Skills Fair: Department of Adult Education Gives Back to The University Community

By Olamide Samson OLALEKAN |The Department of Adult Education and Life Long Learning, in the Faculty of Education, Obafemi Awolowo University, organizes first of its kind Skills Fair in the history of Obafemi Awolowo University. 

The skills fair, which serves as a continuous assessment for the students offering DCE 403 with course title, “Organizations and Administration of Adult Education”, was held on the 3rd of August, 2018 at the Faculty of Education basement. 

It encompasses various vocational trainings which includes tie and dye, soap making, bead making, bow tie, lapel, make up and gele, barbing, wig making etc

The skills fair was not only attended by students from the faculty of education, but also had in attendance lecturers in the faculty, students from other faculties and even persons from outside the University. 

The Dean of Faculty of Education, Prof. M. A. Adeleke, also witnessed the Skills fair. He commended the efforts of the lecturers in charge of the course, Dr. Mrs. Babalola and Mr Paul Akpomuje, for being the brains behind the innovation.  

He also congratulated the students offering the course for participating in the fair and advised them not to see it as a mere continuous assessment, but to see it also as a skill acquisition program. 

In order to get more details about the real driving force behind this first of its kind Skill Fair in the University community, The Lens News Agency met with one of the Lecturers in charge of the course, Mr. Paul Akpomuje, and he granted the agency an interview.

During the interview, Mr. Paul Akpomuje shed more lights on the reason(s) for the skill fair. He said: "We in the Department of Adult Education and Life-long Learning believe that education should be practical; we believe that when people come to the Faculty of Education, they should not just be trained to become classroom teachers only.”

“They may choose to be classroom teachers and do other things or do other things but classroom, so when we train people and do all these things; we believe we should bring education to reality.

“Most importantly, there are three domains of learning; we have the cognitive, the affective and the psychomotor. In our universities in Nigeria, I stand corrected, I’m sorry to say, I think we have missed it in the sense that, I don’t know of other universities but to the best of my knowledge, emphasis is only on the cognitive, that is why you see people cramming, going to write exams, cram to write tests and all.

“We believe that the other domains, affective and psychomotor, are tested. So what we are doing now is called “Skills Fair”, the skills fair is to test both the affective and the psychomotor domain of learning so that we will be able to test people’s character, behavior, attitude, emotional intelligence not only intellectual intelligence quotient. 

“We don’t believe only in IQ in Adult Education, we believe in IQ- Intelligence Quotient, EQ- Emotional Quotient and SQ- Spiritual Quotient, so we believe in all the quotients of a person, meaning that we believe in the roundedness of a person i.e. a person must be rounded. 

“Learning should be a rounding process; it should be able to go round a person’s whole skills. So what we are doing here is a test of the psychomotor and affective skills. While we are testing the affective skill, the behavior, mannerism and emotions, of students; we are also testing their ability to put their hands to work, that is, the psychomotor skill.

“For instance, one of the students in one of the groups, the tie & dye and soap making group, is visually challenged, taking this course (DCE 403) , and was the person who taught soap making. 

“Ordinarily, she may write exams and not do well because you are testing the cognitive domain but here she is using other skills very effectively which is the psychomotor skill and different groups.

“Some people were taught how to make wigs, barb, do make up, finger foods etc., these are the things that may not be taught in the classroom. So, the essence is to practice training or teaching and also to test all other domains of learning", he added.