‘Online University’: eLearning tools are revolutionalising education

Eighty-year old Okonwo stared at the beautiful morning sun and could not help imagining the many ways the world has changed. He had once asked his son who is 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 mentioned some things about carbon emissions and ozone layer depletion. This did not seem to bother Okonkwo that much. Since he believed the heavens belonged to the gods, hence they controlled the elements.

However, what Okonkwo was worried about was the many ways Information Communication Technologies (ICT) were 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 the 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) has invited him to visit the U.S. He declined. To stay in touch, she bought for him an iphone 6. 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 revolutionalising how information is created, stored and distributed is the Youtube. YouTube is a video sharing service that allows users to watch videos posted by other users and upload videos of their own. The service was started as an independent website in 2005 and was acquired by Google in 2006.

Today, e-Learning is over a $90.2 billion Industry.  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 eLearning-based. It is more than obvious that eLearning has revolutionised and changed the way that knowledge and skill are acquired. As a result, there is a great interest for Learning Management Systems (LMS) to systematically implement and manage eLearning. There are a thousand plus LMS vendors and many Learning Management System’s 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 revolutionalising effects of these online tools, the National Universities Commission (NUC) experts say, continues to foot drag on forward looking policies that could harness the enormous potentials of eLearning 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.