Brief Project Background
The title of the project is A Pedagogical Adaptive Model and Framework of Blended Learning for Higher Education Institutions for Employability in Nigeria. The rationale is premised on two major factors: 1. the digital technology gaps in higher education teaching and learning, and 2 the often-reported claims of employers’ observation that graduates of our higher education institutions (HEIs) are unemployable and unfit for purpose.
The Nigerian education context is beset by numerous challenges: large populations of out of school children; large cohorts of young adults seeking access to higher education; education systems that are out of sync with employer skills and competency requirements; higher education students disaffected with learning; curricula that are largely out of date with current developments in the disciplines and inadequate teaching/learning resources. Many of these pressing challenges can find solutions by the adoption of dynamic pedagogies and learning technologies. However, technology adoption has its own dynamics – change management. Research and evidence-based practices are required to inform the choices that governments, institutions and stakeholders are making about technology to improve, support, or extend teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in higher education (Johnson, et al, 2016).
Online learning (E-learning) has grown in leaps and bounds in the last decade. The emergence and popularity of MOOCs has given a new vista in access to higher education in the developed world especially (Barber et al., 2013; Beetham and Sharpe, 2013). The digital divide has excluded large swathes of the developing world from this revolution. However, in spite of the growth of e-learning, there have also been calls for some ‘hybrid’ learning (Blended Learning) that accounts for human interaction and teacher-student physical presence in a social learning environment (and its deployment in Open Distance Learning), plus a leverage of technologies that enable education processes to achieve some of the cognitive activities that are difficult in an all-out physical face-to-face learning space (Conole et al., 2010). This obvious need has given a fillip to the growth of the blended learning variant of e-learning. Given the Nigerian educational scenario of large populations of young school leavers seeking higher education access; large class situation in institutions; inadequate human, facilities and material resources in institutions; large scale rote learning ethos; inadequate and outdated curricula, all resulting in inadequate graduate attributes culminating in fresh workforce largely regarded by industry as ‘not fit for purpose’ on account of a general lack of employability skills and competencies, a review of institutional pedagogical approaches becomes inevitable and urgent. When the skills required in the today and future workplace nationally and globally are considered, with developments in digital technologies, the incorporation of technologies in the educational process becomes imperative. The above, therefore, calls for a need for the improvement of teacher capacity through the adoption and adaptation of the pedagogical model framework and improved employability of Nigerian graduates by embedding employability skills into the curriculum.