E-LEARNING DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECT IN THE NIGERIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

There has been a rising commitment to strengthen the delivery of education in Nigeria for some time now. The quality assurance agency for University education in Nigeria (National Universities Commission – NUC) is unwavering in their cause to facilitate capacity building activities to ensure that academic staff involved in the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) education programmes in the Nigerian Universities are equipped with the requisite ICT skills and competences for quality delivery of University education via the ODL mode. The Nigerian University System has one single-mode open and distance learning University as well as six “dual-mode” Universities (conventional universities with distance learning Centres/Institutes).
Prior to now, the Nigeria distance learning education has been more or less part-time studies as it lacks the qualities of a real Open and Distance Learning Institute. There were no learning management systems in place, instructional materials were not structured and the teachers were more or less digital immigrants. A lot of challenges were encountered. These ranges from resistance to change, poor ICT infrastructure and concern about intellectual property rights and shared rights between faculties and institutions. As the national consultants, we have however increased digital literacy sporadically by following a few best practices. We have developed processes that leverage best practices from both the instructional design and software development areas. Through a mixture of instructional media, learners and educators can experience synchronous and asynchronous interactions.
The e-learning projects embarked on were a software project combined with a performance enhancement ('training') project as well as instructional design for course development. In the bid to effectively service the ODL Institutions in Nigeria, we determined the actual training need of each distance learning institutions. We have developed e-teaching capacity building workshop as well as collaborative development of distance learning courses, designing of online courses to meet the needs of a diverse student population and the use of synchronous and asynchronous mode of distance learning tools. To begin the implementation of the research effort, a series online development courses were collaboratively developed and reviewed among the teaching staff (experts in the content areas) of the ODL Institutions. The Learning Management System provided an accessible, innovative, online learning and facilitation environment for both students and teaching staff. It provided new routes of access to better skills and qualifications.