Prof. Olanrewaju Fagbohun (SAN), Vice-Chancellor, Lagos State University (LASU), on Monday said that to adopt and accept virtual learning in post-COVID-19 era, Nigerian institutions needed to invest in online resources.
Fagbohun, a Professor of Environmental Law, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
According to him, it is clear in this COVID-19 era that academic institutions must invest in online resources.
“Investment of academic institutions in this area, will ease and guide the attention of students to these online resources to complement whatever the lecturers are teaching them.
“If the lecturer is going to focus on going into classrooms to teach face to face for two hours, the same cannot be done online because the students will get tired.
“The pedagogy must change, you want to go online in your lecture for some 15 to 20 minutes, so you can still be able to retain that attention of the students with some online materials,” he said.
The vice-chancellor said that LASU management always encouraged their faculty members to give support to their students, in terms of engaging them through other media platform such as WhatsApp, especially things they were used to.
“Lecturers should give their students guide on online resources which will complement what they were taught during lectures.
“Those are the critical things if we are going to make a success and delivery of virtual learning for our students.
“The critical path of virtual learning in education system now is something that nobody can doubt and must be achieved.
“I believe the way to go about it, in terms of getting our students key into virtual learning system, is first and foremost, for the management of every institution to believe they can achieve it,” he said.
Fagbohun added that we might not have the online resources of Ivy League institutions in America or the U.K. were using to lecture but we could still effectively use virtual learning to support students.
He said that there must be a change of mindset within the education system by starting the process, then developing and aggressively improve on what we had.
“I know we do not have enough online resources but that should not be an excuse not to start by taking our students through and giving them the opportunity of virtual learning.
“Virtual learning can be looked at as a context of real time, that is, as the lecturer is teaching and students are responding online.
“It can be a challenge to some of our students, particularly students who reside in rural areas and lack internet facilities,” he said.
According to Fagbohun, the way to address students who are having challenges on internet facilities is for the lecturer to upload materials online for the students.
“The students will have the opportunity to go online and assess those materials at their own convenient time which will help in the long term,” Faghoun said.
