University education in Kenya is still largely exam-focused. In the sense that, even for practical engineering and quantitative science courses, students are mainly taught for and gauged from written exams.

While this meets the demand of the curricula, it does not really lead to practically competent graduates in subjects such as computational sciences, engineering and even geoinformatics. You end up with book smart graduates who cannot effectively solve real world problems.

One strategy that we have adopted (at GeoPsy Research and also in my teaching roles at the Technical University of Kenya) is to have voluntary practical, extra-curricula sessions where students can learn about practical skills such as geospatial data acquisition, algorithms and computation from the very basics to the very advanced levels.

These sessions are organized outside the normal class hours such as on weekends and even during public holidays. The setting and the pace of the sessions is friendly to allow all the interested students to follow through comfortably.

In the coding sessions, we start with the basics of codes in specific computational languages such as R or Python. Thereafter, we introduce case studies, allowing the students to relate their work to real word cases.

After a few sessions of these kind, there are always a few students who get comfortable with the codes and are able to lead some of the sessions. This in itself serves as a motivation to the other students who are able top relate the guidance of one of their own.

This model also helps to break the monotony of class-based assignments and exams and helps students to begin the practical value of their skills in addressing real world problems.