UNILAG Students Frustrated Over Inability To Attend Online Classes

Undergraduates of the University of Lagos, Akoka, have expressed their frustration over their inability to attend their online classes while residing on the University’s campus.

The students said their classes were above the 300-participant capacity which Zoom video conferencing app allows, thereby resulting in them being unable to join the class once it has reached the limit.

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Punch reported that the students, who belong to the Medical and Biological Sciences departments, also use their own data to access the classes since the school resumed on May 8 2021.

“I have not been able to attend any lecture online since we resumed because whenever I tried to join, the class would have reached the 300 limit. We do not know the reason they asked us to resume but conducting online classes for us.

“Electricity to power phones and laptops is not even available, we always have power supply between 8pm and 8am only,” said a 100 level Pharmacy student.

She said after being unable to join the class, she is forced to wait for those who attended to share screenshots of the slides displayed during the class or their jottings.

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“I am not happy at all, I have not been able to attend any class since we resumed in May. All our classes are online”, she said.

A student of the Dentistry Department said due to the poor network sometimes, lecturers would angrily cancel classes.

“The lecturers might just cancel the class too if he gets angry due to poor network or students not muting their microphones. We are using our data, they do not give us access to wifi; the wifi in the hostel is not working. If it is efficient, one will be able to read after the meeting but most times, we don’t have anything to read,” she said.

The Director, Centre for Information Technology and System in the university, Dr Florence Oladeji said the University asked the students to resume despite the announcement of a likely second wave of COVID-19.

“When we got the wind that there will likely be a second wave of COVID-19, we did not want to send them home, the management said if they were above 50 in a class, they should do virtual classes. We are accessing the population every week as they register,” she said.

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She said due to the Zoom limit constraint, the lecturers are supposed to stream the classes live on YouTube as well but they are unable to.

Oladeji, however, added that the lecturers and the technologists would be trained on how to organize the lectures on YouTube.

“We have been doing streaming and the university just bought 2,400 zoom licenses. With the zoom we can take 100,000 students. They are supposed to stream it on YouTube. It is the lecturers who are not able to stream live. Only 300 are supposed to be in zoom class, others will be on YouTube live. 

“We are starting a training for our technologists who will now help lecturers to set up their classes with the YouTube appropriately. Lecturers will be trained too by next week,” she said.

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