JARUS ON SUNDAY: Make thy fun thy education

This article title is actually an adaptation of Greek philosopher, Hippocrates’ famous quote, “Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food”, which means choose your food such that even if they are not medicinal, they should at least not be injurious to your health. By 11am Dubai time tomorrow (8am Nigerian time), by God’s grace, I will be going in for my Organizational Behaviour (one of the courses in MBA programme) examinations. I have chosen Dubai as my centre because the exam date coincided with my annual holiday and I wanted to use one stone to kill two birds. Edinburgh Business School MBA (of the Heriot-Watt University, Scotland) is actually one of the most flexible MBAs globally. Some of us that cannot leave our full time job for full time studies (who /what will pay the bill in that one year?) have found this programme very handy. I started early this year, and already half way. Its flexibility suits me and my personal programmes. It affords me the opportunity to learn while I continue my job in Lagos. I only need to travel to the Edinburgh campus for seminars, which are voluntary anyway, although I was there in May this year for my Finance seminar. I also have the liberty to choose any of the over fifty centers in major cities across the world to write exams. I wrote my last paper from Lagos in August, I am writing this from Dubai. Such is the flexibility.

Now, back to my adaptation of Hippocrates’ quotable statement above, I have come to realize these days that I enjoy learning more when I add some touch of fun to it. Many a time, I have tried  to sit down in the corner of my room, for rigorous study like I did in my undergraduate days, but it isn’t working for me. My mind is most times somewhere else, that is if my little girl is not tearing my books as if to say “Daddy, e don do, leave the rest for us”. However, when I inject some fun into the study technique, I grasp the content of my study pack more. My favourable fun-education combo has come from facebook. For most of the topics I read, I wrote the key and interesting points/case studies as facebook posts, and stirred discussions with my Facebook friends. Trust me, by the time I flip through my Facebook wall for the postings in the last 2 months, I would have effectively done revision of the salient facts in the course OB. I have made my fun time on Facebook my study. I have also read the better part of my course content inside Lagos traffic on my way from/to office. I also made my traffic time my study time.

Now, organized education like MBA is just an example of how I used Facebook fun time to aid my study. Actually, even random posts can be made educative. I follow some interesting political and economic personalities on Facebook, and I learn from their comments. Elders like Professors Pius Adesanmi and Farooq Kperogi, Dr. Femi Awoyemi, Mr. Opeyemi Agbaje, Mr. Tope Fasua, Dr. Mahmud Dzukogi, Alhaji Garba Ibrahim, my fellow Buhari-liking Dr. Muhammad Abdur-Rahman etc. I also have peers like Mayowa Akinsola, Misbau Lateef, Olawoyin Olamide, Gimba Kakanda, Rasheed Adewusi, Mustay AY, Sola Fagorusi, Hafiz Booby Usman, Zainab Usman, not to forget my GDP-comparing aburo, Abimbola Hakeem and many others that add intellectual value to my fun time on Facebook. Now, even the picture-liking friends play their own role. They all make my fun time educative. That is how it should be, even if this is not to say Facebook and other Social Media platforms should lose their full fun part, like the pranks, the jokes and all that.

In any case, even the EBS MBA has an official blog where students and lecturers interact. That is another dimension of learning and catching fun. I hope Nigerian lecturers will also go digital, like my Social Media evangelist-friend, Sola Fagorusi has been preaching in his i-Punch column. Slowly and steadily, we shall get there.