| Decision Makers 2001 Decision Makers Workshop at the NUC Sponsored by Colleges and Universities Affiliations Program / U.S. State Department
Participants were supplied with two books, Nicholas Negroponte's "Being Digital" and Educause's "Preparing Your Campus for a Networked Future," as well as a sample journal from Educause or Syllabus. More importantly, participants were supplied with the WiderNet Project's "Decision Makers Resource Library" on CD. This CD contains a disk-based Web with over 6,000 books, articles, and Web pages pertaining to ICT in higher education and developing countries. These resources represent a large percentage of the subject area articles that have been "published" over the past five years. WiderNet Project staff secured permissions from hundreds of authors and publishers to make the make these materials available to our participants (and for them to make them available on their campus Intranets...) The workshop convened from 9am-5pm each day, with Missen making the following presentations:
Professor L. S. O. Liverpool made a presentation on the ICT experiences of the University of Jos and Dr. Mamman Aminu Ibrahim made a presentation on the progress of the National Universities Commission's Nigerian University Network (NUNet.) There was considerable discussion during the presentations, which spilled over to lunch (supplied by the NUC) and we actually went an hour overtime the second day with all the participants choosing to stay on and cover one last presentation. Feedback from the participants was overwhelmingly positive, although many expressed exasperation at how much more was left to be covered. Several participants requested further training in Internet and computer use.
On the last day participants also received a copy of the The Gutenberg Project archives which have been converted into a Web format by students at the University of Jos. The CD contains over 1,200 works in the English language which are in the public domain. Consultant's Notes The NUC did an extraordinary job of hosting this year's workshop. They provided a hotel room for me, lunch for all the participants both days, and made their staff and training center fully available to the project. Since I have had experience with doing training in Nigeria, I met the Monday prior to the training with the NUC staff. We discussed the psychology behind putting on a first-class training so that the participants could focus entirely on the subject matter and not get sidetracked by incidental matters. This meant things like: having plenty of note taking supplies on hand; arranging the tables and chairs to allow space for participants and the technical support staff to easily move around; having coffee, tea, and mints available at all times; providing nutritious and satisfying snacks at the breaks; and having well-stocked and clean restrooms. We spent most of Monday reconfiguring the training center, testing the presentation equipment and the spares, installing software on the workstations, removing non-functioning equipment from the room, cleaning the walls and furniture, and preparing the handouts. By the end of the day, everyone knew their role and had done at least one dry run. The NUC staffers were very accommodating and seemed to enjoy the experience. The preparation paid off. The next day we had very few technological glitches and the participants seemed impressed and comfortable. Because we were asking the staff to stay overtime and upset their usual travel schedules (a serious consideration in Abuja, where the nightly commute might be two hours long), and to encourage their full enthusiasm, we provided each staff member a nominal supplement of N200 (less than 2 USD) each evening. While the WiderNet Project provided flowers and "Bature" cookies for the first day's break, the NUC provided an elaborate array of drinks and snacks throughout the two days. |
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