Building Digital Technical Capacity at Nigerian Universities: Laying the Foundation for Greater Digital Participation and Collaboration

Institutional Partnerships Program
PROGRESS REPORT
April 30, 2001

Section I: Qualitative Reporting

1. Project Summary:

The partnership between the University of Iowa and the Nigerian National Universities Commission (NNUC) seeks to develop the capacity of technicians and computer support personnel to develop, maintain, and promote the use of computers and networks at Nigerian universities. It also seeks, in partnership with Kirkwood Community College, to create links between the University of Iowa and multiple Nigerian universities via the Nigerian National Universities Commission (NNUC).

Major accomplishments in the reporting period.

• The University of Iowa has established an effective office in the International Center of the university and employed and trained two student assistants to work with the project.
  

• Primary activities have involved the development of close working relationships with faculty and staff at the university whose cooperation and participation will significantly enhance the training programs. Collaboration with Jim Duncan at the UI Library and Dave Dobbins, Director of the UI Instructional Technology Services have strengthened intra-university links and laid the foundation for future collaboration with those units.
  

• Visits have been made to Kirkwood Community College and Iowa State University in Ames to recruit trainers and establish closer working relationships.
  

• Visit of project partner Dr. Ibrahim Aminu (see c.v. on the WiderNet web site at: http://www.widernet.org/uilinkages/partners/ibrahim.htm). Dr. Aminu's visit to the UI was made possible by his visit to the U.S. to attend meetings in Washington, D.C. in January. During his visit, Dr. Aminu consulted with the ALO Project Directors, met with university officials, met project personnel and toured the WiderNet Offices at the International Center. His visit provided us the opportunity to introduce our project to several senior UI administrators and to secure their support for the linkages with Nigerian Universities. Dr. Ibrahim also met a number of UI technicians and toured instructional technology classrooms and laboratories across campus. A record of his visit is available at: http://www.widernet.org/ibrahim. The visit was especially helpful in demonstrating the size of undertaking and commitment needed by universities to establish and maintain instructional technology capabilities to support their teaching, research and service missions.
  

• In preparing self-study materials and creating documents and training modules, we have been contacting and securing permission for the use of documents from authors and institutions. These materials, representing over a hundred articles and thousands of technical support Web pages, are being used to create a basic library and resource database for the training to be conducted in the project. A number of books have been reviewed and several selected for use in participant training. Several computer-based training (CBT) products have been reviewed and negotiations are underway to purchase these products at a reduced cost.
  

• Nigerian institutions, in collaboration with the NNUC and the University of Iowa have been nominating and selecting participants in the first year training. This process has taking longer than anticipated owing to several disruptions in internet/e-mail access on a number of campuses in Nigeria as well as faculty strikes throughout the country.
  

• Project staff members have done considerable technical consulting with Nigerian partners. From working with Cisco Academy to evaluate the suitability of their training software for use in the WiderNet Project and at several Nigerian universities, to bench testing New Deal software. (A software package for older computers marketed to developing countries.) WiderNet has provided information on power backup resources, top-level domain (TLD) hosting for the national Internet domain, virus protection, and wireless networking.
  

• UI personnel have also been actively consulting with the NNUC, UNIJOS, and other universities in Nigeria in preparing for the training sessions as well as providing occasional technical support to participating universities.

2. Project Status.

The initial stage of the project has taken longer than originally planned. With reference to the initial project schedule, 40 trainees were to have been identified and training topics agreed upon in the first two months of the project, September and October, 2000. This schedule proved to be overly optimistic, as communication among and between the NNUC and the participating institutions required more time than originally allocated. On each campus, administrators, faculty, and staff meetings were required to settle on the proposed list of trainees. There have also been recent strikes among the academic staff at Nigerian institutions that has made planning certain of the actives more complicated. Development of the training materials and obtaining permission to copy Web based resources and training modules has been progressing well, but securing the necessary permission from authors and institutions has also introduced delay into the training schedule.

Finally, the Nigerian partners have counseled patience in identifying the technical trainees until the decision makers were identified for a parallel training project we are undertaking. This has already proven fruitful in that the decision makers, familiar with our projects, have been more forthcoming in identifying technical trainees.

Owing to these delays in the Fall, it was determined in November that the original scheduled training in February 2001 was not possible. We have since discussed the training program schedule with out Nigerian partners and have decided that the First Year training program will now take place in the late Summer 2001 to be followed by a similar training session in the early Summer of 2002.

3. Project Planned Activities for next six months.

The partnership will provide training for the first group of forty (40) trainees. Final selection of participants is being completed by partner institutions in Nigeria in consultation with the NNUC and University of Iowa project directors. Individuals at partner institutions are being provided self-study materials and computer-based training tools prepared or procured by University of Iowa trainers. Participants will interact with trainers and other participants and be expected to demonstrate basic competence in their topic areas. Participant performance will determine their eligibility to attend an annual workshop at NNUC headquarters in Abuja to be held in August, 2001. The week-long Workshop will be conducted by U.S. project directors and trainers and provide participants with hands-on, intensive training. Participants will be tested and certified at the end of the Workshop. Following the Workshop, a two-day Conference on computers and networking, open to the public, will be held at the University of Jos.

4. Significant goals or objectives amendments since the original project proposal.

The only major amendment has been to the timing of the initial training period and Workshop. All of the significant goals and objectives remain the same. We believe that the rescheduling of the training period and workshop have actually strengthened the project and increased the likelihood of success. The longer planning period has permitted us to collect and gain permission to use more and better training materials than might if we had attempted to maintain the original project schedule.

5. According to your records, how much money has the partnership drawn down on ALO funds so far? 
$ 9,900.

Section II: Quantitative Reporting for USAID Indicators

Last updated Friday, July 19, 2002 by Cliff Missen