TETFund to deploy blackboard learning system to institutions

THE Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has concluded plans to deploy a learning platform known as the Blackboard Learning System to provide access to online academic resources in universities and other tertiary education in Nigeria.

Accordingly the Fund has organised a three-day workshop on the theme ‘The Implementation of the Enhanced Blackboard Learning Management System and Train The Trainer Programme’ in Abuja for Directors of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) from various institutions across the country.

The executive secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, speaking at the event, said the platform will provide over two million students and staff of higher education institutions in the country with massive access to online  academic resources.

Echono said the workshop, which attracted Directors of ICT from the 253 beneficiary institutions, was part of measures put in place to bridge the digital skills gap in universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in Nigeria.

While saying the intervention would ensure that physical and online modes of teaching and learning are cemented once and for all in tertiary institutions across the country, Echono said Nigerian students  would be able to compete favourably with their contemporaries on the global stage with the deployment of the Blackboard platform.

Speaking further, the TETFund boss said the fund is improving its allocation to ICT development in its intervention programmes to ensure that the country meets up with the present digital reality across the globe.

“Prior to 2022, our ICT Support Intervention was N15 million for universities and N7.5 million for polytechnics and Colleges of Education. We took bold steps to increase this intervention to N100 million for universities and N50 million for polytechnics and Colleges of Education,-65” he said.

“We envisaged that we would be able to address two main issues: (a) problems common to all our institutions, and (b) problems peculiar and unique to each institution. And we have done this by introducing converged services, which this programme is a part of, and by issuing guidelines for FY21/22/23 which will enable utilisation of funds to address each institution’s peculiar ICT needs.

“Furthermore, I should point out that the increase to ICT support intervention marks the largest single increase to any of our intervention lines underscoring the priority we are giving to ICT as an enabler for teaching, learning and our research environment.

“As you are aware, the Fund is not only committed to digital literacy in particular, but to the transformation of our education system by leveraging on ICT.

“Accordingly, we have commenced various programmes including the Thesis Digitisation Programme, Beneficiary Identity Management Service (BIMS), Tertiary Education, Research, and Application Systems (TeRAS), Consolidated Library Access Platform (CLAP), Aggregated Journal Subscription from EBSCO,

“Online Blackboard, Sponsored Mobile Internet Data on and off campus, Remote Monitoring, BPP Compliance Portal, amongst others. These programmes will deliver significant value to the ICT landscape of our Beneficiary Institutions.” Echono said.