TETFund faults universities over slow use of digital learning platform
- TETFund says universities are slow to use its digital learning platform, TERAS, despite the money spent on it.
- Its executive secretary, Sonny Echono, wants more than 60 per cent of lecturers trained on the platform.
- He also raised concerns about campus security, student hostels and AI-driven cheating.
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has criticised Nigerian tertiary institutions for not making enough use of its digital learning platform, saying the slow uptake wastes public money.
TETFund's executive secretary, Sonny Echono, spoke at a two-day meeting with heads of beneficiary institutions, governing council chairmen and bursars in Abuja on Wednesday.
The platform, known as TERTiary Education, Research, Applications and Services (TERAS), gives students and lecturers access to more than 400 digital libraries holding thousands of academic articles, books and course materials, according to TETFund. It is meant to let students follow lectures and read course materials outside the classroom.
What Echono said
Echono said TETFund expected more than 60 per cent of teaching staff in beneficiary institutions to be competent in using the platform by now. He said the non-use of the platform wastes the money spent to build it.
“We've observed slow adoption rates,” he said, adding that institutions can run a hybrid model with online lectures and reach more students than their physical classrooms can hold.
He urged the institutions to embrace technology rather than fear it, and to build internal systems to manage the risk of students using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to cheat. He said institutions must reduce that risk while still using the benefits of new technology so their graduates can compete abroad.
Echono also said TETFund was moving all its intervention processes online, and that some older institutions were still struggling to submit reports digitally nearly four years after the shift began. He said newly established institutions have some excuse, but older ones do not.
On campus safety, he said students and lecturers must be able to work in a safe environment, and that institutions should design security measures that suit their own situations.
He said fewer than 50 per cent of students live on campus, leaving many to travel at night and use libraries late. TETFund, he said, is building hostels directly and through public-private partnerships (PPPs), where institutions provide land and private partners build and manage the facilities. He expressed disappointment at the slow response to the hostel PPP plan.
He also urged universities to earn money from shopping malls, commercial farms and other campus ventures, saying government funding alone cannot cover their needs amid inflation and rising construction costs.
Mallam Faruk, who represented the executive secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Abdullahi Yusufu Ribadu, said TETFund had kept supporting universities. He asked the institutions to provide safe accommodation for students and to use intervention funds wisely.
What happens next
The meeting was held to review intervention priorities before next year's disbursement guidelines and to decide which programmes to keep, change or drop. Echono said the exercise would help determine programmes to retain, modify or discontinue based on their performance and relevance.
