Mastering new tools to create multimedia content for learners in Ogbomosho, Nigeria

Mrs Mary Adeoye is an e-tutor at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology’s Open and Distance Learning Centre in Oyo State, Nigeria. She teaches courses in accounting, marketing, business and related social sciences at the undergraduate level and has been teaching in the centre for the past seven years.

The university — known as LAUTECH — is a dual mode university, with programmes delivered face-to-face to students on campus and to other students through distance learning.

Mrs Adeoye uses software such as Camtasia to create multimedia content for her students, particularly videos. To create her content, she combines information from different sources, and adapts these to fit the centre’s standard templates for audio and visual materials.

She prepares slides using PowerPoint and PDF documents and using Camtasia (a screen recording and video editing tool), she demonstrates and explains the lessons to her students. The lessons are edited further with Camtasia to remove any noise and the recording is then uploaded on the centre’s learning management system for access by students. Videos are also sent to distance learning students on CD as part of their learning package, while some are made available on YouTube.

LAUTECH has its own studio to support staff to develop content and to provide technical support to content creators. Mary is now adept at using Camtasia to create video lessons for her students.

Mrs Adeoye defines innovation as doing things in a new way — such as adapting her lessons into other formats for learning. The results have surpassed her original expectations, and the content is quite different from what can be found in traditional textbooks — it is easier for learners to use and appeals to them more.

Creating such content hasn’t been without its challenges, though. Adapting materials into digital formats demands significant time, in addition to sufficient internet access and reliable electricity. At times the university’s studio resources have not been sufficient, so recordings had to be done in other environments.

The university values the content that is created and provides subject and language experts to ensure what is produced is of good quality. Staff receive an honorarium for their work to develop content, and that serves as a form of motivation.

As well as supporting lecturers in the face-to-face teaching programme to convert their materials into digital formats, the centre has also helped other distance learning centres to start up their programmes by providing training and mentoring.

Mrs Adeoye feels that further training for academics, to enhance their capacity to create their own content, would be valuable. But she also notes that a degree of personal drive to learn and explore new technologies and tools is needed.

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