Education for All: E-learning, way to go

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” This famous quote by Derek Curtis Bok, an American lawyer, educator and former president of Harvard University, holds so true especially for Nigeria. An ignorant man is a time bomb waiting to explode. Bok is simply saying that the disadvantages of not having an education far outweigh the cost of getting a good education. Stakeholders agree that for education to be affordable and available to all, there is need to employ e-learning strategy which involves extensive use of the internet. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, factors such as poor power supply, poor internet connectivity and lack of funds, militate against the deployment of e-learning strategy. To overcome the above factors and make e-learning possible in Nigeria, especially with the upsurge in the activities of Boko Haram in the North- East where it is becoming increasingly dangerous to go to school, Mr. Salvation Alibor, Chief Executive Officer of Syscomptech Communications Ltd, and his team introduced the Campus Hotspot Service (CHS) which he describes asa prime support to African governments battling to revive the education sector.Excerpts: By Ebele Orakpo Mr. Salvation Alibor…Students can learn online and interact physically with lecturers only as the need arises ACCORDING to Alibor, Campus Hotspot Service (CHS) is designed for African schools, to support governments across the continent in their battle to revive the education sector. “It is the foundation for improved learning for every school,” he noted. The problem: They realised that true education involves sharing knowledge with the global community and in this digital age, this can only be possible through the use of the internet. “Our schools lack access to global knowledge sharing due to the prolonged absence of good quality internet connectivity,” he said. Solution: “Campus Hotspot Service is developed to provide the school community with a reliable internet connectivity to support e-learning, video/voice conferencing, research and routine web surfing. “CHS is built to work in remote locations and can cover wide expanses including multiple campus locations. It takes into cognizance the issue of power supply in Nigeria and is designed to run on low power consumption of 30W, powered primarily by solar. It will enable every student, lecturer and researcher to have uninterrupted access to the internet 24 hours a day and seven days a week,” he said. BOT: Having recognised the fact that many players in the education sector may not be able to afford the CHS, as budget is a major issue for most institutions of learning in Nigeria, “Syscomptech designed a friendly buy, operate and transfer (BOT) partnership that enables the schools to deploy CHS instantly, begin providing the high quality internet connectivity to its community in only a matter of weeks and own the entire system in a couple of months,” said Alibor. CHS/Boko Haram: Campus Hotspot Service is a campus-wide internet service designed to support e-learning for schools. With CHS, it is possible to grant both lecturers and students access to a cloud sharing service that enables the lecturer to upload course materials and have the students download them for reading, activities and exercises. This will drastically reduce the population of students that gather per time for lectures thereby reducing the risk of bomb attack. “Students can learn online and interact physically with the lecturers only on fewer occasions or as the need arises. Where there are no large gatherings, there would be no strike spots for bombings on the campuses. “The CHS project also offers schools the opportunity to own e-Learning platforms, which they can use to provide distant learning to their students online. The e-learning platform would ensure that the post-graduate schools continue running despite the security challenges faced. Thus, students can learn from the comforts of their homes and offices in cities and states far away from the distressed regions. With the CHS infrastructure, the lecturers are guaranteed 24 hours uninterrupted access to instruct their students, review exercises and post assessments over the internet,” he said.