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

The partnership is aimed at providing students and staff of the institution with an avenue to publish academic content for global access and recognition. A key component of the agreement is the creation of an indexing platform for the college, which will assist in retrieving research materials with the click of a button.

The platform also helps in solving the challenge of project topic duplication. With the agreement, the college now has a publishing press where academic textbooks, journals, and dissertations are published free for lecturers at the college.

The Provost, Dr Emmanuel Asagha, said the partnership was aimed at driving academic excellence through easy access to information, which digitisation would provide.

With the platform, Asagha noted that lecturers can now confidently write quality books and instructional materials, knowing that their effort will be hugely compensated through Iwemi’s robust royalty system.

“Our partnership with RDIC would not only ensure easy access to educational content for our students and academic staff through online storage of thesis, dissertations and other publications, it 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 multinational companies and project financiers,” Asagha said.

He promised to give the partnership the necessary support to ensure that it succeeds in its objectives, while urging members of the college community to avail themselves of the opportunity so as to enrich their academic experience.

In his remarks, the college Librarian, Dr. Tony Obaseki, expressed optimism about the potential of the agreement to boost the school’s ranking.
“The FCET is repositioning to become a trailblazer in the academic world. The college is refining its education processes in order to produce graduates who are highly skilled and make an impact in the various industries where they are employed.

The Project Director at Iwemi, Ejimofor Akah, expressed delight at the formalisation of the partnership and pledged to deliver on the college’s expectations.

“Our platform engine enables lecturers to publish their academic textbooks, teaching aids and peer-reviewed faculty journals within minutes. The lecturers determine the sales price of their content, and on a successful sale, our banks ensure that lecturers’ royalties are paid within 48 hours,” Akah added.