E-learning – future of Nigeria’s education sector

What is your e-learning product(s) and how does it work? 

The Learning Nuggets Company has a selection of products one of them being Campus Companion which is not just another table but an integrated educational device for access, rich multimedia learning content and learning management. Campus Companion is a bundled solution comprising the tablet and Learner Workspace learning management environment. Campus Companion Starlight and Gazer are 10inch Android devices running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich and Android 2.3 Gingerbread respectively.

It is still the case that wireless and Local Area Network (LAN) access are not available to everyone and the good news about Campus Companion is in both versions these features plus mobile access are available via a dongle for Starlight and SIM for Gazer. Having an internal SIM card means users can also dial calls through their contacts list.

Campus Companion has multi-lingual interfaces so we can address various markets as the language barrier ceases to exist. Learner Workspace is the cloud-based learning management app that enables educational institutions and organisations to manage multi-media learning content including video, audio, document files and folders and learning delivery online or remotely via live lectures/classes. Lecturers can create and publish video-based presentations for pre-course preparation or reinforcement, or as an alternative to face-to-face delivery.

The live video lecture feature enables real-time delivery and interaction and can be used to engage in small workshops or for delivery to large dispersed classes; this can be up to 250 or 1000 recipients. Learner Workspace also has social media features such as forums and blogs. It can be personalised by creating your own learning-networks, this may include fellow students, cohort, corporate bodies and lecturers.

There are also access to email, word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, video creation and cloud-based storage tools based on GoogleApps. This is a professional and secure way of standardizing and managing user applications supporting learning. All users have access to their own email account with a unified domain name e.g.; [email protected] or [email protected]. The good news is that this is free to educational institutions. As an approved GoogleApps Reseller, LNC can assist institutions without IT experience or resources to get up and running or provide support for setup and integration.

Other Apps available include SafariBooks Online, on-demand referencing resources: books, videos, audios and rough cuts (yet to be published books) with popular titles in engineering, IT, entrepreneurship, HR, management and leadership to name but a few. Subscribers have access to over 28,000 resources from two of the world-leading publishers.

There is also CrossKnowledge mentored management learning solutions, this will provide learners access to a whole raft of online management and leadership courses.

In what ways will this improve the country’s educational sector? 

Our solutions provide access to learning. For instance, Campus Companion tablet and Learner Workspace learning management environment enable educational institutions and organisational learning academies to create, organize and deliver learning online, via mobile and virtually.

Some of the benefits include:

•Standardized quality of learning delivery.

•Ability to reach more students, and provide same quality of education. Restrictions of class size, teacher/lecturer availability, travel costs and cost of infrastructure reduced. For example, an NGO that trains agents throughout Africa is exploring Learner Workspace and Campus Companion as a means of reducing the cost of travel for attending 10 to 15 courses a year. Average flight cost per attendee per course is $700. That alone is higher than the cost of the device plus the first year’s annual subscription.

•Teacher/Lecturer to student ratio improved. Courses can be pre-recordered and posted for student access or delivered live via the live lecture feature in Learner Workspace, this is also ideal for workshops. It allows lecturers to become mentors and facilitators of learning, releases them to focus on problem areas or students that require more attention.

•Learner Workspace provides the opportunity for institutions to deliver rich content for learning, it uses real-time video, enables learners to build their online learning support groups/networks so they do not learn in isolation but have other students and lecturers to support their learning process.

•We further assist organisations/institutions to digitise their paper-based material and integrate rich media such as videos and graphics e.g. imagine the number of offices, colleges you have been to that still store their files and folders and important documents in filing cabinets that are so full they can never find the information you need or worse still in piles on the floor. In the long term your cost of production of educational material is reduced, online books and referencing material also means once developed the resources can be used over and over again…long term effect is also cheaper cost of delivery.

Going by the infrastructure on ground in the country, do you think the education sector is ripe and ready for this new technology?

Absolutely! However we believe government and large corporate bodies need to assist in the process of making networks affordable and available throughout the country. Bandwidth continues to be a challenge but Campus Companion’s access capabilities via LAN, wireless and mobile means institutions and organisations have an option. We would like to expand our current discussions with the network operators to agree on appropriate models that can further facilitate user access.

How accessible and affordable can this technology be to Nigerian students? 

We believe there is a real opportunity to engage the right people/organisations and government in discussions to explore measures for making access cheaper and available. It is also The Learning Nuggets’ strategy within the next 12 months to have aspects of the technology developed and managed locally. For schools, we work with them on virtualization models, which could include localized servers and hard drives accessed via Campus Companion and Learner Workspace.

Why will you encourage education stakeholders to embrace this method of teaching and learning?

This is the future of education and there is no need to bury our heads in the sand and pretend it is not happening. If you go to the Learning Nuggets’ website for example, there are free learning resources from some of the leading universities around the world and students/learners can access these free of charge. The danger is if you don’t provide the resources for your student population they will go elsewhere, not only that, your cost of delivery and student support will remain high and you will become less competitive.

The Learning Nuggets is keen to support educational institutions and organisations with their virtualization strategies for online, mobile and virtual learning. We cover areas from strategy development, implementation and management.

An interview with IFEOMA ONUOHA