Egerton University

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Egerton University is the oldest institution of higher learning in Kenya. It was founded as a Farm School in 1939 by Lord Maurice Egerton of Tatton, a British national who settled in Kenya in the 1920s. In 1950, the School was upgraded to an Agricultural College offering diploma programmes. The Egerton Agricultural College Ordinance was enacted in 1955. In 1979, the Government of Kenya and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded a major expansion of the institution. In 1986, Egerton Agricultural College was gazetted as a constituent college of the University of Nairobi. The following year, 1987, marked the establishment of Egerton University through an Act of Parliament.

The University has accumulated experience in using technology-enhanced learning to support program delivery. It has established a dedicated centre to support E-learning that is self-financed. Through this project, a number of online courses modules have been developed, 100 members of teaching staff have been trained to deliver digital content and engage students on virtual platforms while 120 students are enrolled annually. Additionally, Egerton hosts the Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL), a digital collection of research journals for agriculture and related sciences that is searchable offline. Egerton provides best practices for integrating and institutionalizing IT to support teaching and learning within the local context from which valuable lessons will be drawn to inform the design and implementation of PedaL. Egerton is also a centre of excellence in agriculture education that has attracted massive funding from the MasterCard Foundation. It will, therefore, provide a solid link for replicating PedaL beyond the social sciences, in programmes of agriculture and related earth sciences offered by 60 universities within the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM). This will increase access to innovative teaching and learning methods on the continent dramatically.