Going beyond PowerPoint teaching by using voice notes, social media and creating new digital materials in Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria

Dr Jacob Opele is a senior lecturer in the Department of Library and Information Science, Federal University of Oye-Ekiti. He has been teaching for ten years and is also a licensed health information practitioner. Dr Opele teaches library and information science courses in his department and in other departments in the university. He also teaches in a part-time capacity at other institutions.

Having used PowerPoint for his teaching, he has more recently started to use a combination of available tools, including social media platforms, as part of his efforts to make his content more accessible to his students.

Dr Opele records his lessons in audio format through ‘voice notes’ and shares them to groups of his students on WhatsApp and through email groups. He uses free “voice note” apps, such as Google Keep and Smart Voice Recorder. With these he records his lectures and shares them with students. He also accompanies his voice notes on WhatsApp with slides.

This has been a particularly effective means to engage with his students during Covid-19, in order to comply with the social distancing protocol. He also uses Zoom as a teaching tool, to ensure teacher presence. For Dr Opele, it is important that learning tools are affordable and can be widely accessible.

Dr Opele creates content using online sources as well as physical resources. He is careful to avoid plagiarism. There is currently no quality assurance process in the university for such content, but Dr Opele says it would be a welcome development. His academic background — in health information management and knowledge management — has encouraged him to create his own materials and to try to manage digital knowledge assets more effectively.

For Dr Opele, innovation is about improving an existing way of doing things, or by introducing completely new methods. Using digital tools and platforms, he is able to reach out to his community of learners with ease and convenience from any location.

It has been a radical departure from the traditional approach to teaching that has required lecturers to be physically present in order to engage with learners. He believes digital and remote learning methods have come to stay.

The expertise of the teaching community at FUT Minna in digital tools is average, Dr Opele says, and the faculty would benefit from training to make better use of technology in teaching.

While the university administration is quite open to staff applying technology in their teaching, he feels that they have not pushed it strongly enough and have not tried to institutionalize the practice. For now, lecturers are expected to apply the technology available to the best of their ability.

Currently, digital content creation is hindered by limited support from the university at the institutional level, in the form of good internet facilities, power supply, and access to devices on campus. The lack of financial support for digital projects is a problem, and policies for managing digital content are also lacking.

But more positively, the university administration is open to good suggestions and allows innovations to thrive. The ICT Centre has good facilities, and staff have access to an expansive e-library.

Dr Opele suggests that the Nigerian Universities Commission should step in to support digital learning through the development and promotion of the necessary policy and to give greater direction to the university system. Opportunities to collaborate with institutions beyond the country would also yield great results, he believes.

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