TETFund: Boosting Online Opportunities For Nigerian Students

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) is teaming up with countries and organisations to help improve accessibility and affordability of online education offerings for the Nigerian Students.

As part of the ongoing efforts to actualise this, a global education technology firm from the United States, Anthology, recently visited the Fund.

The company offers the largest EdTech ecosystem on a global scale, supporting over 150 million users in 80 countries.

Its mission is to provide dynamic, data-informed experiences to the global education community so that learners and educators can achieve their goals.

The visit was to consolidate its partnership with the Federal Government, which has already enrolled about three million Nigerian end-users (students) across 253 institutions in its Blackboard Learn project. The firm also has over two decades’ experience as a global leader in distance education.

The Executive Secretary of the Fund, Arch. Sonny Echono, in his welcome speech explained that the Blackboard would establish Centres of Excellence in Nigeria that would be a benchmark for online learning methodologies. While noting that it would also help the country to be at the forefront of learning management systems, Echono said that, “what happened during COVID would not catch us unawares again.”

The Executive Secretary revealed that the Blackboard system, one of the platforms in the recently launched Tertiary Education Research, Applications and Services (TERAS), enhances online learning and increases capacity in communication skills. He emphasised that in addition to the 253 beneficiary public tertiary institutions, plans were underway to extend the initiative to private institutions.

“It is a platform that handles everything, even from management of the institutions to the process of seeking admission – when you get enrolled to how you finish. Also, the Blackboard is able to provide content for all the institutions and the real-time engagement that the institutional ecosystem operates.

“It also gives us the opportunity to be able to benchmark what is happening in other institutions around the globe that are all using the same platforms,” Echono said.

Earlier, the President of Anthology, Joe Belenardo, said that Blackboard has been tested to provide solutions to students and directors of Information Communication Technology (ICT) around the world. He explained that the learning management system currently has about 6,000 clients and 150 million students globally, designed to create additional solutions/innovations, access to networks and give business development opportunities for learners.

According to him, with ICT skills, “we will make a difference in making the world a better place.”

Also, the Country Director and Channel Partner for Anthology Nigeria, Ladipo Adedeji, explained that the system allows students to function adequately both online and offline.

“It is not just about online learning; the learning management system allows you to function in schools whether it is online or offline. As you will find out, nobody carries lecture notes anymore; nobody submits physical assignments anymore. So, this allows lecturers to teach more efficiently; allows students to learn efficiently in a sensitive way.

“Part of the laudable project that TETFund has done is the issue of subscription that allows each student access to a global library. Part of the limitations of a lot of people is that they have no access to credible material but with the platform, the limitation will be addressed. The feature of this is that you can learn Yoruba in a university in Brazil. This is taking Nigeria into that 21st/22nd century and that is what TETFund has been able to achieve with this laudable project,” he said.

Echono later led the team to visit the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, who hinted that the partnership would leverage the limitations of physical capacity of learning and the inability to access credible learning materials.

The Minister who could not hide his excitement about the project, pledged to provide necessary support, adding: “We are at the beginning of major reform in the education sector from the basic levels to tertiary levels.

We know that physical capacity is a limiting factor but through IT, you can reach practically everybody and we are determined to do it.”