The School of Nursing and Midwifery (SoNAM) of the University of Health and Allied Science, Ho (UHAS) has been fitted with a state of the art computer laboratory by a German not-for-profit organization; Healthcare Information Technology for Africa (HITA). The facility comes with a campus Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) that provides both faculty and students with high-speed online access to educational contents and services.
Professor John Owusu Gyapong, the Vice Chancellor of UHAS who doubled as the Chairman for the brief ceremony to outdoor the facility remarked that the HITA foundation is a non-profit making NGO that contributes its widow’s mite to help improve the lives of others. He therefore urged all present at the occasion to also inculcate the spirit of voluntarism and giving.
According to the Vice Chancellor, the UHAS vision can only be realized through partnerships and effective collaborations. Professor Gyapong subsequently called on all stakeholders of UHAS to conduct themselves as development partners in all matters regarding the University.
In a short presentation, Dr. Robert Alhassan Kaba, the Head of Department for Public Health Nursing – SoNAM gave an overview of the UHAS – HITA collaboration. He stated that the project will serve as a knowledge hub to promote the provision of relevant information from lecturers to students. Mr Kabba asserted that the successful implementation of the aspirations of the collaboration will lead to the weaning off of the sandwich students and future postgraduate programmes onto the e-learning platform thereby changing all such programmes into distant education.
Acknowledging how the equipment presented will enhance effective teaching and learning in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, an elated Acting Dean of School of Nursing and Midwifery (SoNAM), Professor Prudence Mwini-Nyaledzigbor, expressed her profound appreciation to HITA for their benevolence. She also expressed her gratitude to staff and faculty of the school for their contributions.
Mr. Thomas Erkert, the leader of the team from HITA foundation stated that, the foundation is a Non-Profit Organization (NPO) as well as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that is based in Germany. He added that the foundation focuses on the application of information and communication technology in healthcare and health related education and training in developing countries. He said the foundation seeks to offer UHAS a state of the art electronic & mobile learning system and also provide SoNAM with a campus WLAN. This he believes will give both staff and students a high speed online access to educational services and content. The project according to him will also enable lecturers to apply modern and effective methods in their day to day work by equipping them with the necessary implementation research materials.
Mrs. Lucy Brimpong Ofori-Ayeh, the Director of Academic Affairs who represented the Registrar also expressed her profound gratitude to HITA for the project. She was hopeful that similar projects will subsequently be initiated in the other schools of the University.
BACKGROUND
It could be recalled that a team from HITA led by Mr. Maximilian Christian Glaetzner in July, 2017 visited UHAS campus to undertake feasibility studies on an intranet project that will be piloted at SoNAM to facilitate effective teaching and learning through innovative mLearning and eLearning solutions .