Working solutions to the E-learning challenges – 3 of 4
Despite all the above problems, it is not all doom and gloom for E-learning in the Country because where this is a problem, there is always a solution or several solutions. Many Institutions are finding way round the problems and are successfully using E-learning to enhance and transform their Education provisions in new and innovative ways all-over the country. Most importantly Education Technology is not at a standstill, the speed of growth in Edtech is not stopping and the evolution and growth in this sector comes with newer solutions to existing and evolving problems.
Notwithstanding all these challenges, students are finding their way round the problems just as some Universities are. With access to the Internet and the use of Smartphone, students and savvy Teachers can easily access the vast amount of E-learning resources available online to complement what is available within their Education Institutions. In fact, these are the most available source of E-learning there are in the country. With Edx, Udacity, Coursera and the likes, learning online has never been easy. But all these are foreign contents, which are agreeably universal for orderless Education purpose and the promotion of open learning and accessible for all.
But the Nigerian Government is promoting local contents, which can be loosely translated as what we produce locally for our local use in the Country instead of re-appropriating foreign produced contents. At least we should be able to domesticate those foreign produced contents appropriately to suit our local needs. Our Education curriculum at various levels needs to be transformed into E-learning to be able to meet those requirements for local contents and so the challenge begins, it does not end at just being able to have an E-learning platform in place but it continues to having our local curriculum and course contents transformed for E-learning purpose.
Through my research, local Nigeria Companies already addressing some of these problems with innovative solutions that harness local knowledge, local contents with international standards and know-how are:
1. Eduplatform:A local indigenous company that provides E-learning solutions to Educational Institutions in Nigeria, partnered with The National Open University of Nigeria and the Kano State University of Science and Technology for their E-learning solutions.
2. Park Associates E-Learning Group: Runs the Federal Universities E-learning in association with National Universities Commission (NUC), government agency under the Federal Ministry of Education, and four federal universities in the country.
3. OASIS: Partnered with Edutech Advanced Business Technologies to deploy the first NUC approved full time eLearning suite of solutions for Obafemi Awolowo University Centre for Distance Learning (OAU CDL) and Ahmadu Bello University Distance Learning Centre (ABU DLC). This led to the development of the first Web and Mobile Compatible Learning Management System – VigiLearn.
Apart from these established companies, there are plethora of others with niche solutions that enables E-learning in Nigeria despite the challenges, with mobile accessibility playing a huge role in these solutions. This is where Webhostville Services comes in, Webhostville Services will contribute solutions to overcome these challenges with a well structured E-learning platform implementation services that includes, integrations with other platforms such as the Student Information System, course creation, staff training and continuous professional development in addition to on-going support services to ensure the best outcome that will transform and enhance the teaching and learning process in Institutions, complementing without replacing the face-to-face classroom mode. We work closely with our clients to provide solutions to all the above mentioned problems so they can be rest assured they are on-board E-learning with the solutions they need to stay on-board.