PEBL West Africa: Summative Evaluation

The PEBL-WA programme, implemented by the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), was designed to respond to the growing demand for higher education in West Africa by improving the pedagogical skills of university faculty in Blended Learning and supporting the development of quality assurance frameworks.

The intended outcome was to increase the flexibility of the higher education system to expand capacity and meet increasing graduate learning demands without compromising quality through 5 specific outputs:

1. Network of universities for sharing degree courses through blended learning; 
2. Online platforms for sharing course materials;
3. Capacity to support pedagogical approaches for blended learning;
4. Strengthened QA systems for blended learning courses; 
5. High quality, credit-bearing BL courses included within traditional programmes.

This report presents the results of an evaluation of the Partnership in Enhanced and Blended Learning West Africa Programme (PEBL-WA). The evaluation used a collaborative and participatory approach, utilizing existing programme data complemented by new data collection through surveys and interviews and a series of stakeholder workshops at the end to co-analyse the results and co-formulate the conclusions and recommendations. The evaluation aimed to determine the extent of achievement towards the intended outcomes, the impact of the programme on the participating institutions and their teaching practices, and to generate lessons and recommendations for the ACU, the partner universities, the regulatory bodies and donors wishing to support similar initiatives.