Teaching with MIT OpenCourseWare Case Studies from Nigeria

[SQUEAKING] [RUSTLING] [CLICKING] VICTOR ODUMUYIWA: Faculty in the university are playing a very important role because you mold the future of your nation and what our nation will become based on the kind of graduates you produce. I think this should be a platform that every faculty all over the world that wants to be the best in what they do should look at it and adapt the content and have their own innovative ideas to the content. AMIR BATURE: How do you show them how the test of real life is? We do that by the laboratories, either simulation laboratories or real life, practical laboratories because things to do but is already done for you in OCW. All you have to do is just do, so a few modification, and there you are. You have it. OLUSOJI ILORI: We need [INAUDIBLE] to have at least a foundation in being able to design a chip. So we actually adopted the OCW. We adopted it completely. So at the MIT, you have two or three instructors who are the best in that field. And then they have support staffs, like graduate assistants, graduate teaching assistants. Graduates are-- they have graders and all that. So it's like you have a whole team teaching the course. So the pace at MIT for that course is very fast. So now, bring it back here. So you have only me teaching the course. There's no way I don't match that. VICTOR ODUMUYIWA: So at first when I brought in the content from the OCW, it kind of raised some questions or some complaints from the students because it's like adding more activities or tasks to what they do. So it's like they feel that, why are you taking us through this stressful path? As at that time, the current markets of the market in our country was not-- the demand were not too rigorous compared to now. Yeah, so [INAUDIBLE] that for them to be globally competitive, they need to have best practices based on that and master the concept and the models. OLUSOJI ILORI: So what we did was that we splitted the course into two semesters. So that reduced the pace and give more room to do a lot of things. VICTOR ODUMUYIWA: The goal of the courses, to train students to write self-developed software that are free from bugs, ready for change and easy to understand. That phrase alone changes a lot of things when we start [INAUDIBLE] classes. And we know that these are focused. This changes a lot of things about the perception of student, about preparation, and about the goal and objectives of the students as well. AMIR BATURE: Now, I want to follow the Bloom taxonomy aim of teaching, not just for students to understand, no, but how can we go up to the grade level. Before, that's not what we have. It's just a bunch of materials and mathematics that will go to class and just teach from there till the exam. They will cram what they know and act them and pass it. So now I try to make it different. OLUSOJI ILORI: So that's why I stress high quality. OCW materials can really, not only the student, they can also help you as educator to learn because it was a new field for me, too. So I needed to actually learn and actually make learning those things easier. AMIR BATURE: In junior than going to the class and participating, seeing the real life problem, going to the lab experiencing the problem, sleeping on it, and tomorrow, go to the class, using theory, and solve the problem. It gives you more intuition of being an engineer. Just streaming YouTube videos and taking some online courses doesn't get too near to the real life thing. VICTOR ODUMUYIWA: Apart from adding to your students, it's going to really add to you as a faculty because you're going to be challenged by the kind of content you see. It's going to challenge you first to make sure you master your field, your own content, your own courses. If you have any challenge, just reach out to ETT Fellows in university or in your neighboring university. They should be able to help you because they have an experience using this platform. OLUSOJI ILORI: And the other thing is you also need to assess if the objective of that course aligns with your own program because some courses are designed with some objectives in mind, which is not necessarily yours, or you don't have all the objective. So you need to know. You need to be aware. AMIR BATURE: And that's where OCW comes into play. VICTOR ODUMUYIWA: Exposing your students to OCW resources will make them to be globally competitive. AMIR BATURE: This alignment of the course is left for every lecturer to do it. It's something that have to take years of experience and feedback for you to achieve. So OCW will be a great help in helping you I to that. OLUSOJI ILORI: So to me, OER generally is valuable in the sense that it gives students access to the body of knowledge in the field they are going to specialize in. Essentially, they are going for research, and also give them access to the top experts in those fields. So they are aware of current thinking. They are aware of what the trends in that field are going to be, and they are prepared for it. AMIR BATURE: So a lot of this is what keeps us inspired in the teaching line, seeing that some of your students are having a very good outcome. It makes you know that their future is promised. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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