Cynthia Tysick
Innovative Pedagogy and Creative Spaces Librarian
State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY)
The University at Buffalo Libraries has collaborated with the Enugu Ministry of Education to provide digital literacy staff training, curriculum development, and offline digital resources. In Nigeria, the project targets rural and peri-urban schools and community centers, enabling access to multilingual digital curriculum in English, Hausa, and Igbo. Using Kolibri, an offline, open‑source learning platform, the Library has been able to deliver rich, open access, educational content in low-connectivity environments. Since launching in January 2024, we’ve partnered with the Ministry to deploy the platform in 15 schools, reaching over 15,000 students and 400 teachers, with plans to expand to another 240 schools (K-9). The brief will cover implementation strategies, adapting interactive lessons and quizzes to Nigerian curricula and local languages. Preliminary results include average usage per day; improvements in basic literacy and numeracy skills; and qualitative feedback from teachers, librarians, and students. The session also highlights challenges and solutions, including addressing inconsistent power/internet access and sustaining stakeholder participation. Key takeaways include best practices for offline deployment, community-built sustainability models, and metrics for evaluating digital learning outcomes in low-resource environments.
