Education experts have called for a deeper infusion of technology into Nigeria’s education system to ensure a resilient system to mitigate possible challenges in learning in the future.
Education experts, including administrators of tertiary institutions in Nigeria, have been urged to leverage technology to deepen access to quality tertiary education.
This was the submission during the August edition of EdTech
Mondays, an initiative of the Mastercard Foundation, in partnership with the
Co-creation Hub.
The virtual roundtable, moderated by a social engineering
practitioner, Joyce Daniels, featured panellists such as the acting Head of
Department, Environmental Health Sciences, National Open University, Nigeria
(NOUN), Oluremi Saliu; an Information Technology scholar, NOUN, Michael Asefon
and a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Oluwatoyin Ajilore-Chukwuemeka.
Speaking at the roundtable with the theme ‘Digitising Higher
Education in Nigeria: Opportunities and Challenges’, Saliu saw digital learning
as the driver for learning in institutions such as NOUN, noting that the
COVID-19 pandemic was an eye-opener on the many possibilities available to
acquire education.
She mentioned that tertiary institutions in Nigeria had
begun using e-learning, with NOUN enjoying a robust learning environment with
students accessing educational resources.
Asefon, a software engineer, said the benefits of digital
learning could not be overemphasised. He advised ed-tech innovators and
university administrators to provide training and needed infrastructure to
facilitate easy adoption of e-learning, both by the students and teachers.
According to Ajilore-Chukwuemeka, the challenge with
adopting digital learning does not lie with infrastructure and training alone
but with behavioural change on the part of students and teachers.
She stressed that many students and lecturers still found
adapting to online learning strange because it was introduced as a stop-gap in
the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She also stressed the need for telecommunication companies
and education stakeholders to find a way to subsidise the cost of data and
devices to enable students to have easy access to online learning.
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