Imagining the Futures of Higher Education in Southern Africa

Dr Avinash Oojorah is currently working as Senior Lecturer at the Mauritius Institute of Education (MIE), Mauritius. He was formerly Head of the Centre for Open and Distance Learning at MIE. Avinash is passionate about the digital transformation of education and educational technologies in general. He has edited 2 books on Teacher Education in the Digital Age and Multimodal Learning in the Southern African context. Avinash has overseen and pioneered digitisation of curriculum at MIE, leading national projects in this direction, and has also worked as Educator at primary, secondary and community levels. His current interests are to explore, discuss and write about the future of education and sociology of technology. He has also completed the design and development of an Open Educational Resources (OER) entitled 'Social Media and Digital Wellbeing'.Dr Waaiza Udhin is Senior Lecturer at the Mauritius Institute of Education, Mauritius, with over 10 years of experience in the education sector. She holds a Ph.D. on learning with technology from the University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. She has experience in curriculum development, assessment and evaluation, online/blended learning, remote teaching and learning and the digitization of curriculum. Waaiza has coordinated a major national educational technologies project, namely the Early Digital Learning Programme. She has presented papers in many international conferences and won the award for the best presenter in an international conference in 2017. She has published and co-published in accredited journals and co-edited two books in the field of digital pedagogies and multimodal assessment. Her research interests are in the field of Innovation in Education, Online Learning, Digital Transformation and Assessment.

• Chapter 1. Imagining futures of Higher Education: An Introduction.- Chapter 2. Futures of Higher Education: The potential of technology enabled learning and micro credentialling for lifelong learning in Higher Education Institutions in Mauritius.- Chapter 3. Academics’ perceptions of the integration of AI and related technologies in teaching and learning at Higher Education.- Chapter 4. AI and higher education in developing country contexts: About envisioning potentiality!.- Chapter 5. Looking at the Challenges and Opportunities of using Gamification in the Mauritian Higher Education Sector.- Chapter 6. Mainstreaming Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Higher Education.- Chapter 7. A review of tools to imagine future of skills: Lessons for a SIDS.- Chapter 8. AI and the metaverse- game changers in higher education.- Chapter 9. Impact of globalisation as a major engine of change and disruption on Higher Education.- Chapter 10. Becoming an Ocean State: Shaping the future ofMauritius through a post-humanist paradigm shift in Higher Education.- Chapter 11. Navigating the Dichotomy in the 4th Industrial Revolution: Growing Populations and Shrinking Higher Education Programmes in Southern African Countries.- Chapter 12. Finding Harmony in Diversity - The Mauritian Public Higher Education Sector.- Chapter 13. The Next Chapter: Futures of Higher Education in Mauritius.- Chapter 14. Small but Smart- Grasping Higher Education for the Future.- Chapter 15. Technauriture: The Intersection Between Orature and Technology.- Chapter 16. Students' Perceptions of the Integration of Emerging Technologies in Fine Arts Education.