The University of Botswana as a learning organization: The challenges of fostering change

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Research and Development in Higher Education Vol. 28: Higher education in a changing world

July, 2005, 639 pages
Published by
Angela Brew and Christine Asmar
ISBN
0 908557 62 0
Abstract 

One critical element of a learning organization is its ability to ‘respond quickly and effectively to change’ (CAPAM, 2004). Such an organization is not only’ skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights’ (Garvin, 1993), but more importantly, it ‘facilitates the learning of all its members and continually transforms itself’ (Pedler, et al, 1991).

With a well articulated but nonetheless an ambitious vision of being ‘a leading academic center of excellence in Africa and the world’, the University of Botswana boldly embarked on the task of fostering change in its teaching and learning in response to the rapidly changing character of higher education driven by the forces of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in a highly globalized world.

How far and how well, has it gone in this continuous task of fostering change and getting its staff adapted to it? This question forms the central focus of the analysis this paper. To do this, the paper uses the model of a learning organization put forward by Kandola and Fullerton, (1994), as captured by Armstrong (2003) as a framework for assessing the extent to which the University of Botswana can rightly be described as a learning organization in Africa.

Keywords: universities, learning, organizations