As part of its efforts in providing seamless service delivery, resolving challenges bedevilling students, the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) has trained about 25 staff selected as e-ticketing desk officers and managers to handle students’ various complaints within 24hours.
The 2-day training workshop held between 5th – 6th May, 2022, at the university headquarters in Abuja, was organised by the office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Technology, Innovation and Research (DVC-TIR), Prof.Monioluwa Olaniyi.
The e-ticketing training workshop brings forth fulfilment of promise by the Vice-Chancellor (VC), Prof. Olufemi Peters in his address during the 21st Matriculation of the university. “Our registration process is being simplified further, a ticketing system is being developed to attend to your requests for information and complaints’’, it stated.
Speaking at the official opening ceremony of the 2-day training workshop, the VC, stated that the e-ticketing system is to ensure that the students have a wonderful experience as they go through NOUN. “My prayer is that with launching of these systems, the complaints, responses and challenges of our students are resolved.
‘’The reason we are adopting the e-ticketing system is to make sure that our students have a very wonderful experience as they go through NOUN’’, he said.
According to Peters, the main benefit of adopting the system is to make sure we resolve student’s challenges, because if they are not satisfied, they will not come to us, we want them to realise that ODL is a fantastic way of delivering lectures, receiving lectures and earning degrees.
Also for the students to boldly say that NOUN resolves academic challenges within 24hours.
‘’It’s a mechanism to tackle any complaint that our students have, which we simply refer as quality assurance in the university,” he said.
The VC implored the managers and desk officers for the e-ticketing to take their responsibilities seriously to make sure that the students have a very wonderful experience as they go through NOUN.
He further commended the DVC-TIR for his passion, Director ICT, whose job has been to provide the backbone to use in putting up the system, among others.
In her opening speech, the DVC-TIR, while congratulating the VC said this is the first of its kind in the annals of the university, “we cannot but commend the efforts of our visionary VC and as well congratulate him for this great achievement,” she said.
‘’I call it great achievement because it signals the commencement of a holistic approach to the resolution of challenges that bedevil our system, sometimes ,we may even imagine it as a hydra headed monster, seeing unresolvable mammoth challenges and a barrage of complaints from students, alumni and visitors ,which transverse all aspects our service delivery’ ’she said.
According to Prof.Olaniyi, the e-ticketing is innovative and simply a way to deploy our operational tool to solve problems which has dented the reputation and impaired the university visibility by others in time past.
She further appeal to all participants to participate fully in the sessions and make success out of the system as this is the first stage of the workshop, ‘We will be having a session for study centre desk officers and another one solely for managers, she added.
The DVC-TIR also thanked the VC for the opportunity given to the team and believing in the team.
Speaking earlier on the general overview of e-ticketing, the deputy director Management and Information Services (MIS), Mr Sule Onu said the e- ticketing is query resolution system for enquiry that enables students to talk directly with agents and officers of the university whose main responsibility is to follow up with issues that are been raised by the students, sort for resolutions and give appropriate feedbacks to the students.
According to Onu, the system is made up of multiple level users, which include; the agent, supervisors and custom users.
The beauty of e-ticketing, he said, is that the student is seeing who is responding to what he /she has raised and this is simply service monitoring and evaluation system.
Concept behind e-ticketing he said, is that any of the major service delivery system that is been deployed will be integrated, as the scope is limitless,we will continue to integrate as to give our students a seamless mode of operation ,and from there we hope they will be able to market the system on our behalf, he added.
In his closing remarks remarks, the director MIS, Dr.Alhassan Mukthar, while thanking the VC for his initiative, effort, guide and active response said the system is a great opportunity for the students to clearly express their views and communicate.
The high point of the training workshop is that the VC graciously provided 25 laptop computers for agents, supervisors and custom users
