Education

Psychometrics as new course will enhance students’ potential — IPC chairman

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3 years ago

IPC Chairman

Otunba Abimbola Davis, an award-winning author and a man of many parts is the executive chairman of the International Psychometrics Centre (IPC), Ibadan, the first of its kind in Nigeria and Africa as well as the third in the world. In this interview, he speaks to MODUPE GEORGE on his discovery of the innovation, establishment of its centre and efforts to introduce it into the Nigerian education system and other issues. Excerpts:

What prompted the idea of establishing a psychometrics centre in Nigeria?

As a matter of fact, the International Psychometric Centre in Nigeria is the third in the world as well as the first and only centre in Nigeria. We have the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, which is the first, and then the Psychometric Centre in America as the second. This is actually a major plus for the country. Sometimes in 2014, I had this discussion with Professor Rust at the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre which is part of the Cambridge University in England. I actually was talking to him about the possibility of going for a doctoral degree in Grammar because I was in the process of releasing a book. Having left the education system for quite some time, I thought of something that I could do to brush up my experience in this regard.

Along the line, we got talking about psychometrics issues, and I realised that we were actually practicing psychometrics in Nigeria through the aptitude tests, but there was a major gap. As a country, we are fond of introducing new things and following trends, but we fail to get proper orientation or train people in the new trends. The oil and gas industry started the aptitude tests, but the people they are testing are not trained on how to handle such. Whereas the aptitude tests, it is an arm of the psychometrics system. Somehow all of these things became so interesting to me and I decided to dig deep.

I also got to realise that every student in the West: Europe, American, among others is mandated to have psychometrics in their educational system. Over there, as a student, the first thing you need to know is who you truly are and what is your potential to study the right course or pursue the right career as well as what vocation or skill you can take along with it.

All of these discoveries are what prompted the idea of bringing psychometrics to Nigeria, many thanks to President Muhammadu Buhari and Honourable Minister for Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, who quickly realised the importance of psychometrics to our education system as a country and keyed into the vision. Credit must also be given to the former permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Architect Soni Echono, who quickly understood the importance of psychometrics as a course in the educational system.

In fact, the first thing he recommended then was that it should commence at the secondary school level. After the discussion at the ministerial level, the minister set up a committee on it, and it was the same zeal we saw in the directors and permanent secretaries. Relevant boards and stakeholders such as the National Universities Commission (NUC), National Board of Technical Education (NBTE) National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) and the likes were invited to form a body and later, we did a harmonisation in 2018. This was successfully done and totally sponsored by the Access Bank. The building we are using presently was actually refurbished by the Access Bank.

When exactly did you start?

It was established in 2018 to be precise, but the official commencement started last year. We just have five Psychometrics experts in the entire country, so how can they serve the entire nation? The least one can pay to study Psychometrics abroad as a short course is $500 dollars and the textbook is about $149. How many students can afford that? So, we had to speak to different stakeholders and we agreed to bring the cost of studying the course in Nigeria to as low as N3,000. We came up with a bulk system that affords the opportunity of running the course online at the International Psychometrics Centre, located in Ibadan.

How far have you been able to drive the innovation among institutions in the country?

I want to give kudos to the executive secretaries of NBTE and NCCE; they have been able to push the innovation to a very great level. Psychometrics is now a mandatory course in all the higher institutions in the country. We have been able to push the innovation across different institutions through our stakeholders. However, on the part of the students, you have to be very patient with them to make them realise that what you have brought to them is not a scam. As a result, we had to work with the student union leaders directly along with our desk officers who are trained by Cambridge University and are also part of our board members. We have received many commendation letters from schools, appreciating us for the new project and how it has affected the lives of the students. We run an online course for students, with most of our modules being prepared by Cambridge University. Apart from creating a better IT culture among students, the online course encourages them to read. For instance, the students are away from school now, but for us they are not, because they are still taking their courses, so there is really nothing missed. I hope the government will one day look at what we are doing and plunge all the schools to our online system.

How many students have you trained so far?

Right now, we have like 100,000 students on the programme and are expecting more in or before September to have all the schools. If we have all the polytechnics and colleges of education on the project alone, that will be over two smillion students and then by the time the universities are back into the system, the same thing would have happened.

As you make progress, do you intend to retain the teaching online or make it become a course/subject that will be taught in the classroom?

We have just five psychometricians in the country, so how do you teach the subjects or course in the classroom in such a situation? However, that may be obtainable at the secondary school level because there is the teacher’s or teaching guide. This can’t be done at the higher institution level. What we are trying to do later is to make it a course that can be hosted by the education stakeholders, then it can be inculcated in the curriculum and can be taught right in the classroom.

As a matter of fact the University of Ibadan is actually the only school that is offering psychometrics at the Master’s level through Professor Benjamin Ehigie. What we are trying to do is to sponsor 10 Master’s students in psychometrics in order to gradually rebuild the system, but we don’t want to rush. However, whether we are teaching the course in the classroom or not, it will still be offered online.

With your experience in breaking this new frontier, will you say that the Nigerian education system is prone to welcoming innovations? Can we share some of the challenges you faced before getting to this level?

There were lots of obstacles while launching this new idea, but then any project that would be successful must go along with challenges. In the process, I discovered that we have bastardised the education system in this nation for political reasons. You can imagine, in a bid to win an election, school authorities have been ordered not to allow students at the higher institution level to buy any book that costs more. How can students study without having books? In order to overcome this challenge, we had to provide the students with a highly subsidised textbook on psychometrics so that they can also have access to internationally recommended materials to study the course.

Another challenge is that while some rectors understood why they should embrace innovation, the school councils did not; there were one or two people who proved very difficult. We had to get consulting partners who went around enlightening and persuading the school authorities. This really worked because the school managements are now the ones selling the idea to one another. Aside from all these, you had the government policies to grapple with. The project was initiated in 2014 and we didn’t run it until 2021. I want to give kudos to Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, the former head of state, who happens to be the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the IPC in Nigeria. He has devoted everything to make things work, ditto with other supporters of the vision too.

How have you been able to cope with the technical aspect of the online programme, considering the Nigerian factor in terms of power, internet connectivity and the likes?

The good part of the online programme is that students can study anytime. The module is there online. The students can download it and read at their own convenient time. It is not about coming for lectures at a particular time, except if there is a general lesson for learners or during examination period which are taken together online. No doubt there have been challenges in this regard in some schools, but they are surmountable.

Apart from undergraduates, who else can study this course?

Anybody can study psychometrics. We hold training for personnel in the human resources, health sector, and the likes. Psychometrics is about character measurements and reliability. When it comes to crisis management for instance, the service of psychometricians is highly required. The study of psyhchometrics is beyond individuals. One major advantage of psychometric is that it can be deployed for recruitment exercises too.

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