Social engagement

The term ‘social engagement’ is used here to denote:

[The] partnership of university knowledge and resources with those of the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good. (CIC Committee on Engagement, 2005, p. 2.) Accordingly, it “involves a very different posture from (we do it to them) outreach” (Carot et al., 2012, p. 42); it includes the involvement of external communities or their representative in the teaching and learning activities of a university (through activities that enhance the educational experiences of students) as well as the sharing of university facilities with the public. It also includes the involvement of communities or community representatives in the decision-making processes of a university—for instance, having external representatives on administrative and/or academic boards of the university. Social engagement, then, occurs through (a) formal activities, such as field attachment, field-based learning, the involvement of external communities in the decision-making processes of the university and the sharing of the space, facilities and services of the university with the public and (b) informal activities, such as active involvement in activities of associations, religious groups

58 For example, the postgraduate certificate programmes in monitoring and evaluation, human resource management and procurement and logistics management offered by the College of Business and Management Sciences.

and political parties. The discussion here focuses on the former because the latter are largely personal efforts that do not necessarily draw on the academic expertise of the academics.

Field attachment

The term field attachment as utilised here refers to a credit-bearing “field-based practical training experience that prepares trainees for the tasks they are expected to perform on completion of their training” (MUK, 2011, p. 1). Although the practice—often termed internship, school practice and/or industrial training, among others—had always been part of the curricula of academic fields, such as education, engineering and medicine at MUK, the university adopted the term field attachment as an umbrella term to denote:

Any approved field based practical work carried out by staff and students for the purpose of teaching and/or research in places outside the University control but where the University is responsible for the safety of its staff and others exposed to their activities. (MUK, 2011, p. 1.)

Field attachment pervades all the undergraduate programmes at MUK. The university has made it a policy, R15, notes, “that every student who passes through Makerere University must have an experience in the field … So, in a way, you could say there is some kind of institutionalisation of students’ practice in the community (personal communication, April 17, 2012). Its purpose is to enhance the connections between MUK and external communities, especially the communities that utilise the services and/or products (e.g., graduates) of the university. Its specific objectives include the following:

1. To strengthen the linkages between Makerere University and various stakeholders;

2. To enable students to get hands-on experience and to apply theoretical principles and techniques to real-life problem-solving situations;

3. To provide the students and academic staff with opportunities to interact with external stakeholders, to appreciate field situations and to generate information for curricula review and improvement; and

4. To develop students’ understanding of work ethics and employment demands, responsibilities and opportunities. (MUK, 2011.)

Field attachment, then, is a planned and monitored pedagogy that links university learning and reality, involves external communities in the students’ learning, enables students to learn and apply theories to real-world situations and prepares students for the labour market—that is, to be active and problem-solving citizens (ACUP, 2012; Bogo, 2010).

Field-based learning

The term ‘field-based learning’ as utilised here refers to “a learning process that allows students to view and experience phenomena in the wider environment and thus better understand how such phenomena come to exist” (Scott, Fuller, & Gaskin, 2006, p. 161).

It involves activities such as field teaching, field trips and field camps (Fuller et al., 2006) that utilise external environments as a learning resource (Scott, Fuller, & Gaskin, 2006).

Accordingly, field-based learning is widely regarded as an essential part of undergraduate education in some academic fields (Kent, Gilbertson, & Hunt, 1997) because it enables students to learn through direct interaction with environments that reflect taught concepts (Queen’s University, 2012). For instance, when asked about the ways in which the university carries out its TM, R16 remarked,

First, I have to think of university courses, which have a component, which requires students to go to the field. … I am thinking of courses like in agriculture, environmental management, tourism, urban planning … development studies, of course medicine, forestry. Most of those courses, with a practical component that require students to go to the field we can consider them partly as outreach because the students go out, interact with the communities as far as their field is concerned.

That should be called outreach because it is well structured and it is part of the degree or diploma programmes. (Personal communication, April 10, 2012.)

Unlike field-attachment, field-based learning is not compulsory. However, it is utilised in some programmes as a teaching and learning tool for enabling students and staff to access learning resources, such as private and/or public laboratories, conservation centres and national parks that are not available on the university campus; to conduct research; to learn from external communities and to connect theory with real experience (Kent et al., 1997).

In this regard, R21 noted that because they cannot offer proper practical exposure in the laboratories due to, for instance, a lack of equipment,

We would rather take them [students] out to outside institutions, people’s gardens, people’s farms, parks, zoos, etc. It came up as an alternative to our inability to offer proper laboratory training on the university campus but the whole process of getting it operationalised can be difficult. (Personal communication, April 16, 2012.)

Sharing of university facilities and services with external publics

MUK owns various facilities, such as the libraries, lecture rooms, incubation centres, hospital, guesthouse and sports facilities that are of interest; therefore, the other form of the TM at the university is the sharing of these facilities with external communities (Benneworth et al., 2009; Charles & Benneworth, 2008; Molas-Gallart et al., 2002). The classic way in which the university shares its facilities and services with the public, and from

which I have also benefited on several occasions, is by granting external users access to its library services for a small fee. Although the sharing of facilities and services is, in most cases, a standalone activity, in other cases, it is associated with other TM activities. For example, there are instances in which external organisations (e.g., East African Consult Networks Uganda and the Integrated Efforts in Culture for Development), together with a university centre, utilise the lecture rooms at the university campus to run continuing education courses.

Involvement of external publics in decision-making processes

The involvement of external stakeholders in the decision-making processes of the university is another form of the TM at MUK. It occurs through the participation of selected external members in the advisory, steering, review boards and other decision-making organs of the university. The first form of this type of engagement involves the participation of selected non-university members, representing off-campus groups, such as alumni, government, local government and people with disabilities, on the administrative and academic boards of the university—specifically, the University Council, Senate and the board of the Makerere University Private Sector Forum (MUPSF). Community involvement in decision-making processes also occurs during curriculum review and development processes. The interview data show that university departments engage some non-academic external stakeholders in curriculum review and development processes to enhance the practical relevance of the academic programmes and to bridge the gap between the university and society. Sometimes, when we are reviewing the curricula, R20 revealed,

[We do not do it alone]; we invite those out there in practice to participate with us … we want to know [whether] a need exists for certain areas of study” (personal communication, April 2, 2012).

Unfortunately, the involvement of external stakeholders in curriculum review and development exercises is not well structured, and it is difficult to ascertain how far the views and contributions of the external stakeholders are considered. Despite these concerns, the involvement of non-academic interests in the review and design of academic curricula

“represents an important [TM] activity as it fundamentally affects the most important of university activities” (Molas-Gallart et al., 2002, pp. 25–26).

Summary

The above discussion shows that MUK carries out various TM activities, which can be clustered into three broad, but not mutually exclusive, categories—namely (1) knowledge transfer and innovation; (2) continuing education; and (3) social engagement (Carot et

al., 2012)—that serve as vehicles for networking between the university and the external communities. In addition to the activities discussed above, the university interacts with, and serves, the external communities through various activities that are initiated and coordinated by individual and/or groups of students and members of staff.

6 Institutionalising the TM at Makerere University

Building on the discussion in Chapter 5, this chapter discusses and analyses the findings regarding the institutionalisation of the TM at MUK, specifically, the organisation of the TM, the institutional commitment of the university to the TM, the approaches utilised to institutionalise the TM, the benefits of the TM and the challenges to the deeper institutionalisation of the TM at the university.