By Idris Auwal
The National Board for Technical Education, NBTE had provided curricula for the unbundling of Mass Communication and Computer Science courses in line of the global trend of polytechnic education.
The Executive Secretary of NBTE Board, Professor Idris M. Bugaje said the unbundling of the courses was aimed at repositioning, revitalising and to meet the global standard of polytechnics skills development in the 21st century.
Garba Abdussalam, lecturer of Federal Polytechnic, Damaturu, Department of Mass Communication said the unbundling of HND mass communication programme is a welcome development in the media industry and the students’ that have interests in the fields of communication.”
” Polytechnics in the country are graduating students of HND Mass Communication without choosing area of specialization, which is affecting media industry negatively, but with this modern development by NBTE, it will help individuals who have interests in the field of communication to have way of direction and to automatically choose area of specialization/professionalism from the day one in the polytechnics for who want to make a career in media industry.” The lecturer added.
In a letter signed by Professor Idris M. Bugaje to the Director General of the National Youth Service Corps on the bundling stated that the unbundling is to strategically position Nigerian graduates for a more effective national development.
Aminu Haruna Maipampo of Department of Computer Science, Kaduna Polytechnic said that, “unbundling Computer Science course is one of the best things that ever happened to the Polytechnic sector in Nigeria. It will give room for specialisation to meet up with current world trends in IT like Cybersecurity , Data science as students will have option to specialise on a particular aspect of IT as obtainable in developed world.”
Maipampo added that, “there will be different options for those (applicants) willing to join the field of IT unlike how it is now ( just Computer Science which is just one area of ICT).”
The NBTE as a body is saddled with the regulation and supervision of polytechnics, monotechnics and technical colleges in Nigeria on skills demand and Maipampo said the NBTE’s Executive Secretary had repositioned Computer Science course on its skills option.
Mass Communication course is unbundled to three courses of Journalism and Media Studies, Strategic Communication and Media studies and then Film and Multimedia Production. While Computer Science is divided into four courses of Artificial intelligence, network and cloud computing, software & web development and cybersecurity & data protection.
Kudos to the ES NBTE, this is well thought development.