Akin Odebunmi, a professor of Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis, is the pioneer president of the Nigerian Pragmatics Association (NPrA) and the director, Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CEteL), University of Ibadan. He spoke to MODUPE GEORGE on current issues in Pragmatics in Nigeria and the activities of CETel in the premier university.

What exactly is the Nigerian Pragmatics Association all about?

The Nigerian Pragmatics Association (NPrA) is a group of professionals who specialise in the discipline called Pragmatics, which is a branch of Applied Linguistics. We have two levels of linguistics: the Linguistics and the Applied Linguistics, where Linguistics would be aspect of language studies such as phonology, syntax and semantics. And of course, if you want to combine morphology with syntax, the two can also go together; while Applied Linguistics would be aspects like Stylistics and Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics and Text Linguistics, the kind that we do when we apply the principles of linguistics to text or situations of language use.

There is this international body of Pragmatics that is called International Pragmatics Association. There are regional bodies that are subset of that international body. We have quite a number of them – American and Chinese Pragmatics Association; but there is no African Pragmatic Association, so we are the first to form a regionally-based Pragmatics Association.

A typical university is known for teaching and learning; why create another centre for the same purpose?

Let me say that we have a university where teaching and learning occurs; that would not mean that we shouldn’t have a centre of excellence in teaching and learning.  We all do teaching and of course, we have students who get engaged in learning; but all over the world, universities have centres for excellence in teaching and learning. We need to be able to ensure that the kind of teaching that people are doing; the kind of learning that is taking place is standard and is consistent with state-of-the-art tools. If you now want to add that to the already burdensome duties of the faculty of education, it would be too heavy for them.

We do a lot of things; one of them is to ensure that the quality of people who are employed to teach is the kind that we expect. When we have new employees, this centre organises an induction programme where they are taken through the rubrics of teaching and learning. Not everybody has a background in education and you cannot really assume that someone who has just been employed as a lecturer would fit perfectly into the classroom structure. The faculty of education cannot add that to its very own already broad duties. We also ensure that what requires upgrading in terms of teaching and learning across the university is done as well as whatever could be done to aid teaching and learning. We also organise seminars and workshops in conjunction with relevant units.

ALSO READ: 19.4% of children in South West stunted ―UNICEF

How has the term ‘excellence’ been able to affect the contents and techniques used in teaching the students?

By excellence, we mean something that is outstanding. The learning, which is also part of the excellence, relates to how the students receive the information in the most digestible form and how the students are able to utilise information to excel in their studies. We have programmes as well for the learners, but now we are concentrating on the teachers and that is because for us we need to have excellent teachers. We have programmes we are undertaking together with the unit of Students Affairs, where we want to talk to students on how to learn and cope in the classroom. Also, we tried out a pilot (scheme) in the past, where we got a group of students together in a discussion group. We made a video recording of their interactions on a particular subject matter. Our plan is to get as many as possible to be uploaded online for students who are not part of the group to benefit from that. So, we want to make our learners excellent, not only by staying in the class, but also doing so in their rooms.

Have you been able to effect any change in the curriculum yet?

Curriculum review is something that is progressive in all universities. There is a Senate committee that is called the Senate Curriculum Committee. If there is any need for the curriculum to be modified in relation to current events in the world or new things to make our graduate better and to perform better in the society, the department will sit down, get a committee at the departmental level to take a look at the existing curriculum and then propose the changes that they want. They would forward that to the faculty curriculum review committee, and then that committee forwards it after several deliberations to the university committee. This is not within our operation; ours is to ensure that the curriculum is used effectively to achieve excellence.

How accessible is your centre to the learners?

We are still working on our website. We are proposing working on making all our programmes accessible to students and even members of the public. I think we could also make it interactive, such that students could ask questions regarding teaching and learning. Very soon, we shall organise a workshop in all faculties, where there would be a congregation of people, experts in particular disciplines, who would tell us ways by which they do the teaching, so that the two can be blended. Then, we have the most effective teaching that would result in best learning.

The post At UI CETel, we ensure standard teaching with state-of-the-art tools —Director appeared first on Tribune.