‘Online University’: e-Learning tools are revolutionizing education

Eighty year old Okonwo stared at the beautiful morning sun and could not help imagine the many ways the world has changed. He had once asked his son, an astrophysicist why the heat from the sun seemed to be increasing each passing day or was it by each passing hour he thought? The son in response had mentioned some things about carbon emissions and ozone layer depletion which did not seem to bother Okonkwo. The eighty year old believes that the heavens belong to the gods who control the elements.

However, what Okonkwo was really worried about was the many ways Information Communication Technology (ICT) was disrupting his cherished daily routines. As a boy he literally sat at the feet of his teacher to learn the customs, norms, cultural values and skills required to become a productive and functional member of society. In his early adult years, he served as a teacher to young boys at the village shrine.

Now, as he imagined how much things had changed, his iphone 6 rang interrupting his train of thought. His daughter in the United States of America (USA) was invited him to visit the U.S. He declined. To stay in touch, she had bought for him an iphone 6 on which he learnt how to access Facebook in order to see his grandchildren.

Beyond Okonkwo’s world, the internet is redefining life in every imaginable way: from the way information and knowledge are created to how they are distributed and consumed. In the past, to have access to the best teachers and professors around the world, the student needed to either go to the teacher or the teacher came to the student as in the days of Okonkwo.

“The times have really changed. When we were growing up I never imagined there would come a time when I could sit in the comfort of my room here in Nigeria and follow conferences in the USA or the United Kingdom (UK). Those days access to updated information was limited to what our lecturers knew and taught us” said Athanasius Obiadazie, a maxilo-facial surgeon.

One powerful online tool revolutionizing how information is created, stored and distributed is Youtube – a video sharing service that allows users watch videos posted by other users and upload videos of their own. The service which started as an independent website in 2005 was acquired by Google in 2006.

Today, e-Learning is an industry valued over $90.2.  About 42 percent of global Fortune 500 companies now use some form of educational technology to instruct employees during formal learning hours. By 2019, roughly half of all college classes will be e-Learning-based. It is more than obvious that e-Learning has revolutionized and changed the way knowledge and skill are acquired. As a result, there is a great interest for Learning Management Systems (LMS) to systematically implement and manage e-Learning.  There are a thousand plus LMS vendors and many features to choose from.

Gossy Ukanwoke, founder of BAU Research & Development and BUA Online Executive Programme in a recent interview with BusinessDay Media Ltd said “over the last three to four years we have had thousands and thousands of students, over 8, 000 students applying for our Online Executive Programme from all parts of the world. We have students from across Africa, from Asia and South America on this programme.”

Amid the revolutionizing effects of these online tools, the National Universities Commission (NUC) experts continue to foot-drag on forward looking policies that could harness the enormous potentials of e-Learning platforms, decongesting university campuses in the process. The future is digital these experts say and the NUC needs to find ways of integrating and making digital learning tools relevant.