PEDAGOGY, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND MEDIA SERVICES.
This is the second edition of the account of stewardship of Professor Idowu Olayinka who recently completed his five-year term as the 12th Vice Chancellor of the University Nigeria on the 1st of December, 2020. In this volume is documented the achievements of his administration in the areas of Pedagogy, Information Technology and Media Services, Publishing these feats, as said in the first edition means inviting everyone to not only note but to also attempt to confirm the veracity the claims of Idowu Olayinka, learn from his actions and place commendations when impressed (and criticisms when not). We wish you a good time with Olayinka’s exploits below:
Pedagogical Leadership for Africa (PedaL) Project
The inadequacy of curriculum to address the 21st century challenges largely accounts for the inability of Higher Education institutions to meet society needs. There is often a mismatch between higher educational institutions’ production system technique and the need of the labour market. A major public policy issue is the continuous insistence by employers of labour that our graduates lack the requisite skills employment in the labour market. Though many factors are responsible for this unfortunate development, low pedagogical competence of university teachers also contributes in no small measure. This thus accounts for the relevance of the Pedagogical Leadership (PedaL) for Africa Project.
The deficiencies in the contents and management of higher education pedagogy in Africa, aggravated by globalization, galvanized the need for the PedaL Project. In 2017 the University of Ibadan participated in a consortium of five institutions namely, Universities of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Egerton (Kenya), Ibadan (Nigeria), University of Ghana (Ghana) and Uganda Martyrs (Uganda) led by the Partnership for African Social Governance Research (PASGR). PASGR won the Department for International Development (DFID) funded project through the British Council, valued at over £3 Million. The University of Ibadan share of the budget is £310,945.
The PedaL project is a platform to revolutionize the teaching narrative by updating the pedagogical skills of African university teachers. The PedaL integrated model comprises six major components, namely, pedagogical strategies, educational foundations, technology-enhanced teaching and learning, curriculum and learning design, pedagogical leadership practice and assessment. PASGR targets creating a vibrant African social science community that addresses the continent’s public policy issues.
The University of Ibadan supported the PedaL project geared to improve the pedagogical competencies of university teachers because of its potential to drive our vision to be a world class institution for academic excellence geared towards meeting societal needs. The project involves academic staff’s ambidexterity in learner-centred teaching, multimedia resources deployment for teaching, regular updating of self-knowledge, understanding the impacts of learning philosophies and theories on teaching, appreciation of the roles of mentorship and collaborations in the learning process, and the skills for formative and summative assessments of learning outcomes.
Up till date, the University of Ibadan has committed about $30,000 of its internally generated revenue as counterpart funding to support cascading the training in the university as a demonstration of our commitment and support for the programme. So far, over 300 members of the academic staff across all departments and units of the university have been trained. Also, a number of non-teaching staff have attended different PedaL programmes outside the country to understudy the administrative process.
I am glad to say that Ibadan has brought the influence of PedaL to other Nigerian Universities namely Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, University of Lagos, University of Jos, Federal University of Technology, Akure and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria by participating in our cascading training. Also, our staff have facilitated PedaL programmes at many other universities namely University of Ilorin, Kano State University and the Committee of Deans and Provosts of Postgraduate Schools of Nigeria. There is, therefore, no doubt that the training ultimately helped to bring the pedagogy skill to other non-participating members of the PedaL consortium.
It is exciting to report that pedagogy competence is now entrenched in the academic life of staff of the University of Ibadan. The University of Ibadan implementation committee led by the Vice Chancellor, who is ably represented by the PedaL project site Principal Investigator (PI), Prof. Ayodele Samuel Jegede, established a Community of Practice Platform (CPP) where trained members of staff meet virtually on regular basis to interact for sustenance of gains of the programme. With this, I am bold to say that pedagogy is now the teaching model at Ibadan. The programme is now domiciled at the Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning for sustainable staff capacity development on pedagogy.
In order to make the knowledge available to Nigerians on a sustainable basis we have concluded plan to deploy the PEDAL through the Distance Learning mode. This will help to address the question of quality of teaching in Nigeria from Primary to tertiary level of education.
As at the end of 2019, about 400 members of the academic staff of the University of Ibadan had been trained under PedaL. Another Train-the-Trainer Workshop will be extended to another 200 Faculty members as soon as the current lockdown is over.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND MEDIA SERVICES
The provision of fast and reliable internet facilities is central to various operations in the university in respect of research, teaching, learning and administration. It is a major driver in the quest to transform/innovate our learning environment for exceptional user experiences for all stakeholders. Hence, the University is committed to providing a robust IT infrastructure (including a campus wide internet and intranet coverage), improvement of the work environment and provision of appropriate framework and platforms for innovative learning, seamless communication and information exchange, and timely identification of skill levels and gaps for training. Efforts made in this regard include:
Organising Boot Camps for students and youths on Artificial Intelligence; Coding; Robotics; Software development team-services; and patenting.
Provision of Standard Operations Manual for all services; Outstanding Open Educational Resource Contents; and Needs assessment and service evaluation (Key Performance Indicators).
Enhancement of creativity and innovation through collaboration for innovations and idea incubation.
Equipment overhaul at Diamond FM, enhanced training and collaborations; Film Village – Animation, Recording and Editing studios and Three-Dimensional Theatre.
Facilitation of enhanced institutional impact and sustainability through Centralised Database Management System – to enhance data integrity; end to end automation of academic processes (admission and registration processes; issuance of transcripts, etc); administrative processes (in the Registry, Bursary,etc); systems and services audit parameters;
Staff capacity development through exchange programmes; Research and Development driven contents for television and UI On Air Schools; Emerging Technology suitability /application
Some of our major achievements include:
Increasing our internet bandwidth from 310 Mbps (costing N67.7M) to 470 Mbps (at a cost of N63.4M) per annum with a considerable saving in cost. With the introduction of the technology fee, the bandwidth was increased to 935 Mbps with effect from August 2019. Arrangements were made to ensure that students have internet access, in the first instance, around the academic area. This will be extended to all Halls of Residence subsequently.
Stronger infrastructural base – design update
Audit of I.T equipment and services.
Expanded Fibre optic connection to Faculty of Pharmacy offices & library.
MacArthur Grants Liaison Office support to Faculty of Technology for 96core X 1.82km fibre – serve 21 to connect departments/units.
Server room upgrade stage 1
Partnerships for accelerated infrastructural development.
Automation of the admission clearance process; result management; and registration system upgrade
Students ID card web-based validation
Commissioning of the Integrated Database Committee
Improvement of University of Ibadan ranking on the Times Higher Education (THE) from 801-1000 to 601-800 (global); emerging economies 141
Maintained and improved on global rankings – Webometrics 15 in Africa, 1145 in the world
Open Educational Resources – Books -22-65; Journals 477-768, Theses 9-600
Daimond Radio received awards – BBCC Media Action, NINAAFEH for Esteem Collaboration; Distinguished Merit Award etc. for outstanding services through programming.
Decentralization of Website – schedule for training published
Localized web streaming
IT Skill enhancement – over 2,000 students; 6,000 PG students
Digital Appreciation
Turnitin Antiplagiarism tool has been effectively deployed by the Postgraduate College
Efective collaboration with ESRI industrial partners on GIS.
Introduction of Orientation Program for the Centre for Petroleum Economics, Energy and Law (CPEEL).
Induction programme organised for newly employed Academic Staff and University Technologists by Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETeL).
Induction programme organised by ITeMs for University Webmasters.
Radio Volunteers Programme – Graduate interns and up to 50 Students have benefitted.
Auditing of Internet Accounts
Establishment of a Service Support/Issue Resolution Desk
Staff skill gap survey
Improved Staff work environment
More effective information flow within ITeMS
ITeMS has established a vibrant collaboration with:
The Department of Computer Science;
The Distance Learning Centre;
The Post Graduate College;
Directors of ITeMS;
The Kenneth Dike Library;
Huawei –Training Academy; and
Techbridge Robotics;
Its Staff is also working on University Journal System
Clearing of backlog of certificates of graduands from Affiliated Institutions running into tens of thousands.
Color coding of examination answer booklets on a faculty basis to enhance the integrity of our examinations.
Ongoing effort to reduce the turn around time for processing students’ academic transcript to between twenty four and seventy two hours.
We have developed a five-year schema for the deployment of a Learning Management System in the University as a tool for blended learning. A faithful implementation of this will turn around the fortunes of the institution as a digital university in the Post COVID-19 era.
