4th training workshop on digital education opens in Abuja

As part of its contribution to the development and progress of education in Nigeria and West Africa, the Africa Centre of Excellence for Development Impact in conjunction with the World Bank, Association of African Universities and the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) has commenced a four-day training workshop about digital training on education in line with the realities of the moment brought about especially by covid 19 pandemic and other factors.

While declaring the workshop open, the vice chancellor of NOUN, Prof Olufemi Peters welcomed all participating delegates to the meeting. 

He said NOUN in collaboration with all the partners is glad to train high level manpower on digital evolution for Nigerian universities and the sub region.

“This would help in the way we deliver lectures to our students. One thing about this is that those participating in this workshop would now go back to their respective institutions and whatever they will learn here would be extended to their students back home. 

“If you look at the programme, they are very pedantic in terms of the specificity of what the gains would be, for instance, at the end, we should be able to assess online facilitators and those who would be assisting the students to learn.

“Through the NUC, many other universities are able to discover the level of expertise domiciled in NOUN, at least through which other conventional universities are buying into this concept. We have been receiving requests from other universities in this regard. So far 20 indigenous universities and 15 outside Nigeria are already benefitting from the training of this type,” he said.

According to Sylvia Mkandawire, the project manager of African Centre for Excellence (ACE), the training affords the opportunity of providing state of the art facilities and tutorials for a conductive learning environment.

“The objective of this particular workshop is to train teachers, lecturers and instructors to be able to deliver digital education in a manner that they can actually reach out to many others. If you notice, for almost two years now, the covid pandemonium affected education and there is a need to ensure sustainability so that the vector does not collapse,” he said.

On his part, the coordinator of ACE at the NUC, Joshua Atah, noted that from the experience of covid 19, it is no longer possible to run away from technology.

“The way we do things in education has changed and that has come to stay. Even before now, we have been having issues with overcrowding in our universities. This digital platform is coming to address that sort of anomaly,” he said.

The four-day training which began on May 9 ends on 12.