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As part of its work to support widening access to high quality education, Saide collaborates with many institutions and organisations throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Due to its diverse forms of work, the organisation has formed a network of education partners in sub-Saharan Africa. These network institutions do not only host Saide staff who visit to offer support, most of them are also keen to visit the Saide offices in Johannesburg to meet with and share experiences with more staff at Saide. Ephraim Mhlanga reports on a recent visit from a team from the National Open University of Nigeria.
The delegation of six people from the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) was led by Dr Christine Ofulue, the head of the newly established Quality Assurance Unit. The purpose of the visit was to explore further opportunities for collaboration with Saide, particularly in the areas of quality assurance, Open Education Resources (OER), and e-Learning.
Institutional Background
With a student enrolment of more than 200 000, NOUN is the only single-mode distance learning university in Nigeria and the only national distance education university in the West African sub-region. It supports students through study centres that are scattered throughout all the provinces of the vast country with an estimated population size of 178,516,904. Nigeria's population is equivalent to 2.46% of the total world population.1 In this context, the need for expanding access to quality higher education through distance education cannot be overemphasised, being one of the primary reasons for the establishment of the quality assurance unit.
The Quality Assurance Unit
The aim of the Unit is to promote a culture of quality by supporting continuous improvement of institutional practices. That the University is committed to the quality improvement project is demonstrated by the fact that the Unit was established in the Vice Chancellor’s Office, and Dr Ofulue reports directly to the Vice Chancellor. In order to enhance its operations and to maximise ownership of quality assurance practices, the Quality Assurance Unit operates with a Quality Assurance Committee comprising representatives from the various Schools and support units in the university.
One of the first tasks of the Unit was to put in place a quality assurance framework for the University. Saide is supporting the University in this process, which involves developing an institutional quality assurance policy, conducting internal sensitisation workshops in order to bring all Schools up to speed with quality and quality assurance issues, developing quality assurance templates and guidelines, and conducting regular self-reviews.
Focus of the meeting
During their visit, the NOUN team had the privilege to meet with the Saide Director, Jenny Glennie, and several other Saide staff. The discussions centred mainly around areas where the University generally and the QA Unit in particular are wishing to focus on, namely quality assurance, embracing open education resources (OER) and adopting e-Learning as a major delivery mode. Dr Ofulue highlighted the current challenges the University is facing in terms of meeting its quality goals. Given the decentralised nature of the institution and its mammoth enrolment size, coordinating the activities of all the Schools and the regional centres and resourcing the quality assurance processes sufficiently enough is indeed a huge challenge.
Dr Jane-Frances Agbu explained the University’s decision to fully embrace OER as a strategy for enhancing quality. She explained that the University is currently being supported by UNESCO to develop an OER policy and to implement some of the initial activities needed for OER to take root in the institution. The major challenge, however, is that many people in the University are not familiar with the key tenets of OER usage, like the various licence types and licensing processes.
The NOUN team also reported on the University’s investment in e-Learning. The University has outsourced the development of a customised e-learning portal called NOUN I-LEARN. The portal is specially designed to make learning more exciting for students, for interaction with course lecturers and other students, for asking questions and downloading course materials. Clearly the intention is to gradually move towards greater use of e-Learning in supporting students. The team, however highlighted challenges that still have to be addressed in order for the implementation of this technology innovation to succeed. Amongst other challenges is the need to develop capacity in online course design and delivery.
The Way forward
From the discussion, it was clear that NOUN would like support in all the three areas discussed. Saide staff with expertise in all these areas were present in the meeting and engaged with the NOUN delegation on how support can be provided. Suggestions were made that appropriate policies should be developed for all these initiatives to take root in the University. There is also need to build a critical mass of human capacity if implementation is to be effective. In her closing remarks Dr Ofulue noted that they would have discussions with NOUN management regarding possibilities for greater collaboration with Saide.
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