University of Ghana and Microsoft have signed a landmark Education Alliance Agreement which seeks to provide a framework to use technology to offer faculty, administrators and students powerful tools for improving teaching and learning. Under the agreement, students will also be provided with the support they need while at the university, as well as the skills they need in the world of work.
Re-echoing the mission of the University, which is, to create an enabling environment that makes University of Ghana increasingly relevant to national and global development through cutting-edge research and high quality teaching and learning, Rev. Professor Cephas Omenyo, Provost of the College of Education, explained that it was with this mission in mind that Microsoft first partnered with the University of Ghana as a sponsor for the academic institution’s Computer Science Department Week. Following this, the university was included in Microsoft’s DreamSpark initiative.
“The Education Alliance Agreement moves our engagement past being a series of individual transactions to a long-term strategic relationship,” says Country Manager for Microsoft in Ghana, Derek Appiah. “At Microsoft in Ghana we are focusing on investing in the youth, and productivity tools and cloud technology are important enablers to help them grow.”
Faculty members, staff and all registered students can expect to benefit from free access to the latest Microsoft productivity tools, for use on up to 5 personal devices (such as personal computers, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones) at work or at home so that they can install Office desktop programmes on their personal devices. In addition, all registered students, faculty and staff will have free access to Office 365, a cloud-based communication, collaboration, web conferencing, document creation and storage service. This package comes as part of the Microsoft Campus Agreement between Microsoft and the University.
The university will also incorporate the Microsoft Information Technology Academy (MS-ITA) Project. As part of the programme which would be deployed through Smartthink Ltd, a Microsoft Training Partner in Ghana, faculty members and students will have access to Partners in Learning, a Microsoft global initiative designed to drive effective use of technology in teaching and learning. They will also be able to access the Microsoft Digital Literacy Curriculum, enabling them to acquire essential computer concepts and skills and to become certified in Microsoft technologies. University of Ghana will continue to be part of DreamSpark, driving application development, and will receive support for a Microsoft cloud development lab.
Professor Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi, Dean, School of Continuing and Distance Education, University of Ghana is excited about the Education Alliance Agreement, commenting: “I believe this partnership will significantly improve the University’s response to the needs of our Distance Education students at the UG Learning Centres and our external publics by providing them with opportunities to develop essential digital literacy skills for lifelong learning. With the Microsoft IT Academy and the use of cloud-based computing tools, there will be increasing options for online learning and occupational continuing education for the Ghanaian youth, adult learners, and other professionals.“
Appiah ends, “Our agreement with the University of Ghana is an important step in the right direction. We are giving students and staff the opportunity to be productive anytime, anywhere and develop the skills they need to punch above their weight locally and globally.”
Microsoft maintains that this is a key part of their efforts across Africa, delivering tools and services over a secure cloud platform to enable people to up skill and innovate in order to contribute to economic development.
