INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGIES IN INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING: BUILDING A BETTER FUTURE?

Today’s graduates are engaged with the demands of the current knowledge age; the skills needed to succeed in live and the workplace in 21st century. This paradigm shift coupled with high demand for university education puts higher learning institutions in a crisis situation due to: enrolment pressure against static resources; demand for 21st century competencies in knowledge, skills and attitudes that correspond with needs of contemporary workplace, and the economic inflation. In Kenya, tuition costs have been escalating beyond the management of students from the average income families thus putting the students in significant debts of fee arrears, and declining completion rates. Also the universities are expanding drastically through opening of new satellite campuses all over the country to meet demand for higher education whereas; both human and teaching resources continually remain constraints in existing and new campuses. To arrest this trend, the universities are struggling to re-invent themselves to reduce costs whilst improving quality, utilizing the minimum resources, and increasing flexibility for students. Innovative pedagogy is a responsive system to address these growing demands while efficiently utilizes the limited resources. In this context, new technologies have enormous potential to effect changes and enable universities to meet broader range of learners’ needs. The educators and policy makers have a duty to embrace the transformation. This concept paper therefore is informed by constructivism and ACTION models to base the argument on reinventions in Higher Learning Institution. The focus of the paper is on: impact of innovative pedagogy in learning, acceptance rate by the universities, implication for the future, and the challenges of using new pedagogies.?AbstractArticle visualizations: