NITDA to Rejig Curriculum for IT Education

Dr Isa Pantami, director general, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) on Thursday said the agency was working on developing a viable curriculum for IT education at all levels.

Pantami made this known at the conference of the Academia in Information Technology Profession (AITP) in Abuja.

The theme of the conference was: “Information Technology for Promotion of Quality Education Research and Local Content Development”.

Pantami, who was represented by Mr Ben Ewa, deputy director, Cooperate Planning and Strategy Development said “we are interested in fostering viable and sustainable education ecosystem.

“IT is a broad environment but it is multi dimensional and knowledge field that involves computer science, artificial intelligence, psychology and public policy.

“To get it right in education system, we need to employ these disciplines in a process that enables Nigeria to fill up the deficiency in the supply.

“What is critical considering the rate of technological development globally is the supply of technology enabled services including content,” he said.

According to him, there is insufficiency of digital content from the primary level to tertiary level.

He said that IT education in the country required an interactive curriculum including software devices.

“We are working to bring together partners to come up with a workable framework for a new curriculum for different end users for quality turn out of students at all levels.”

Prof. Charles Uwadia, president, Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria (CPN) stressed the need to upgrade the teachers’ IT knowledge.

“If teachers are not well grounded, we are not going to have quality graduates and the teachers of IT need to be properly schooled to be abreast with the profession and apply technology in teaching.

“It is not sufficient to set the standards and do accreditations, we need to take interest in how the standards set are met and adhered to.

“Upgrade is something that is ongoing and technology is ever changing, so curriculum upgrade should be done in a timely manner.

“CPN decided that we will upgrade curriculum every two years. Upgrading curriculum is not sufficient, when you upgrade your curriculum, you would need to improve the skills of those who are going to implement the curriculum.

“You could have up to date curriculum and teachers are laid back, their teachings will not be effective.

“We need to invest through collaboration in building capacity to be able to do curriculum upgrade in terms of implementation.”

Prof. Afolayan Obiniyi, president AITP, in his opening remarks, said the world was technologically driven and Nigeria as a nation could not afford to lag behind.

Obiniyi said there were so many complaints about teaching and research in the academia which necessitated bridging the gap between the industry and the academia.

“There are inadequate teaching materials, research works, poor quality of graduates and other complaints.

“We came together as a group to bridge the gap between the teaching process and research in the country.

“We can utilise local content to improve research that will be globally accepted.”

Mr Andrew Abu, President Young Innovators of Nigeria (YIN) said the conventional practice in the IT educational system should be discouraged.

“We want to change the mentality of the conventional practice of going to school, graduate and work among young people.’’

Abu said that the group had targeted to train 5,000 youths by 2020 to bridge the gap in IT skill gaps.

According to him, the training will be done in areas such as cyber security, business development and maintenance.