Up to 1.2 million students in Nigeria qualify to begin college each year, but the country’s 104 universities can only accept 300,000 students. In response to the great demand for distance learning to make in-country education more accessible, Michigan Virtual University (MVU) is supporting Nigeria’s first e-learning project with Mediasite by Sonic Foundry Inc., the trusted leader for video content management and
webcasting solutions.
MVU has been using Mediasite to create online learning materials and record and stream events since 2007. Through a partnership with Venture Garden Group, MVU is bringing its e-learning expertise to Nigeria. MVU and Venture Garden Group designed an e-learning solution based on Mediasite lecture capture for the Center for Distance Learning at Obafemi Awolowo University.
“Aside from this project, e-learning is not happening in Nigeria. It’s starting to evolve as a discussion, and there is great demand for college-level education. E-learning is the only practical way to bring a significant new group of learners into the fold,” said Kirby Milton, VP of Operations at MVU. “When I heard the scope and the scale and what the project was trying to accomplish it was an immediate leap to Mediasite as the core technology for us to capture hundreds of hours of lectures and present them in an online format.”
Implementing a large scale lecture capture project in a developing country meant Nigerian faculty needed significant training from MVU and Venture Garden Group to get them ready to present in front of a camera. MVU acquired two Mediasite Mobile HD Recorders in January 2013 which were transported to Nigeria to begin training.
“Getting lecturers to develop their content in e-learning compliant formats on their own was not easy. Instead, lecturers were taken to a resort to work on their content in proper formats. Many came without their course materials and laptops while others had no idea what e-learning entailed,” Milton said.
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This article was first published on 15th July 2013
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