The COL President maintained that students were becoming more interested in designing their own curricula, with the emergence of new technology which also unleashed what he described as a storm of ‘disruptive innovation’, that forced many workplaces to redesign jobs constantly. He added that with this principle of students referring to their courses of studies as ‘my degree, my way’, there had been a corresponding multiplication in the tools that students could use for this purpose, ranging from Open Education Resources (OERs) and the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)- a direct development from OER.

According to the lecturer, these new trends were given a massive boost due to the move to online learning, which until recently, was thought to be of low quality among universities. It was also supported by the fact that students tended to move towards shorter courses, which they believed guaranteed intense concentration on learning and enabled them to succeed. He added that the qualifications that defined the output of higher education were being reformed, such as awards in the form of open badges.

He, however, stated that the challenge of these online offerings and any qualifications attached to them were to ensure quality, insisting that like the rest of Mr. Maiyaki, Profs. Okojie, Aminu and Akinrinade higher education, quality assurance systems had to move with the times. Professor Daniel stated that there was plenty of room to develop approaches to higher education models that were authentically African and Nigerian. He recommended that all students must be trained to examine any statement critically, to assess the evidence for and against it and to make up their minds, on their own, whether to accept the statement, reject, modify or develop it further.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/National-Universities-Commission/153655261473222#