As part of efforts to equip the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) graduates with future skills for the dynamic and competitive job market, the university, with the support of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), has designed an employability framework that will help produce graduates with such skills.

Consequently, a meeting, held on January 17, 2024 at the NOUN headquarters, Abuja, was organised by the Directorate of Quality Assurance to provide a progress report and dissemination of the NOUN –COL Employability Project, which was  attended by deans, directors and academic staff.

The director, Prof. Juliet Inegbedion, who served as the Project Coordinator, while giving a brief history and overview of the project, said the purpose of the project was to build employability capacity for better graduate outcome.

She said the project was jointly handled by her directorate, on behalf of the university, and the Commonwealth of Learning.

To this effect, the director stated, a team was set up by the directorate to work on the project, with the team consisting of course writers, course editors, learning technologists and instructional designers.

Inegbedion also gave an overview of the roles members of the team played towards achieving and completing the project, noting that the main purpose of designing the employability strategy was to deploy and integrate it into the various students curriculum.

According to her, “the project started with developing the employability strategy. Thereafter, the  university community was sensitised on the project and persons were selected from each faculty, who had a meeting with the COL consultant to design the strategy.

She appreciated members of the team for their contributions towards the success of the project and thanked the course writers for contributing their industrial knowledge towards the project.

Ag. Director of the Directorate of Learning Content Management Systems, Dr. Bello lukeman, who served as the instructional designer on the project, delivered a presentation on the Roles of Instructional Designers in the Project: Benefits and Challenges.

A content developer in the university, Mr. Okechukwu Okafor, played the role of the learning technologist on the project and delivered the presentation on Integration of Interactive Learning Skills: The Pros and Cons.