Experts Advocate Technology to Deepen Access to Quality Tertiary Education
Uchechukwu Nnaike
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.
