DungorNwike Charles, Partnership Implementation Manager at Skool Media is an experienced project manager with a demonstrated history of working in the development industry.

Charles is skilled in negotiation, budgeting and sales, strong program and project management professional with an MA Business Studies with emphasis on corporate strategy and business growth.

Prior to joining Skool Media, Charles spent several years as Project Manager at Lagos Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

In this interview with UgoOnwuaso, Charles talked about what Skool Media is doing to change the educational landscape in Nigeria.

About Skool Media

At Skool Media we are basically passionate about changing the landscape of the educational space and for reasons of doubt,Skool Media is an ICT organization that is focused around changing the narrative on how the educational system functions in Nigeria with the adoption of technology and the focus on e-learning to improve or position the average Nigerian child for competitiveness in the global space. So that’s really what we are all about as a business.

e-learningas new system of learning

Of course it has not been easy as we all know Nigeria is an underdeveloped economy, so there is a level at which knowledge is being dispersed among different regions. We are privileged to be in Lagos as one of the regions but we must as well know that there are six geo political zones in the country and in that sense there are reasons to say there are difficulties around knowledge base. So, it’s not an easy task having to spread that gospel of education advancement within these several regions.

Fortunately, for Skool Media as a business, we are positioned around these six geo- political zones in having to offer these services to Unity schools, which is, federal government schools, so what we seek to do is to offer Technical Experience Centres and also offer infrastructure around those unity schools.

Over the next few months, we will be delivering our resources to twenty three unity schools, cutting across the six geo political zones and what we will do in those schools is to provide a platform that could advance this product called e-learning in our educational system.

So, for these centers we have what is called experience centres, the center is more or less like an ICT center where you are able to engage in critical thinking among students and teachers,

We are also trying to breach the gap between teachers and students and also to give student their opportunities and privilege to expand their knowledge base by assessing e-learning materials.

At Skool Media, we’ve commenced installation of tech equipment in some of these schools; projector screens, laptops, and software around educational materials inside those laptops, we also have what we called our Skool Media tablets which we’ve also been able to disperse around these schools to students that want to do further studies and engage themselves in further learning’s on that space.

So it’s not been exactly easy but it’s doable because the system is now adopting it, it’s been tough over the years with students having to engage with computer as means to equipping themselves basically, we are coming from a narrative where students are use to what the teachers teaches you and what you should present to what the teachers teach and having to engage your minds around it and improve on that learning you’ve learnt in the class.

So that’s why we offer this infrastructures and support systems to unity schools across the regions. So I will say over time things will improve because the transformation is ongoing and it’s cutting across these regions, so I believe over the next couple of years e-learning should be ready and steady in the country as a whole.

Do you have the resources and infrastructure to accommodate private schools or is it exclusive to unity schools only?

Yes we do. We are in partnership with federal ministry of education and hence the decision to kick off with the unity schools, so basically we’ve also developed a platform, which is Edufirst.ng,it’s expected to address engagements with private stakeholders as well as private schools, so it’s all encompassing both the unity schools and private schools but what I would say is the level of engagements differs, so the level of engagement we are having currently at unity schools, some of these private schools have been privileged to kick off with them.

So, our engagements with them are in different e-learning services as oppose to what we are currently offering to the unity schools, so that’s also a very possible engagement with private schools as well as private stakeholders.

Offering different services to unity schools and private schools

Like I said initially for the regions we need to put to perspective what the regions offer, if you put in the knowledge base in the northern region its quite different from the knowledge base from the southern region. For us as a business, we are working on faith and hope, so we are expecting engagements to be all encompassing in the future years, so we believe that as a vision of the business not to seclude private sector engagements in the advancement of the business overtime. So that’s why we’ve used terminologies to say we are expanding the business overtime and in that perspective expansion will be an adoption to the private schools as well.

Broadband deployment challenge in the deployment of these services

Well like for the internet availability, it’s still not available around the regions, what we have done on our e-learning services is to actually have these things offline so as to be acceptable by all, like we all know, in Nigeria currently, the cost of having to engage with wireless orWiFi services is not as cheap as you would expect it, but I believe the system is getting there, there are a lot of new businesses, there are a lot of emerging businesses as well as established ones that are trying to reduce the cost on having to access internet services, so I believe, what we’ve done in having to bridge that gap and to still spore growth in the educational space is to provide educational materials in an offline basis.

So instance, if you go to our regional centers that cuts across our e-learning centers you would find out that some of the materials you see on the laptops and some of the materials that we used to disperse knowledge are offline materials, so there are no restrictions and there are no segregation between regions.

Offering students in urban areas the opportunity to explore more with internet

We engage with both those that have access to the internet and those that are unable to access the internet directly. How do we engage with them? We have what we called the Skool Media tablets, in those tablets are educational materials that are both offline and are accessible for you to engage with online service.

So we try to disperse information via that same platform but what we do is to make it convenient for both those that are unable to access internet facility and those that are able to, so there is no exact gap in the knowledge base from both stems.

What we’ve also done is to improve on these thing through trainings, we do trainings at those e-learning centers, so some of our project team members are actually dispersed at these centers to conduct training like internet of things, Microsoft offices, trainings on Google, so students are able to gather on the ground knowledge on how to research and get educational materials for themselves.

We obviously can’t at this stage have gotten to every nook and cranny of what we are trying to achieve but we believe that with the core skills being in place people are able to go back and engage with the knowledge they’ve learnt during the training programs.

We do lots of training in those e-learning centers, so it’s not just to have the facilities on ground we also have our project team on ground as well to educate and to enlighten people on how to use them.

EdufirstPlatform

The Edufirst platform is meant  to address the gap in the educational space, part of what we are doing on the Edufirst platform is to create a school portal management system that allows you to have good interactions, student /teachers interactions, parent/ teachers interactions, stakeholders interactions as well.

The portal is also useful for parents to access performance of their children in school, and conversations with teachers on how displeased or pleased they are with their children performance.

Under that platform we also have what we tagEdufirst blog. The blog is designed to have conversationon trends occurring in the education system both indigenous and global as well, so the platform is quite big and its meant to be all encompassing to all key participant provided you are an individual that have passion for one level of education or you are a school proprietress you will get access to signing up on the blog.

We’re also trying to develop on that platform what we call scholarship schemes. So the platform will also help students to be able to access on the spot scholarships with certain partnerships we’ve built with, so the partnerships will be for both institutions, universities at this point, universities both indigenous and international as well that are trying to get scholarships, it’s also suppose to be like a support scheme Edufirst is offering to the general public.

E-learning program roadblocks for unity schools

For us one key challenge has being the growing trend of attention span that cut across student and individual, you will find out that people are no longer having critical studies or having extended studies on their own.

So what we’ve tried to do is to ensure that knowledge is fun, so you will see that part of the topics or the thematic areas in which we are engaging on our platform will be interactive and also visibly educative to the mind.So it’s something that should be engaging for student to work with.

Skool Media is a member of Nigerian British Chamber of Commerce and we are partnerships the Lagos State Chamber of Commerce and Industry to see how best we can advocate for improved quality education that will cut across Nigeria to ensure that e-learning is being adopted into the curricular of schools because it’s something that we are passionate about and it’s something we believe that will reposition Nigeria in the long term to be among the developed economies of this world.

Capacity to support expanded portfolio

We do have, you should understand that the concept of e-learning has to do with the ability to engage, it also has to do with technology and the capacity has to do with learning. we have core staff that have the ability to deliver this things at the beck and call of the business, it’s something that we’ve been on like you rightly said, it’s been on for a few years and it’s something we’ve developed overtime.

We are currently in twenty three unity schools as I speak and we are currently serving as much as over ten thousand students that cut across over these unity schools. So the capacity in house to expand or engage with the state’s schools is very viable, it’s actually something we are looking at in having to expand the portfolio of business of Skool Media.

SourcingSkool Media tablet that are given to students

We were in partnership with Samsung in offering that service to the educational landscape of Nigeria. Over the years we would be seeking to have our products indigenous, so we would be having what I would tag as made in Nigeria Skool Media tablets, which is what is currently in the pipeline and that will come to surface within the next few years but the tablets we have currently are Samsung developed tablet and based on our partnership with Samsung we’ve been able to have these tablets dispersed to our students to engage with their minds.

Contents in the tablets, are they approved by the federal ministry of education

For the tablets, what’s been done is that the hardware is what’s being developed by Samsung, so the content as well as the software is indigenously developed by Skool Media that aligns the partnership. Some of them or most of them are approved by the federal ministry of education but like I said because of what the strength of the tablet is meant to do, it is to explore your mind;it’s also to expand your mind.