The failure of many Nigerian tertiary institutions to initiate policies to guide mentoring and research activities is doing more harm than good, say two academics who are seeking reforms in the two areas.
Prof Samuel Bandele and Prof Oka Obono explored the challenges and opportunities in these two areas of need at a five-day workshop organised by the Executive Trainers Ltd at the London Suites Hotel, Dubai last week.
Addressing participants drawn from universities, polytechnics and colleges of education at the workshop, Bandele and Obono underscored the importance of mentoring and quality research culture to the growth of tertiary institutions and identified lack of policies and negative practices that retard progress.
In discussing the topic: “Effective Academic Mentoring of 21st Century Students”, Bandele, a professor of measurements and evaluation at the Ekiti State University (EKSU), Ado-Ekiti, said the freedom associated with tertiary level education, especially in public schools, necessitates an over-arching policy that ensures students are properly mentored to succeed.
He argued that the subsisting practice of leaving mentoring to teaching members of staff cannot help all students succeed because not all will be mentored positively. He added that many lecturers need to be mentored themselves by older professors before they can adequately guide students.
“Mentoring is so important. It involves guiding, tutoring, influencing. If the institution does not take mentoring in a holistic manner, you may think mentoring is going on, when it is not. It could be indoctrination, or immorality,” he said.
With an institution-wide mentoring policy involving both teaching and non-teaching staff in place in schools, Bandele said the principles and practices of mentoring would be well defined and students will achieve greater academic success.
“There must be an over-arching policy that will make everyone to be accountable for the success of all students,” he said.
Bandele challenged the participants to return to their schools with a proposal for the establishment of mentoring units that would involve the management, teaching and non-teaching cadres. He expects that they would include ingredients of good mentoring practices they learnt during the workshop.
Treating the topic: “Measuring and Managing Research Performance in Tertiary Institutions”, Prof Obono discussed the research process, the centrality of research to human and national development, and how to measure research performance using internationally-accepted benchmarks.
Obono, a professor of sociology from the University of Ibadan, said many students and academics in Nigerian tertiary institutions have problems conducting research because they erroneously treat the activity as a means to an end. While students deem it crucial to succeeding in their final year project, lecturers pursue research to earn promotions.
On the contrary, Obono, said research should be perceived and taught as a systematic critical thinking and problem solving skill that will benefit students for life.
“Research is not only central to science; it is also the cornerstone of the society. Our students think they are being taught about research methods to help them write their final project whereas research should be taught as a life-long skill.
“If we want to assess the performance of lecturers, we can collect their CV every year as required by the NUC and you plot a graph, you will find that when the promotion year approaches, they are productive. The frequency and number of publications are high. Once they are promoted, their productivity drops,” he said.
Obono faulted the tertiary education system for not having a national standard for assessing scholarly work.
He said the assessment of research output by academics should not be based on the number of publications but their impact. He also said such impact can be measured by how well recognised their works are in international journals, and how much they are cited by other scholars.
While Nigerian academics have faulted the criteria used for the Webometric World rankings of universities by the Cybermetrics Lab of Spain because it is based on web visibility, Obono said even if ranked using the Bibliometric index (number of times cited by other scholars) Nigerian academics and institutions will still be ranked low because of poor quality work, or good work published in unrecognised journals.
To remedy this, Obono recommended that there should be a nationally-acceptable standard for measuring research performance in tertiary institutions, and urged Nigerian academics to publish in international journals.
“Scholars are told to publish in international journals because they have widespread circulation so more scholars in their field have access to their work and will cite them more. We must move from quantity of publications to quality which is measured by the citation index,” he said.
He urged institutions to, as a matter of urgency, update their websites and encourage academics to upload scholarly works online. He also advised they subscribe to SCOPU, which has the world’s largest database of scholarly works online.
In interviews with The Nation, participants described the workshop as timely and expository. Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijagun, Ogun State, said tertiary institutions must address the apathy for research.
“Many times, we have researches published in journals packed on our shelves, and yet the country is not moving forward. Like you rightly said, all the things we enjoy are products of research. While we have a sort of apathy to research, the import of research cannot be overemphasised. By the time we all go back and we make our proposals and they are implemented, it will lead to the development of our institutions, development of families, and the development of the nation, then we will have a proper approach to research.”
On mentoring, Hajiya Halimatu Muhammad, Deputy Provost, Federal College of Education, Katsina, said as a teacher-training her institution, her college would find the suggestions useful to prepare the students for their future roles in the classroom.
Similarly, the Registrar of The Polytechnic Ibadan, Ms Omotomilola Olatunji, said the workshop helped her better understand the import of all workers being involved in mentoring students.
“Before this workshop, I thought mentoring was just the responsibility of parents and teachers. But now I can see that even from the Rector, we should all be involved,” she said.
Explaining how research would help his institution, the Librarian of the Maritime Academy, Oron, Mr Effiong Emmanuel Okon, said he would propose a step-down workshop for academics to appreciate the importance of research.
“All lecturers whether young or old who supervise students should attend this kind of training. As I go back, I will share this with my Rector and if he buys the idea, then we will organise this kind of workshop for teachers,” he said.
Explaining why Executive Trainers Ltd focused on research and mentoring at the workshop, its chairman, Dr Ayo Ogunsan said it was to remind academics and administrators of the purpose the tertiary institutions were established in the first place – to train students, and to affect community through research.
“I want to bring back to the fore the reason why institutions are in business so they can go back and re-design their teaching modules and work on their administrative processes so their students can succeed. Institutions should make research a skill that should be learnt right from inception. And we look forward to organising this kind of workshop for institutions at the local level so they can adequately train their workers.
