, 2004). There is great potential therefore to utilize such technologies in education. In fact, it has been reported that farmers and those in the healthcare sector are positively using these technologies for their benefits (Mutume, 2009). Such use of technology could be emulated in the education sector to improve teaching and learning. However, the increasing uptake of technology by sub-Saharan African countries, and their eventual utilization in education (Nganji, Kwemain & Taku, 2010), has been discriminatory in that students with disabilities are often excluded (Nganji, 2008). This might be due to the fact that such technology has not been designed for accessibility (Brophy & Craven, 2007; Sheldon, 2001). Also, in most sub-Saharan African societies, there is the tendency to neglect the needs of people with disabilities. This includes education as the society has not adapted to including the needs of disabled students within mainstream education. This calls for measures to improve accessibility to blended learning technology for disabled students.