What do you think student's pay for to come to an educational institution...

I was recently in Nigeria for official business and come across an editorial article in a local newspaper (National Mirror of February 16th) on "Graduate unemployment: The root causes", it was really astonishing. This is why.

The article starts by stating "Companies and organisations (public or private) distrust today's academic certificates. Thus such qualifications, which has already been reduced to a mere 'meal ticket' can no longer guarantee even a meal for their holders". The article goes on to say

 "The alarming rate of youth unemployment may be traced to certain factors. These include population growth,youth migration from rural to urban areas, stagnation in the manufacturing sector....but the most critical factor explaining the rising youth unemployment in the country is the simple truth that the typical Nigerian youth is unemployable even after training. Most of them lack the basic job skills the employer seeks in order to turn the organizational fortunes around". These are the reasons that are given:

1. "The unrestrained pursuit of lucre by parents,often making it difficulty to groom the children....exposing the child to wrong influences thus growing up lacking proper foundation for sound character. Later in life, such character flaws renders a person unemployable as a youth" .
2. "Personal manners which are generally poor characterized by lack of courtesy or respect, indiscipline, a poor dress sense and moral looseness are difficult to correct by the time a child has grown beyond a certain age"
3. "Closely related to the above is the skewed orientation of the school system which is no longer considered by many as a place to mould character. For instance, many students now throw away books and notes of previous classes passed as having been "passed"  the classes will never be needed again"
4. "Nigerian youth is more likely to exhibit some or all of the following: poor communication in standard English, a repulsive dress  sense, poor manners and immorality. How then can he defend his qualifications?"

Though I do not agree 100%  with the above, this article makes me ask the question "what do really students pay for when they join a particular educational institution". I have asked this question to lecturers and school administrators and at times I end up getting the response "certificates, knowledge etc". I don't agree that this is what they pay for. I want to believe that a discerning student with options will most likely choose an institution that he/she perceives to have a better teaching and learning experience. This experience will comprise of their perception on the quality of education they will receive, the networks they will create, the leadership and opportunities to excel presented, the competence exhibited in teaching, teaching resources etc.  Efforts that will improve the teaching and learning experience of a student should be the primary focus of any educational institution that intends to create value in its students.

Futuristic growth synopsis for 2010...

I remember last year (2009) a time like this when we were planning for this year (2010), with something like a nostalgia.  Days have gone fast and I cannot believe it is the end of a "new" year again. With the benefit of hind-sight, I would like to point out some of our key growth areas. Ofcourse we have had our challenges but I will leave this to another post in the near future. Futuristic has been in operation for the last four years. Each year we witness growth of which we would like to thank our estimeed clients, partners and staff members for this. Our growth has been in a number of areas:

1. Growth in our Software Development Unit with a products portfolio comprising of Enterprise Resource Planning Health Management Information System (in implementation at the Karen Hospital encompassing both clinical and final modules and other mid sized hospitals in the East African region), Legal Case Management Software implemented at a number of institutions including the KPLC, Document Management and Archiving Systems implemented in a number of utility companies,College Management Information System implemented at the NIST among other educational institutions, Rescue and Membership Management Information System implemented at the FDSA among others . The local market has continued to realize the importance of customised software and how well designed and properly implemented software is critical for better service delivery, resource management, profit maximization etc. Every organisation has unique business processes which gives it a competitive edge. These business processes should not be tampered with to suit a particular software application but instead the software application should be customised to suit the business processes. It is unfortunate that a number of organisations implement their software solutions without this consideration.
2. On the side of training, we have been involved in a number of corporate trainings for this year including:
   
   • IT security training for various ministries and agencies in the Kenya Goverment
   • Office Automation training for a number of public organisations in Kenya
   • eLearning a Content Development for a number of Universities in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. To mention afew (Makerere - Partnering with RUFORUM and AgShare), Moi University and Haramaya University (In partnership with AgShare ) among others
   • In partnership with CTA , Futuristic has conducted a number of  Web2 for development training at ICRAF, Baraka College and Moi University
   • In partnership with COL, Futuristic was involved in the design of learning materials and training for the Linux for IT Managers project
3. On eLearning and Content development, we have been able to participate in a number of content digitalisation projects (notable here is the COL's Open Schools Project  and , Inoorero University ). Through our partnership with the WikiEducator and FLOSS4Edu, Futuristic has facilitated a number of content development trainings and content development workshops in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Namibia and Botswana
4. Our Consulting unit has also seen some growth in their IS Audit section, providing this service to organisations like AAR , ICDC and URA. The demand for our Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery Planning services has also been on the rise, with clients like AAR being on our list.

In this month of December, we shall be evaluating ourselves and  carry out numerous planning activities to ensure that we will be able to increase our growth by serving our customers better, recruiting the best and becoming more innovative in the way we deliver value to our customers.

Wishing you all a merry christimas and prosperous new year!

Self Discipline in Open and Distance Learning...

Self discipline is a term you constantly hear about when you are about to embark on difficulty and/or challenging ventures including weight loss, studying, exercises, projects etc. I will disclose here that I never paid much attention to what this "Self Discipline" really means until I was recently involved in a training exercise (as a trainer) through an online workshop.

I have trained, in many occasions, various groups of people from different backgrounds, religions and cultures. This has mainly been through face to face workshops.Few times have I had online training sessions. This was an attempt to teach a technical course online. So I set up the learning environment, prepared my lessons and invited my participants. We were all ready to roll.

We started off well, sendng a list of the things that we needed to have ready before we actually start and asking the participants to perform some pre-workshop tasks. This was a good test as we were able to identify those that are competent enough to do this.

We moved on with the course and by the time we had gotten to lesson 5 of 10, 35% of the participants had dropped off. I decided to do an investigation. I got the following interesting remarks:

1) "Too busy", I got caught up in other office related activities
2) "Too Technical to do online"
3) "This is a new thing to us that I am not used to"
4) "Will do it but I am lagging behind"
5 "Nothing"

Web2.0 - Its possible!

If they ever told you that it is not possible then they lied to you. Today, we are on our final day for the Web 2.0 Learning opportunity at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Nairobi. A total of over 27 participants from various organisations participated. We have a combination of different professionals from different backgrounds and it has been great fun.

Check out this for a participants view of the workshop