GOOD NEWS: NOUN Set To Replace Textbooks With Tablet Computers

The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN)
is working toward producing its course materials
as tablet computers rather than textbooks, its
Vice-Chancellor, Professor Abdalla Adamu, has
said.
Adamu disclosed this while receiving Irina
Bokova, United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Director-
General, who paid him a courtesy call on
Thursday in Abuja.
According to him, the largest area of support that
UNESCO gives to NOUN is the Open Education
Resource (OER).
“The OER is an online repository of a huge
number of resources in education and the
beauty of it is that they are free and anybody
can access them.
When NOUN eventually matures to a package
called iNOUN, we will produce our materials as
tablets rather than as textbooks.
Virtually all the OERs will be downloaded on
the tablet so that people will take them along
wherever they are.
They do not need to have internet access in
order to have access to OER; this is one area
that UNESCO has been extremely dynamic and
helping us to acquire,” Adamu said.
He said that OER was a part of the equity drive of
both NOUN and UNESCO in order to make sure
that people around the world had access to
quality education at no cost.
The vice-chancellor said that NOUN was
networked to OER and UNESCO in order to provide
thousands of Nigerians with an opportunity to
have access to quality education materials free of
charge.
According to him, one of the OERs the institution
is running at the moment is the History and
Philosophy Science.
He said that one major challenge confronting
NOUN was that the public was not well-informed
on the validity of Open and Distance Learning
(ODL).
Adamu appealed to UNESCO to assist in projecting
and spreading the gospel of ODL as a veritable
tool for university education in the 21st century.
The vice-chancellor said that NOUN had provided
scholarships to prisoners and was focusing on
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), petty traders,
artisans, commercial drivers among others.
Responding, Bokova applauded NOUN for its
passionate support education and social inclusion.
She said that NOUN represented everything in
the mandate of the SDG4 – Equality, Education for
all, reaching the unreached and distant and
marginalised.
“You are involved in achieving the SDG4 in all
its ramifications. You cannot achieve excellence
in vocational education without higher
education.
We need to stimulate Research, Science,
Technology and Innovation; we need to train
teachers.
You have plenty of energy and we will continue
to support you,” she said.
NAN reports that Bokova, the first woman to lead
the UNESCO, is in Nigeria for a three-day working
visit.
Bokova, a Hungarian, was elected UNESCO
Director-General in 2009 and re-elected for a
second-term in 2015.