Digitising the Supervision of Postgraduate Students in Higher Education: Indigeneity and Sustainability

Introduction

Olivier (2016) indicated that technology has at all times played a vital role in education dialogs in terms of linking between learning and technology that began during the era of Plato. Crittenden et al (2019) likened digitisation with a fast-moving tsunami which is the reason why every country, developed or developing are heeding to the call-in terms of digitising student support at higher education. There is a general move from contact to digital student supervision of postgraduate Masters and Doctoral students at higher education institutions. Generally, there is a growing interest in digitisation regarding how people do things in their environments, in this case digital supervision of African indigenous postgraduate students at higher education. The relevance of this chapter in this book is that it addresses the digital supervision of postgraduate African indigenous postgraduate students in an African context considering that many countries are at a developing stage even technologically. This negatively affects African indigenous postgraduate students at higher education. In addition, this research is conducted at a higher institution in which student support including supervision of higher degrees is conducted using digital devices. This means digitisation is taking place in a very high pace and this is no exception with the supervision of post graduate students. Scholars such as Crittenden et al. (2019) point out that formal education call-in central in facilitating learning while technology takes fundamental position in digitisation. However, there is an increasing concern that supervisors lack the capacity to utterly support the postgraduate students in the current era of technology (Stokes et al., 2019). This fact is confirmed by Gumbo (2019) because one of his study findings was that there is a need for supervisors training in terms of using some online tools or applications.

The chapter speaks to the title of the book which is global perspectives on decolonizing postgraduate education. It argues that digitising the supervision of indigenous African postgraduate students is challenging because the indigenous aspirations of the students is overlooked. It advocates for the decolonisation of the supervision of the indigenous African postgraduate students to address their aspirations. This means digitisation should consider the African context and the technological development of people in this context. The global move in terms of digitisation of supervision should not be a one size fit all. If it is viewed and implemented that way some students like the indigenous Africans may not benefit from the digitisation move as expected.

This chapter targets higher education institutions stakeholders such as indigenous supervisors, students, policy makers and researchers to rethink how supervision of the indigenous African postgraduate students at higher education should be done to benefit them and their communities. To have to address research matters that are relevant to the contexts of the indigenous African students. The target of the chapter’s audience is aligned to that of the book which targets indigenous scholars, including indigenous and non-indigenous postgraduate students; curriculum policy makers and designers in higher education; researchers on indigenous knowledge systems and practices. This research focuses on the topic of the book that talks about technology or online vice versa supervisor-student. As a conceptual study the chapter will follow a theoretical approach.

This chapter aimed to explore the digital supervision of African indigenous postgraduate student taking African Education for Sustainable Development postgraduate students at higher education as an example. This was done with the objective to determine the status of digital supervision of indigenous African students at higher education. It sought to determine the readiness and feasibility of developing countries to provide digital supervision, and digital supervision of African indigenous Education for Sustainability students, these objectives are embedded within the objectives of the book which include:

• 1 heightening the value of indigenous knowledge systems through research and practice,

• 2 promote the dignity of indigenous students and make them true critical scholars in their academic work, and

• 3 inspire debates about the transformation of postgraduate education as regarding its relevance to indigenous people.