Unilorin VC, Egbewole urges tertiary institutions to adopt emerging technologies
The vice-chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Prof. Abdulwahab Olasupo Egbewole has said that institution that are unable to invest in content aggregation and technology will struggle to compete and meet their operating costs, particularly in terms of tuition pricing.
Prof Egbewole while presenting the 7th Convocation Lecture (entitled: LEARNING IS SCHOOLING PLUS) of the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, said that the obsession with quantity over quality is often triggered by an obsession with certificates while neglecting “sabificate” be looked into.
He stressed that in today’s world, educators aspiring to be relevant must seek to provide solutions to the challenges of schooling using the integration of innovative pedagogies, emerging technologies and best practices for teaching, learning and research that lead to reflection, problem-solving, informed decision-making, and practical experience.
The vice-chancellor, while commending the management of institution, which has been, largely described, as the fastest growing university in Nigeria for honouring him with the invitation, observed that his interest is to draw attention to the conundrum that education seems incapable of solving the problems of Nigeria.
He added that it is worthwhile and indeed compelling, to investigate this puzzle with a view to understanding and resolving the humogous investment we have made and making on education, while he opined that in the matter of training of students’ character, the Nigerian educational institutions have performed very poorly.
In the discourse, Olasupo Egbewole, submitted that wellness is not the absence of diseases and peace is not absence of war as presumed that when institutions declared at convocation ceremonies that graduating students have been found worthy in learning and character, it only implies that they have not been found guilty of negative character such as examination malpractice, cultism, rape and theft. How truthful are we to the maxim?
Furthermore, Egbewole explained that the outcomes should be interpreted carefully, because they do not imply a casual link: it does not prove that increasing education necessarily produces democratic outcomes everywhere in the world. The academic researches does suggest that there is a casual link between education and democratisation. Indeed, Egbewole submitted that a number of empirical papers have found that this positive relationship remains after controlling for many other country characteristics.
He said, rather than focusing on future jobs, the lecture examined future work skills competencies and abilities necessary across various jobs and work environments. The convocation lecturers listed skills such as social intelligence, novel and adaptable thinking, cross-cultural competence, computational thinking, new media literacy and trans- disciplinarity amongst others to reinvent the wheel of our education. Thus, implementing the innovative CCMAS required some cautions that we thread carefully in developing the “glocalized” curriculum.
However, Egbewole advocated that the ideal education should be a combination of both quality and quantity, why lamenting that the massive rise in the number of articles published is utterly out of proportion to the real improvement in quality research.
