NOUN VC says online facilitators must interact with students or get fired – The vice-chancellor, National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, has handed a marching order to the academic staff of his institution on online students’ facilitation as an inescapable practice.
Giving the charge during the inauguration ceremony of NOUN Oracle Academy organised by the Department of Computer Science, NOUN, on Tuesday, May 12, 2020, Adamu said: “Any lecturer in the National Open University of Nigeria who failed to interact with their students via online facilitation should either look for a College of Education to go and teach or resign and start selling foodstuff in the market.”
Adamu, who made the statement in answer to a student who, during the question and answer session of the virtual inauguration ceremony, queried why all lecturers were not interfacing with their students regularly in online facilitation, said that no NOUN lecturer had any excuse whatsoever not to have online interaction with their students on a regular basis.
The vice-chancellor said that the university has put all facilities and structures in place to enable its academic staff to interface with their students via online facilitation regularly. He said that NOUN, as the foremost Open and Distance Learning (ODL) university in West Africa, has set up the Directorate of Learning Contents Management System (LCMS) to create enabling platforms for seamless online facilitation.
Adamu said that NOUN by its foundational philosophy and mode of operation was never meant to be hindered in discharging its responsibilities as world-class ODL institutions even in lockdown situations as is obtained during this Covid-19 crisis if its academic staff are up and doing.
He added that the university would put necessary machinery in motion to monitor and ensure that all academic staff of the university maintain regular interaction with their students during this Covid-19 lockdown and beyond.
He warned that erring lecturers would be sanctioned accordingly.