Today, the impact of ICT and digital technology in society has made it important for policymakers, technical experts, end-users, governments, and private sector organizations to develop shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programs that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.
On September 9 2019, thirty-five (35) participants of the Eko-Konnect Campus Technology Internship Program (CTIP) from University of Lagos, Lagos State, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Anambra State and University of Benin, Edo State commenced the 6 weeks Online Course: Shaping the Internet – History, and Futures by Internet Society (ISOC). The course raises awareness on mechanisms for Internet governance, touching on key areas such as its history, policy principles, actors and stakeholders, infrastructure, regulatory frameworks, multilingualism, and cybersecurity.
Using internet-enabled personal devices ( PCs and smartphones), the course participants accessed the each of the eleven (11) online modules on the course; The History of the Internet, Internet Invariants, Introduction to Internet Governance, Internet Actors and Stakeholders Groups, Internet Policy Principles, Internet Infrastructure, Standards, Protocols and Systems, Regulatory Frameworks, Internet Governance for Development (IG4D), Multilingualism and, Internationalization, Legal Aspects of the Internet, Cybersecurity and Resilience.
Through four (4) scheduled Zoom meetings, the course moderator, Uffa Modey, Community Outreach Coordinator, Eko-Konnect supported the participants’ learning experience by facilitating their assessment of critical internet issues raised during the course and responding to questions arising from the course materials. The course also enabled the participants to access a rich pool of online content and resources for promoting understanding and discussions relating to internet principles, the global internet ecosystem and primary internet infrastructure concepts such as DNS and IPv4/IPv6, and explore open standards development and its importance to the evolution of the Internet.
At the end of the six weeks course duration, the participants received collaborative certificates of course completion from Internet Society and Eko-Konnect.
Feedback received from the course participants.
- “It’s a course where you learn what’s behind what we use every day – the internet. It gives you the consciousness of the internet in your everyday living” – Sadeko Daniel Damilare
- “It was a wonderful experience, we could learn at our paces and I discovered there were a lot of things I didn’t know about the internet.” – Boluwatifenisolae Grace Jemiriye
