AAU team’s visit to NOUN
The Africa Centre of Excellence on Technology Enhanced Learning (ACETEL) has played host to a team from the Association of African Universities (AAU) who visited to verify installed ICT facilities, Metro-Campus 15-Kilometer Fibre 12 Core 1GBPS Internet Facility and e-Library resources.
The team, which visited the headquarters of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) in Abuja on Thursday, February 2, 2023 was led to the Vice-Chancellor’s office as well as the DVC, Technology Innovation and Research, by the ACETEL director, Prof. Grace Jokthan.
The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Olufemi Peters, welcomed the team and commended them for their support to the university, saying that the university has benefited from the AAU’s provision of internet connectivity.
Peters said he had personally inspected the newly installed IT facilities around the university campus and assured them of the university’s utmost satisfaction.
AAU’s team leader, Ms. Irene Dufoe Addai, intimated the Vice-Chancellor of the purpose of their visit, noting that they came to ensure that the university has a stable internet connection, as the university runs on internet connectivity.
On her part, the DVC, Prof. Monioluwa Olaniyi also commended the centre’s director, explaining that Prof. Jokthan and her team have been contributing immensely to the development of the university.
Addressing the AAU team, Prof. Olaniyi told them that NOUN has an IT committee that oversees the technology activities in the university which she chairs.
“You know we are largely driven by technology. Also, at that committee, we get audits of the activities of each of our units, ACETEL has contributed greatly to that committee,” she said.
Responding, Ms. Dufoe Addai explained that her team was on the verification visit not to penalise rather they came to help not only ACETEL, but NOUN generally to ensure that every part of the university is connected.
Earlier, Prof. Grace Jokthan had briefed them about the newly installed Plasma Television, which, she said, has been installed in all the faculties of the university to enable facilitators have a wider reach of students and easily interact with them where ever they are.
“We are in the process of moving the Directorate of Learning Content Management System (DLCMS) from the present place, because they are sharing a building with the media but given the importance of that directorate in the university, a whole building is being dedicated to that. It is actually at the finishing stage; it is the same building that will host our C-Code studios.
“We felt that it will not be good to put it there and in the next month we are moving them again. So we just mounted it in our CISCO Lab,” she added.
The AAU team members took turns to ask the ACETEL ICT officers some technical questions regarding the internet connection in the centre to ascertain the number of times internet connection has been interrupted so as to be able to help curb the problem.
The team toured the Directorate of Information Technology (DICT), the Directorate of Learning Content Management System (DLCMS) and the NOUN Library to check the IT facilities on ground and to ascertain the level of functionality.
The Directors of ICT and DLCMS and the University Librarian received the team at their respective offices and showed them their IT facilities and the effective functionality of the equipment.
Other members of the visiting AAU team were representatives of the World Bank Consultant and the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC).
