Creating videos with student role-players to reach learners in Minna, Nigeria

Dr Caroline Alenoghena is a lecturer in the Department of Telecommunications Engineering at the Federal University of Technology Minna, where she teaches courses in engineering and financial literacy. She also lectures at the Center for Open, Distance and e-Learning at the university.

She has created a series of short videos for her undergraduate students, using cameras for capturing the videos and Adobe 360 for editing and to add sound effects and graphics. In some cases, she has used students to role-play in her videos, and some have become very good at it.

She feels that the scenarios she describes in her financial literacy course are more realistic when demonstrated visually through role play in videos.

She hosts the videos on the university’s learning management system to enable her students to access them.

Earlier on, she relied on the technical expertise of the staff in the multimedia department. With time she has honed her skills and those of the students who work with her. The students are excited and always willing to participate as role-players. The university has supported with equipment and software to create her videos.

Dr Alenoghena has been bringing technology into her teaching since 2017. She was motivated by her academic background in Information Technology and her personal interest and drive.

She feels it has helped to make her classes more engaging and enhances the reach of her teaching material. Creating digital content and putting it up online also enables students to learn at more convenient times, or in ways that suit them better.

As well as creating the content, Dr Alenoghena uses Google Meet to connect with her students online.

The greatest challenge has been the cost of the tools to produce the videos, as software subscriptions are often expensive. The university has been very supportive in terms of subscribing to software, but lecturers who want to work in this way often expend personal resources to create their content.

Dr Alenoghena tends to use infographics a great deal to illustrate her material and communicate key concepts, and while there are good collections of these online, they often lack local content.

She sees the university as a leader in digital learning and technology. It has helped to foster a good working environment, and many of her colleagues are committed to teaching with technology.

The university has also forged partnerships with IT-oriented organizations, such as the National Information Technology Development Agency, which has established an IT Hub, and Huawei which has a training academy on the campus.

Interview conducted by Oluchi Okere, Federal University of Technology, Akure