By Steve Ajagbe
On Wednesday, 10th August 2022, the Management of Crown Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State organized a one-day seminar to broaden the knowledge of its academic staff in the area of digitalization, Information Technology, and how to move in the trend, so as not to be left behind.
The program which lasted for about 3 hours was well attended by virtually all academic staff.
A University Don who is a Senior Lecturer in the Languages department, specifically English, at the Bamidele Olumilua University, Ikere-Ekiti, in Ekiti State, Dr. Faloye Bankole, took time to deliver his lecture on how to stand out in this digital age.
The theme of the seminar is “Realigning with the digital trends in the academia: Nigeria Polytechnics in perspective”.
Dr. Faloye said the world is moving into full digitalization in the education sector, to this end academics must strive to align with the global trends.Below here is an excerpt of the seminar.
“When I was in Birmingham, they were analyzing Polytechnics in Nigeria through the global map, I saw Crown Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria I didn’t see Odo there.
“So I was wondering, so this Polytechnic is on the global map. I was wondering so digitalization can open doors.
“You just find yourself somewhere one day. It can be at the airport or anywhere. You may be asked, where are you from? I’m from Campbell.
“They will Google the thing. It will come out. Your data will be there. You’ll be surprised that digitalization breaks down geographical barriers in life. It breaks down many things.
“Today’s lecture workshop is on realigning, that word realignment is key. If you drive the car and you found out your car has a very poor alignment, what will happen to the tyre? the next thing you do, you go to the vulcanizer and realign the tire, and after realignment what will happen? Sir, you have a smooth drive. That is one.
“Two, you will be saving costs. You need not replace your tyres every time. Three, safety. So those are the three objectives we want to talk about today.
“How can we realign our teaching, our learning to the digital trend? We want to look at some tools that we can apply here if the Director and his Management can recommend them because it’s going to be a recommendation at the end of this talk, and if it’s approved, you’ll find them useful in your different offices.
“Yes, I’m a language educator. I speak English, I do this, but this is beyond language education. Today this is global. It cuts across every discipline, every subject matter.
“How can we realign and what can realign you? How can we align, what are the tools we can use to realign in the Polytechnic here?
“We have what I call, Digital literacy but before I go to that. I said, do you know that the globe is shifting? We are talking of trends in this world, especially in the area of education and most specifically at Crown Polytechnic. Completely people do I do Nigeria?
“Things are shifting. People have so much depended on the conventional mode of teaching; facing the board, we have to go fully digitalized in education.
“And what do we mean by digitalization? There’s something in the world we now call digital literacy. My mother-in-law is a market woman at Oja there.
“When this transfer and everything came out she didn’t know anything about that. Do you believe that last week my In-law, I think she’s about 75 years old now? She was chatting with me on Facebook. That means my mother-in-law is digitally literate.
“We have all kinds of what are called sub-teams surrounding them. We have what we call functional skills. If you don’t have that skill you can’t withdraw money from the ATM. I want to enter my bank and one woman is standing by the side. She was there for close to 30 minutes.
Do you know her problem? She didn’t know how to operate the ATM. So she had to call me and thank God I wasn’t a fraudulent guy. She may be unfortunate to beckon to a 419.
She didn’t know how to enter the pin of her ATM card, so that is what we call the functional skill. If you don’t have that skill, I’m sorry you may be left behind in the world.
“Yes, we have creativity which I’m going to demonstrate today. What creativity do we have in the safety realignment of your tyre? We have effective communication. I’m using this.
I’m using my PowerPoint and I’m communicating to you, that is digital literacy. We also have the ability to find and select information. Let’s put that one aside, that’s another workshop on his own.
“Digital literacy improves functional skills, creativity, critical thinking and evaluation, cultural and social understanding, collaboration, the ability to find and select information, effective communication, and above all e-safety.
Dr. Faloye added that digital literacy is very essential for academics as it helps them to be ahead of their contemporaries.
“One of the things that put me ahead of my mates during my Ph.D. program was the fact that I engaged in self-learning. This made me combine the study of Language with digitalization.
“I have attended several conferences, seminars, and workshops, and it had helped me a lot.”
He encouraged academics to embark on self-learning to make them stand different before their mates.
Dr. Faloye also charged participants about the need to have an orcid ID. He said with it information about them can be easily accessible all over the world. He said they can log on to orcid.org to do that.
He also took them through the process of generating a Quick Response Code (QR Code) for their CVs and affixing the same to it. The QR Code contains all information on their CVs compressed into a code.
The Facilitator also encouraged them to write and contribute to journal articles, particularly e-journals published in electronic format to remain relevant on google scholar.
He expected all academic staff to be registered on google scholar where their research works will be made public and easily searched on Google in any part of the world.
Also, the Rector of the Institution, Mr. Ajisola Kolawole said the importance of the seminar is to update the IT knowledge of the academic staff of Crown Polytechnic.
He advised members of staff to always make themselves available for training and seminars of such nature to develop themselves.
The second session of the program featured the general review and appraisal of the 2021/2022 academic session. Members of staff gave suggestions that could move the Polytechnic forward.
Participants expressed their happiness in the Polytechnic management for organizing the seminar and were given a certificate of participation at the end of the program.
Ajagbe Steve.O, (Public Relations Officer), Crown Polytechnic Writes From Ado Ekiti