NUL learning system gets facelift

 SEKETE LESAOOANA

MASERU – The National University of Lesotho (NUL) is currently working on a makeover of its learning management system ‘Thuto’ to make it affordable to allow more students and lecturers to access it with ease. In a media briefing held at the Roma campus on Monday this week, NUL management acknowledged the current system’s capacity challenges that also include high maintenance costs.

Speaking at the gathering, NUL Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Professor Kananelo Mosito, highlighted that problems of Covid-19 induced online teaching were not exclusive to the university but were a nationwide and global phenomenon. Professor Mosito noted, however, despite these challenges teaching and learning continues unabated, but mainly online, even when students had been excluded from campus.

Mosito further indicated that resources from the government are dwindling such that when it comes to the National Manpower Development Secretariat (NMDS) students’ sponsorship there was speculation that the government can no longer handle the huge number of sponsored students. He said these developments, misperceptions and misinformation in some quarters about operational challenges in both institutions have inundated the media recently are a matter of concern.

The NUL management also hammered on the issue of students’ admissions, registration and the NMDS regarding loan bursaries. In his remarks during the meeting, Vice Chancellor Professor Isaac Olusola Fajana, disclosed that NUL received a total of 4 424 new applications for admissions into undergraduate programmes offered at the Roma campus and 593 new applications into postgraduate programmes for the 2021/2022 academic year.

He said of all the 2 937 admitted students, 2 560 were undergraduates with 377 postgraduates. About 1 820 local students are likely to receive loan bursaries from the NMDS, as it allocates the student quota, he said. “It is important for students, parents, guardians and the public to appreciate that admissions to study at NUL does not automatically imply that an admitted student will be awarded a bursary. NUL has a much bigger intake capacity than the bursary quota allocated to it by the government of Lesotho through NMDS.

“In September of 2021, the names of 2 071 admitted undergraduates were submitted to the NMDS to compete for 1 620 loan bursaries; similarly, in November 2021 names of 290 admitted postgraduate students were also submitted to the NMDS to compete for 200 loan bursaries. “This means that of the 2 361 submitted names, some may be allocated bursaries while others may not,” Professor Fajana indicated

The university stated that to-date, a new intake of 1 600 undergraduate students has been awarded bursaries by the NMDS, leaving the many more hopeful that they may be awarded the remaining 20 bursaries. As management marked their success as the NUL, they also acknowledged that the university has experienced some ICT system challenges with the increasing demand for most of its operations to be done online, when resources to develop ICTs were dwindling.

These challenges are now receiving attention as they relate to both the ITs, the legacy system and Fedena which are under pilot. The bursar, ’Masechaba Mantsoe-Ntaopane said there were attempts to seek auctions and three systems were presented to the NUL but appeared costly so the university had to resort to ‘Thuto’, an online platform. Later they realised that ‘Thuto’ was not as interactive between students and lecturers as is desirable.

She then mentioned that they are optimistic that the coming academic year will be fruitful for online teaching as they will use cloud instead. For her part, Dr Malineo Matšela, Director CTL said, “Thuto was not initially meant to shoulder such huge numbers of lectures and students combined yet Covid-19 forced us to, but preparations are in order.”