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Virtual universities have developed considerably over the past decade, particularly on the African continent. They provide a way to deal with the considerable need to educate a large young population, but the lack of physical space can be a drawback that prevents students from succeeding and increasing dropout compared to a more traditional face-to-face university. To limit these issues, some virtual universities have been opening Open Digital Spaces (ODS) to complement the virtual space and offer students a place where to work and solve pedagogical, technical or administrative issues. However, it is unclear how students actually make use of these ODS and which uses can be beneficial or detrimental to their success and limit dropout. In this paper we lead an exploratory study of the results of a large-scale digital survey in a major African Virtual University (N=2392 answers) to identify factors in the use of Open Digital Spaces (ODS) that have an impact on students' success and dropout. We analyzed the data using multiple Chi-Square tests of independence. Results indicate that students who visit ODSs more during the 2 weeks before an exam or only when it is mandatory are statistically less likely to succeed, contrary to students who come to work in groups or for the internet access who are more likely to succeed. Conversely, students who do not see the value of ODSs for learning and who visit only when mandatory are more likely to dropout, contrary to students who come when they have a pedagogical need or to work in groups who are less likely to dropout. Some factors particularly impact first year university students, highlighting the need to make them understand which use of the ODS are relevant to increase their chances to graduate.

This paper deals with a solution allowing digital universities to extend the functionalities of their distance learning platform to offer a secure solution for the dematerialization of assessments. Currently we are witnessing the rise of digital universities, this is the case in Africa, particularly in Senegal. We are witnessing strong growth in the number of students, in a context of extension and diversification of training offers. This is the case of the Virtual University of Senegal (UVS), the number of students has increased from 2,000 students in 2013, the year of its creation, to 50,000 in 2021. It offers 13 licenses and 30 courses of training. With these large numbers, the organization of assessments in these universities becomes more and more tedious. Taking the example of the UVS with 50,000 students and 30 training courses, we will have to deploy millions of exams copies due to one copy per candidate. These universities have digital campuses (connected campuses) or Open Digital Spaces (ENO) which make it possible to organize face-to-face evaluations on the table. This organization has several disadvantages, on the one hand, the management of the proofs and the correction of the copies require the mobilization of human and financial resources; on the other hand, the risks of errors, reports and authenticity of the notes. In this article, we propose a secure system for managing online assessments in digital universities based on LMS Moodle, SEB and remote monitoring with the JITSI video conferencing system. The solution will allow universities to optimize human and financial resources and make assessment results more reliable.

This paper reviews the success factors of the digital transformation of higher education institutions based on the experience of Hassan 2 University of Casablanca (UH2C) in Morocco, which is the second largest university in the country. This work is based on the good practices implemented in the university's digitalization strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to run all the courses online and allow students to properly follow their lessons, the implementation of a robust and secure system is essential. This paper will take stock of the technical infrastructure of the university which has enabled it to support approximately 130,000 users, then the identification of all the services whose university needed to do its distance learning courses well and a proposal for the new system with the minimum of services that users will need to deliver and follow quality lessons.