By Martin Paul
Abuja
Participants at a one-day workshop on “Blackboard” workshop on e-learning have called for effective use of electronics for both teachers and students of e-learning programmes in the country.
The workshop, organised by Trust Global Technologies Limited, stressed that the use of technologies, would tackle the problems of plagiarism in the university system.
Chairman of the group, Dr Gregory Ibe, who is also the Chancellor, Gregory University, Uturu, Abia state, enumerated the benefits of “Blackboard” learning to universities.
He said since the coming of internet to Nigeria, the integrity of final year thesis works and class assignments has become a subject of ridicule.
He said that 90 per cent of most final year students’ projects were “copy and paste” as students lifted research works from other universities and changed the addresses and names.
Ibe said that plagiarism had, unfortunately, become part and parcel of the Nigerian education system, even at post graduate level.
“The solutions provided by Blackboard soundly address these challenges from academic integrity and openness – these solutions are long overdue for implementation in Nigerian universities.
“It will astronomically enhance your visibility and attract students’ enrollment growth.
“The system will enable students to access course materials, reference guides, hand-outs, reading lists and course activities anytime, anywhere from any device,’’ he said.
The chancellor said that aside, eliminating plagiarism, the platform would reduce cost of technology investment and improve the quality of learning to global standards.
In his presentation, Mr. Emmanuel Clemot, Regional Vice-President, Africa, Blackboard, said that what mattered in any technology was its impact on society.
Clemot said that 80 per cent of the top 10 institutions in the world used Blackboard technology.
According to him, Nigeria is facing the challenge of giving access to education to a huge population which can be addressed by Blackboard.
Blackboard is a leading company in technology providing e-learning platform. What we want to do is to partner with universities- provide technology access to education.
“We have been in Africa for 10 years; we have leading institutions in South Africa using our platform with about 50, 000 students having access.
“We started in Nigeria in 2015; we started with Gregory University even as we target all Nigerian universities, ‘’ he said.