The Federal College of Education, Ekiadolor (FCET Ekiadolor), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Retail Development and Investment Company Limited (RDIC), owners of Iwemi Engine, to enhance academic visibility and embrace digital innovation.

The collaboration aims at provide students and staff of FCET Ekiadolor with avenues to publish academic content for global access and recognition.

Among the key components of the agreement are the creation of an indexing platform for the college which will assist the college retrieve research materials conducted within the college with a click of a button.

This indexing platform solves the challenge of project topic duplication. Furthermore, the College can have a publishing press where academic textbooks, journals, theses and dissertations are published free for lecturers of the institution.

Speaking during the MoU signing event, Emmanuel Asagha, Provost of the College, said the partnership was aimed at driving academic excellence through the ease of access to information that digitisation would provide.

The provost said he was very delighted with the platform as lecturers can confidently write quality text books and instructional materials knowing that their effort would be hugely compensated through Iwemi’s robust royalty system.

“This event is epochal in our quest for academic excellence in our college.

“Our college’s partnership with RDIC will not only make for easy access to educational content for our students and academic staff through online storage of thesis, dissertations and other publications, but will also boost the school’s revenue generation, completely eliminate intellectual property loss, facilitate ease of reference to specific project materials and provide global visibility of the school’s project work to multi-national companies and project financiers,” Asagha said.

He promised to give the partnership all the necessary support to ensure that it succeeded in its objectives and urged members of the College community to avail themselves of the opportunity the partnership offered them to enrich their academic experience.

Speaking at the signing event, Tony Obaseki, Librarian of the college, said that he was very optimistic about the potential of the agreement to boost the webometric ranking of the college.

“Federal College of Education-Technical, Ekiadolor is repositioning to becoming a trailblazer in the academic world. The college is refining its education processes in order to produce graduates who are highly skilled, who will make immediate impact in the various industries where they are employed.

“This agreement, which is another first of its kind in the history of this country, will go a long way in projecting this citadel of knowledge in the best light and will earn it a place of pride amongst its peers locally and internationally,” he said.

Ejimofor Akah, Project Director of Iwemi, expressed his delight at the formalisation of the partnership and pledged to deliver on the expectations of the College.

“I am delighted to be part of this partnership between Federal College of Education-Technical, Ekiadolor and RDIC. I convey our organisation’s commitment to providing quality and timely delivery of the services which we have been appointed to provide in such a manner as would bring about overall excellence and prosperity to the college,” Akah said.