By Amoto Ndiewo
Strathmore University has partnered with Amazon Web Series (AWS) to cement their education system in remote learning.
Stephen Momanyi, the Director of ICT Services at Strathmore University, revealed that university decided to speed up their partnership with AWS after seeing the need to due to the corona virus pandemic.
“Over the past year, working on accessible education has become our major focus since we have over 8,000 students and 1,500 staff who require 24/7 education experience,” he said.
He revealed that the university saw the need to scale fast to online learning but that they had to be careful so as not to disrupt the education process.
“With the help of the right cloud solution, education has become truly believers borderless,’’ he added.
He revealed that the university had witnessed an increase in the number of students studying abroad who have been reading themselves for the digital evolution.
‘It is just a matter of putting the right cloud partner to guide us on this safari,’ said Momanyi.
Momanyi added that operating on cloud environment implies that the university doesn’t have to worry about maintaining hardware.
Amazon Web East & Central Africa Web Service’s Regional Lead Robin Njiru pointed out that the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic drastically set back learning in the sub Saharan Africa where technology uptake has been slow.
He acknowledged that Strathmore University was the first university in Kenya to adopt workloads in AWS clouds.
Njiru invited more learning institutions (primary, secondary and higher institutions of learning) to marry online education as to experience flexible, affordable technology services and solutions.
Jonnies Taabu Okuta, an IT teacher at Boystown Secondary School in Garissa, said the need to embrace digital learning was most felt in the education sector where long term disruption could have create a devastating and negative impact on students.
“Cloud has transformed teaching and learning. We couldn’t have done it without the help and support of the online industry. We hope all our colleagues will forge similar partnerships.” Okuta said.
