90% of all the heads of ICT in universities in Nigeria will say Yes if asked – can they develop a learning management system for their university. However, Vice-chancellors wrongly frame the question. The right question should be: Considering your workload, how overwhelmed is your team; and can you and your team develop, deploy, train and maintain and support the university community to use a learning management system that is lecturer and student-friendly, which will require upgrading every three years to their existing workload? When the question is framed as suggested, most say no.

See the case study of Stanford University, why they chose to move from an in-house developed system to a third-party SaaS LMS. Some of the reasons are:

1. Generally, third-party systems are more versatile.
2. The core mandate of the ICT directorate is to foster the adoption of technology in learning, which entails selecting the right vendor at a price that gives value, deploy, train and provide support to the university community.
3. Use the latest technology for course design and development that increase student learning experiences that will invariably increase revenue while you lower the unit cost of educating a student.

HB Brown said, ‘wise men, learn from other’s mistakes’.

We may choose to develop your system, but consider the pros and cons to make the right decision. The little money you may save now may cost you a lot more. Why should you, like three other universities who have made their choice, choose ARGVLE LMS?

1. An advanced and dependable system that enhances teaching and learning in any challenging environment where access to data and IT adoption for teaching and learning is low.
2. Easy to use, modern, simple and light. It can be used offline once the course material is downloaded.
3. Designed in the UK with global best practices for universities in Nigeria
4. No other learning management system has the programme structures recommended by the Nigerian National Universities Commission (NUC).
5. It is secure and hosted on Amazon AWS for 99.99% uptime, with regular backup that guarantees security and access to your data at any time and anywhere.
6. Although it is advanced, it is within budget for universities. Your student can afford to pay our monthly/annual subscription fee.
7. Nigerian-based customer support in Nigeria. A professional EdTech support specialist is provided per university for change management, training and dedicated support.
8. We invest a large percentage of our profit in research and development, so you get the latest technology for a robust digital foundation for learning, teaching and research.
9. We can provide you with advanced change management and instructional design services, especially when new to learning management systems.
10. We can provide you with a team of four that can help build and manage your Education Technology Department.

In conclusion, we do not think the heads of ICT in universities are the problem with the slow adoption of LMS. Their workload is a lot, and they are very enterprising despite the challenges they face. However, ask them the right questions and refocus them on their core mandate, which is to adopt new technologies for teaching and learning.

Contact us to let us know what your thoughts are on what we said.