By Funmi Ogundare
Professor Adedeji Badiru, Dean of the Graduate School of Engineering and Management, Airforce Institute of Technology, Ohio, USA, has stressed the need for operational research as a tool for achieving efficient and effective delivery of education, especially in this era of COVID-19 pandemic.
Badiru made this known at a three -day virtual conference on ‘ Overcoming Impacts of Covid-19 Pandemic: An Operational Research Optimisation Approach’, organised by the Institute of Operational Research and Management Science (IORMS), University of Lagos, Akoka.
He said since people were now tending towards online learning, education systems must be rejigged to sustain the enterprise through operational research methods and tools.
He affirmed that the use of the D.E.J.I system model, an acronym for Design, Evaluation, Justification and Integration, will also help in achieving effective and efficient delivery in the education sector.
According to him, “Anywhere we are, we face resource limitation, many times urgency will develop, sometimes emergencies will arise and global demand will always stare us in the face, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic. We must usher in all intellectual resources under the umbrella of operational research to do the best job we can do.”
Earlier in his remarks, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, harped on collaboration with the academic community and how to use operational research as veritable tool in solving problems at this time of pandemic.
He said researchers must come together to assist each other in tackling problems and provide possible solutions on how to handle the coronavirus pandemic which has also affected the education sector. The Deputy Vice Chancellor in charge of Development Services Professor Folasade Ogunsola said one of the major problems confronting us as a nation, is operationalising and implementing policies.
“COVID-19 has taught us to do a lot of things very differently. Even things we were doing before and one such thing is creating virtual platforms for online lectures,” she said.
The President of IORMS, Professor Rasheed Ojikutu, said the conference was aimed at providing answers to some socio-economic challenges that arose from the coronavirus pandemic.
At the programme, speakers delivered papers on ‘Predictive Modeling of Covid-19 Pandemic Evolution in Nigeria’, ‘Resilient Health Systems to Mitigate Impact of Pandemic on Medical Professionals’, Covid-19: Imperative for E-Service Quality Improvement in Business Organisations’, among others.
