Prof. Kola Sonaike
By Boluwatife Oparinde
Pastor (Prof.) Kola Sonaike, the Vice Chancellor, Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Ikeji-Arakeji, has stressed that to achieve academic excellence in a virtual (online) schooling is possible just as it is in the regular face-to-face setting.
Delivering his lecture titled "Harnessing Academic Excellence through Virtual Schooling" at the 2nd day of the 2021 CACYOF Academic Summit ongoing at the university, the erudite professor stated that there is only a little difference between the path to achieving academic excellence between on-ground and the online schooling modalities.
According to him, "about the same amount of efforts seem to be required. The efforts may even be slightly more for online schooling than for on-ground. This is because in general, online requires a lot of assignments since it is fully virtual interaction."
"For many online schools, the contionous asynchronous portion of the course is essential. Apart from the weekly high quality paper that must be submitted, each student also has to participate actively in the ongoing class discussion on the discussion board. Finally, students submit the final paper on the last day of the class."
Prof. Sonaike further highlighted to the students at the summit, some of the steps to promote academic excellence in virtual schooling.
The steps include, proper studying from the first day of class; proper allocation of study time to cover all courses; effective research to supplement study materials; avoiding resistance of online schooling; and realization of online schooling as one of the models of God-given knowledge.
The don and university boss advised everyone to embrace and learn the processes of online education which appears to be the future of education globally. In his words, "we either embrace the change or be swept by the change."