Why you should try out the enhanced ODEL by St Paul's University

Whereas the Covid-19 pandemic created challenges and disruptions across the university education sector globally, it presented St Paul’s University with an opportunity to revamp and enhance its online learning and teaching capacity.

Blended learning, which is a combination of both face-to-face teaching and asynchronous studying, has been well taken up by both faculty members and students. Over the past two years, most of the university’s courses have covered at least 40 percent of the content through e-learning technologies, as envisioned in the institution’s e-learning policy.

The transition to blended learning has been made possible through investment in the technologies and training required, and the presence of a team of support staff who have constantly offered services round the clock.

The upgrading of the university’s Learning Management System (LMS) to a new version has enabled it to integrate more technologies, further enhancing learning experiences. The technologies include the virtual programming labs, which have made it possible for the university to offer computer programming courses online without losing its practical component.

The LMS upgrade has improved the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the systems through improved security features that protect both the infrastructure and the content generated by lecturers. With the new version, administrators are able to get real-time notifications in case a virus-infected file is uploaded into the system. Further, the system is able to automatically quarantine such files for the viruses not to spread to other sections, pending action from the system’s security team.

Another security measure the university has implemented is the single sign-on, which has drastically reduced the attack surfaces that can be exploited by hackers.

To ensure the integrity of the work submitted on the portal, the virtual campus has integrated a new antiplagiarism plug-in, Ouriginal. This is a shift from Turnitin.

Ouriginal gives accurate reports within a short period and does content match analysis through premium quality content from top databases. The software also offers intelligent writing style analysis through the use of pre-determined quantitative parameters that analyse various writing styles, identifying patterns that are then used to verify authorship of all the documents uploaded on the virtual campus portal.

Authorship verification is an important feature, as it deters ghost-writing and contracts cheating, which are major threats to academic integrity.

Ouriginal also has fewer false positives. False positives can affect the overall accuracy of findings, making it frustrating for users to evaluate the originality of submitted works. The technology in Ouriginal can identify false positives and remove them from the analysis, making the accuracy of the findings and the reports therein reliable.

In his famous quote on education technology, David Warlick opines that, “We need technology in every classroom and every student and teacher's hand, because it is the pen and paper of our time, and it is the lens through which we experience much of our world.” To this end, St Paul’s University has established an ultra-modern virtual campus on the third floor of the Postgraduate Centre at the main campus.

The virtual campus is the host to two centres – the remote teaching centre and the multi-media centre.

The remote teaching centre is well-equipped to enable hybrid learning, where students can study physically in the classroom while others log in online and follow the proceedings and participate in classroom activities. A second remote teaching facility has been established at the university’s Nakuru campus.

The multi-media facility has two fully equipped studios and a post-production centre. The studios enable faculty members to convert their learning materials from common word documents, PDFs, and PowerPoint presentations, to audio-visual format, which has been proven to enhance information retention amongst learners. At the same time, it improves learners’ experiences.

The post-production centre is equipped with the necessary hardware and production software, and will be used to edit the materials produced in the studios, and also to deploy the same on the e-learning platform. The post-production centre is additionally equipped with assistive technology and software to take care of students with diverse learning needs. This is in line with the virtual campus’s vision of inclusive education.

Additionally, the virtual campus has established a modern e-compliant boardroom that will enable the university to host virtual and hybrid conferences and meetings, especially in line with the goal of establishing international partnerships and collaborations.

With more postgraduate courses being rolled out on the distance learning mode, the facility will come in handy by playing host to colloquiums, research seminars, and defences.

Queen Pama of Jordan said: “In education, technology can be a life changer, a game changer, for learners who are both in school and out of school”.

As the university continues to invest in relevant technologies to support online learning, it welcomes you to experience learning simplified at the virtual campus.

To get a feel of St Paul’s University’s virtual campus, click here. For more information about the university, visit https://www.spu.ac.ke/