Training for ICT-enabled teaching and learning: a call for action.

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The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is increasing in Nigerian universities. Communicating via e-mail and accessing information over the Internet are now key elements of academic life. This has brought enormous benefits to the academic and research communities in our universities where the internet resource is available and efficient. Unfortunately, many senior academics have missed out on the opportunities provided by the internet because of poor understanding of the applications of the computer and the internet for research and updating lecture contents. Also, creative use of ICT-related facilities to improve learning opportunities and effectiveness has eluded a lot of lecturers in universities. The National University Commission (NUC), therefore, should engage in a policy of deployment of ICT training of senior academics, especially the professors, to enable them adapt to this digital technology. The need for an ‘e-learning action plan’ is obvious if higher education in this country must open up to the global virtual information system, harvest from it and contribute to it through digital networking. The “E-Learning Action Plan” defines e-learning as: “the use of new multimedia technologies and the Internet to improve the quality of learning by facilitating access to resources and services as well as remote exchange and collaboration”¹. The plan presupposes that there is a pool of competent academic staff to create the teaching ‘resources and services’ in the digital national network. Nigerian universities have a low population of self-trained senior academics that can drive the digital e-learning revolution which entails delivering updateable learning resources or materials through the use of computer technology (e.g, intranet, internet, interactive TV, CD-Rom). There is, at present, no deliberate attempt to train senior university teachers on the pedagogical use of ICT. The professors are, undoubtedly, the pivot of dynamic pedagogy and must be the instruments of transformation of the universities as trained trainers in content teaching and transmission. ICT-enabled teaching implies that teachers and learners have some specific ICT-related skills. Students are offered ICT courses in General Studies in the first two years of their curriculum, but long-standing senior academics who had no such training as students are faced with ICT illiteracy. Without ICT-enabled learning system supported by trained hands, we lose its potential to allow larger numbers of students to enrol and attend classes. The NUC should recognise that the quality of university education depends on the internal capacity of academics to engage in virtual research, learning and teaching. This is the time for an e-learning action plan for our universities. The place to start is in staff training:

“Staff development for effective use of e-learning has been identified by almost all studies of the challenges in e-learning implementation as the most important barrier to progress. All universities will develop more comprehensive and effective training and support mechanisms and processes to ensure that they deploy staff efforts (both from support as well as academic staff) in the most efficient way.”¹

¹ ICT in European universities: trends and perspectives. Directorate General for Education and Culture of the European Commission. http://www.spotplus.odl.org/downloads/Context_report_final.pdf