Enhancing Access and Quality of Open Instructional Videos in Africa: Visibility of NOUN Repository on Social Media

National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) open courseware has been adjudged a source of dependable open educational resources for students and instructors within and outside the ambit of open and distant learning institutions across African sub-region and beyond. The development of instructional videos, produced by professional in every subject area in NOUN has added significant values to open learning resources. Opening the instructional videos to unrestricted access particularly through social media has been a subject of debate considering the public request and the university’s need to protect the integrity of the videos. Although, social media especially YouTube house both open and restricted access instructional videos, doubtful sources and questionable contents have made its adoption for open universal education a prolonged challenge. This work surveyed public opinions within and outside Nigeria on how social media could enhance the openness of NOUN’s instructional videos and boost the users' trust in the contents on social media. Hanging the discussions on Uses and Gratification theoretical analysis, transporting NOUN instructional videos to social media was adjudged a welcomed development. Substantial empirical deductions from public perceptions of the idea affirmed that the practice would lubricate the public interests and confidence in open and distant education.


Introduction
Enhanced interactivity of open and distance model of education has placed more pressure on the demand for innovations to enhance access especially among the educationally disadvantaged and the less privileged in Africa (Adelakun, 2018).This achievement speeds up the central target of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and various governmental policies on mass education of African population.Various developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) are also easing both the access and the mode of transferring knowledge without distance barriers.The development in ICTs has also cut up with the interactivity challenge, which was earlier considered one of the main obstacles in open and distance education compare to face-to-face classroom affairs.The influence of technological determinism proposition has proved a significant trend in the way every development in information and communication technology benefits open and distance education.Social media are now rendering significant functions in education and knowledge sharing and have been widely adopted as means of facilitating access to unrestricted educational contents (Essel, Vlachopoulos, Adom, & Tachie-Menson, 2021;Olivier, 2019;Ssentamu et al., 2020).
Many institutions in Africa like their counterparts in other continents were forced by the challenge of Covid-19 to engage in distance education in the year 2020 and 2021 so as to maintain social distancing health measure and to avoid disrupted academic calendars (Adelakun, Aliede, Enwerem, Ambassador-Brikins, & Abutu, 2020).This trend reinstates the relevance of social media in educational engagement and how it mandated teachers and students not only to keep abreast of the development in ICTs but also to seek knowledge of their usage for open and distance educational purposes.The trend also celebrates National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) courseware repository as open educational resources, where reading course materials can be freely accessed by the educators and students to facilitate distance educational demand for post-secondary education levels.Virtual classes on Zoom, Microsoft Team, Google Classroom and many others keep enticing the interests of learners in virtual education system as the level of interactivity with the tutors is almost equal to face-to-face classroom affairs.All these technologically-induced developments in education has increased the number of school enrolments, enhanced continuous education, lifelong learning, and consolidated the traditional learning approach that fosters coordinated and robust academic curriculum (Beldarrain, 2006;Chaka, 2020;Muhirwa, 2009).
The Introduction of instructional video as a subtle means of educational delivery scuttles the issue of inconvenient class schedules in the interactive virtual classes (Chan, 2010).Though less interactive compared to physical classes, studies (Mayer, Fiorella, & Stull, 2020;Tang, Lu, & Zhou, 2020;Zhang, Zhou, Briggs, & Nunamaker Jr, 2006) have attributed the high rate of virtual class adoption to convenience and conformity to personal schedules and the learner's control over what, when, where, and which scene of the instructional video to watch.These, in addition to the opportunity to fast-forward the contents to avoid the redundant scenes; rewind it to grasp the interesting aspects or for emphases purpose; and watch over and over again until the messages are grabbed, alluring to the audience of instructional video stand out the medium for educational use.Studies (Hibbert, 2014;Lee & Mayer, 2018;Zhang et al., 2006) also affirmed that instructional videos meet the educational needs of the nontraditional students, professionals, artisans and the international students who are not within the radius of the learning environment.Though the instructional videos on social media particularly YouTube are educational inclined, their contents are not produced based on specific curriculum or subjected to professional gauges in each area of expertise.Uploading of instructional videos on social media is opened to all social media users thereby questioning the quality, standard, originality, as well as the relevance or palatability of the contents to the actual and potential users.
Based on the submissions of some studies (Adelakun, 2018;Adeoye, 2020), the use of social media for academic and research purposes is fast growing and the volume of educational contents presently on social media buttresses the submission that social media have become vital education resources highly depended on by all partakers in educational activities.Although studies on social media relevance in education have been able to establish the growing rate of reliance on it for educational drives, the attention of the studies on the degree of credibility that such contents demand from the users to ensure confidence while applying the knowledge embodied in the contents to the society is not considerably established.There are certain research gaps in the relationship between the volume of the educational contents on social media and the trust the educationalists repose in the academic contents of the instructional videos.Restraining NOUN instructional video contents to the university repository may result to limited exposure to the potential beneficiaries.The challenge is how secure and credible are the contents when made open on social media particularly YouTube and what degree of trust would educationalists have in it to beef up the knowledge gap and align it with academic curriculum at various level of post-secondary education ?Will the users be able to distinguish the quality, standard and the originality of the NOUN instructional videos on social media from others that were not subjected to academic and research rigours?Will they be able to accord the trust that the NOUN instructional videos deserve when the contents are housed on social media together with others of doubtful sources?

Social Media Adoption and usage trends in Africa
It is empirically documented that social media use in Africa is not evenly distributed among different categories of age groups (Whiting & Williams, 2013).The statistics from substantial number of studies skewed in favour of the digital natives -the middle age group, who are most often regarded as the youths.The skewness of the data, which substantiate high level of social media adoption and use among the African youths is a plus to any study on the adoption of the media for educational purpose.The vantage steps out of the fact that the bulk of the social media users in Africa as documented in Adelakun (2018) are school-age group who may find favour in using the media for knowledge sourcing and sharing purposes.Although, the concept of school-age population requires clarification as the age parameter is no more a distinctive characteristic for the classification.The concept is becoming cloudy as continuous and lifelong education through Open & Distance Learning (ODL) system entices even the adults and the aged population into convenient schooling.The digital-immigrant category who majorly depends on traditional news media are always struggling to come out of the laggard category in the hierarchical level of adoption of the new media especially when the needs transcend news purpose.This category rather places their media priority on the primary motives for using media, which are information and news value and they found their needs gratified with traditional news media.
Social media adoption and usage is exponentially growing by the day in Nigeria.Empirical evidences (Adelakun, Ademuyiwa & Oyebode, 2021) attribute the incessant increment in social media use in Nigeria to the rediscovery of the media as the most potent avenue for political campaigns.The study hypothesised and empirically justified a steady increment in social media use for political purposes from 2011 when Twitter was first used by one of the presidential aspirants to declare his intention to contest.After 2011 general election, politicians and their allies hijacked social media, most especially Facebook as the cheapest means to reach out to their target audiences, who are majorly the electorates (Adelakun, 2018).Until the beginning of Covid-19, the use of social media for educational objectives was at low ebb.YouTube contents prior Covid-19 was infested with films and comedy presentation series.YouTube played host to insignificant proportion of educational videos of indigenous contents before Covid-19.The contents were not only made outside Nigeria but also not made by Nigerians.During Covid-19, academic lectures were uploaded on social media to enhance virtual learning.But the effort to streamline the contents to ensure originality so as to protect copyright; standard to maintain learning per excellence; relevance to avoid misleading knowledge; and credibility to maintain consumer trust, remains a big challenge.Any attempt to gate-keep educational videos that are uploaded online is considered an infringement on the right to information and freedom of communication as entrenched in the international human right declaration.
There is high similarity in the trends of social media adoption, subscription and use between Ghana and Nigeria.Studies confirmed that more Ghanaians are not only subscribing to social media but also using the platform heavily particularly for health information since the beginning of Covid-19.This makes Covid-19 a significant factor that prompted more subscription on social media for educational task.No specific empirical deduction attributed the use of social media for education objective to Covid-19 in Ghana could be cited in this work.But studies (Beldarrain, 2006;Essel, Vlachopoulos, Adom, & Tachie-Menson, 2021;and Zhang, Zhou, Briggs, & Nunamaker Jr, 2006) relate the adoption of virtual learning environment by many higher institutions of learning in Ghana to more engagement of social media in facilitating learning.The case is similar in Uganda and South-Africa where the adoption of social media for education purposes was sped up by Covid-19 experience Ssentamu, et al., 2020).

The Place of Instructional Video in Online and Distant Education in Africa
The relevance of instructional video to learning is enhanced by the audio-visual and motion advantage it offers.It has almost all the characteristics of a classroom setting except limited interactivity between the instructor and the learners.One great opportunity of instructional video as noted in Hibbert (2014) is that it accommodates unlimited number of students.Just like any of the mass media, instructional video can serve unlimited heterogeneous dispersed students at the same time.Another functional benefit of the educational medium that surpasses conventional broadcast media is that the contents can be accessed, revisited, downloaded, and shared to other consumers in other to enhance its visibility.It can also be reproduced as video-within video to substantiate or as a reference material in a related online lecture or another similar instructional video (Mayer et al., 2020;Tang et al., 2020).
The fact that most instructional video are uploaded online free and are characterised with unlimited access make it a viable and cost-effective means of spreading knowledge.Studies confirmed that those who live below poverty line and the educational less privileged found the medium of education more accessible, affordable, and as such fill the gap of their unique educational deficiencies (Fiorella & Mayer, 2018;Lee & Mayer, 2018).In most African educational settings especially in Nigeria where industrial strike actions have reduced the public higher institutions of learning to an effigy of their past glories and a compromising avenue to create market share for the private higher institutions, opportunity for higher education has become unattainable dream for the common man.The hope of those who could not afford education at higher cost in private tertiary institutions rises in open and distance online education where the mode of learning largely depends on online classroom and instructional video structure.Through instructional video, learners are at the liberty to select from numerous online lectures on specific topics that cover the areas of their academic or research interest.
Instructional video also paves ways for laboratory and industrial practical for learners and institutions.Practical-oriented lectures and technical practices are demonstrated on some instructional video contents to keep online learners abreast of the standard practice in wellequipped laboratories or engineering workshops in conventional universities.Universality of education curriculum as well as international standard practices and structures are enhanced through instructional video contents.Studies (Chan, 2010;Kristanto & Mariono, 2017;Mayer, 2017) document the incessant increase in the statistical ratio of conventional university students who use instructional videos not only as alternative education sources but also for the consolidation of knowledge received and the filling of knowledge gaps.Researches have also confirmed high dependency ratio on instruction video by the lecturers in higher institutions of learning for knowledge updating, to compared methods and modes of teaching, and for the adoption of the new techniques of engaging students in standard learning processes.

Instructional Video on Social Media: Uses and Gratification Theoretical Perspective
The issue of how beneficial the consumers of instructional video find the contents on social media is a function of the level of convenience in its accessibility, usage, and the degree of satisfaction they derive from its consumption.Experimentation and application of uses and gratification proposition in studies related to the media use and the satisfaction that the media audience derive from such use often confirms why people can't do without the media.The primary roles of the mass media and the needs that the media audience desire to be gratified from the media, which studies summarised as information, education, entertainment, and merchandising corroborate some of the media effect theoretical propositions and models.Hence, the speculations and the unverified hypothesis is that instructional videos perform the same roles and gratify certain needs of the media audience just like conventional and other new media.All these explain why discussions and empirical justifications of instructional video contents and usage be subjected to uses and gratification theoretical explanation.
Uses and gratification theory, propounded by Blumber & Katz's (1974) explains the nature of the bound between the media and the media audience, which is the message.Media audience are the consumers of what the media produce and the media messages are the products that the mass media offer to the audience.Economics theory of utility proves that consumers of a product will consume more as long as the product satisfies consumers' needs.This buttresses the reason why the audience patronise the media, that is, to satisfy their needs.The needs that the media audience put forwards define the roles that the media perform in a society.Indeed, as the media audience's needs become expanded, the media must adjust its roles to meet the new demand.This also explains the concepts of media selectivity and preference.The needs of the media audience vary and that defines various medial roles, hence some media houses specialised on each of the audience needs to ensure utility.
It has been hypothesised that the needs that the audience of the instructional video bade to gratify lies within the roles of the medium.The essence of engaging uses and gratification theory to discuss the media and audience relationships under this media structure is to compare and confirm the degree of satisfaction that the audience of instructional video derive from instructional video contents of unknown sources and those from the professional or university repository alternative sources.The usage of social media in open and distant learning alternative was confirmed and back by uses and gratification theoretical proposition in Adelakun, (2018).The empirical discussion in the work attuned to the essence of engaging the uses and gratification theory in understanding social media audience needs to be gratified and how media contents are selectively consumed to satisfy the needs.Similarly, the interest of the instructional video audience and the needs for the content in gratifying their academic purpose buttresses the adoption of the theory in understanding usage and needs gratification proposition.The theory further explains the audience preference between accessing instructional video contents through university repositories or social media.Considering this theoretical perspective of needs gratification, opening NOUN instructional videos on social media demand a serious consideration.

Methods
This study adopted mixed method in research designs (survey and interview), data generation instruments (questionnaire and interview) and data analysis procedures (quantitative and qualitative).Survey design was adopted to sample the opinions of various audiences of instructional video among social media users in Nigeria and in three other Anglophone African countries that were randomly selected.The questionnaire respondents are limited to the social media users among NOUN students and students of conventional universities in the selected countries, who use NOUN repository in search of instructional materials for education purpose.Considering the objective of this work, heterogeneity, and unequal access and digital versatility characteristics of the respondents, three different data gathering instruments were adopted.The respondents constitute NOUN students and students of other institutions in the sampled Anglophone African countries, who access or subscribe to NOUN open repository for educational and instructional materials.The details and the email contacts of the respondents were accessed through their online presence on NOUN repository through reads and downloads statistics on the repository.Online questionnaire was administered on the respondents, who use NOUN educational contents.In-depth interview was conducted to elicit responses from NOUN management on the university position whether or not to give open access to her instructional video contents on social media just like the instructional reading materials (Course Materials).Considering the multiplicity of the characteristics of the instructional video audiences and the level of acceptability of the open and online education, half of the respondents were selected from students of ODL and conventional universities who visit NOUN repository for educational materials.
The population of the study was configured on the users of NOUN online educational materials which was determined by the statistic of the users' presence on NOUN repository by ODL/conventional university students.It was impossible to separate ODL students from conventional university students on NOUN repository except through their response to the variable that addresses this attribute in the administered questionnaire.Considering the inaccuracy of the population of subscribers to NOUN repository due to repetitiveness of online presence of some respondents, and unstable in the frequency of visits to the repository, the population was based on the statistics of the visit to repository within the specific period covered by this study (July to October, 2022).The population of the users of NOUN repository was therefore approximated to one million students, which speaks volume of its uncelebrated level of adoption and students' level of the digital compliance in some part of Africa.Using Taro Yamane formula (n = N/1+N (e) 2 ), The sample proportion of the respondents, who subscribe to NOUN repository to access online educational materials amount to 400.The sample of the respondents were randomly picked evenly from the four-month strata.In-depth interview was conducted with the Directorate of Learning Content Management of NOUN, who manage NOUN repository.More online questionnaires than required number were sent out from which those that corresponded with the specific characteristics of the target respondents such as studentship and educational purpose, (which is the focus of this study) were selected.The links of NOUN repository audience were got through their comments on the educational material contents on NOUN repository and that made it easy to send online questionnaire links across to all the chosen 400 digital-native respondents.
Survey responses were quantitatively analysed through the use Statistics Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) tool and summarised on frequency distribution tables.Interview responses were discussed in relation to the appropriate research question.

Data Presentation and Discussion
The two sets of data generated were used to respond to the research questions earlier raised.The opinion sample poll was subjected to quantitative analysis to establish how the instruction video users relate with the contents in term of usage pattern, the degree of satisfaction derived and further needs.in Africa: Visibility of NOUN Repository on Social Media Factors such as level of digital literacy and the degree of access to digital compliance tools influence the frequency of the demographic variables as presented in Table 1.Considering the large population of NOUN students and the online mode system of education adopted, the level of digital literacy as well as the rate of online presence and search for education instructional materials were mostly justified in the statistics of NOUN repository subscribers.Since there is no discrimination in term of privilege to access NOUN repository between NOUN students and students of other universities, access to the repository can therefore not constitute a moderating variable in this essence as the open access to the repository is an even privilege to all.The normal curve structure in the age distributions of the respondents is a clear picture of the age range of the university undergraduates in most West-African countries with the results in West-African Examination Council and common educational system as moderating factors (Okagbue et al., 2020).The dominant age range in the distributions, which can be regarded as the youth category has been empirically proved as the most active online (Adelakun & Oyebode, 2021).Invariably, most of the students within this age category are regarded as the digital native generation because of their activeness in the manipulation of the digital compliance tools in search of education instructional materials in virtual environment (Adelakun, 2018b).The gender structure of the distributions is also a reflection of the ratio of male to female undergraduate students in some universities in West-African sub region (Okagbue et al., 2020).

Demographic Distribution of the Respondents
Q1: What is the usage pattern of education instructional materials by the subscribers of NOUN repository The distributions of the survey variables as presented in Table 2 show the aggregate perceptions of instructional video users.The statistics indicates that the awareness of educational instructional video is the variable that recorded highest mean value.Considering the decision rule, the level of awareness was more favourable to the educational instruction video contents on social media which various studies considered of unknown or contending sources most especially among the non-ODL subscribers than those that are housed within the university repositories (See Table 2).Access to instructional video contents on NOUN repository was not favourably assessed.The shortfall could be attributed to the limited access to the repository unlike those that enjoy open access on social media.Contrarily, the variable on the access to instructional video contents on social media was favourably adjudged with a 3.5 mean value.This confirmed the openness of many of the instruction video contents on social media to public domain and corresponds with the demand for the NOUN instructional video to be uploaded on social media to ensure unrestricted access.
High usage rate of educational instructional video were recorded among the respondents with 3.35 mean value.The usage rate indicates that the interest in instructional video contents is not a monopoly of the subscribers from ODL institutions but rather a beneficial platform to all who want acquire knowledge or skills beyond face-to-face physical interaction.The respondents also confirmed that educational instructional video contents are highly relevant and address the needs for which they engage the medium.This significantly correspond with the degree of satisfactions that the respondents derived from the educational instructional video contents as both are valuable at favourable mean values instructional video contents are yet to be in public domain unlike the university course materials, he affirmed that the openness of instructional video contents to public domain is still under consideration as the necessary steps to ensure the sanctity of the contents must first be ensured before fulfilling such demand.He emphasised the need to protect the copyright of the videos and the need to be assured that the videos are used for the purpose they were designed for.

Conclusion
The submission of Adelakun et al. (2020) on the online exuberance and the fundamental human right to freedom of information that has lubricated access to information through social media has been extended to education needs.The interest and usage of instructional video on social media for educational needs stems out of the convenience, interactivity and the interest in lifelong learning that devoid of age barrier.The essence of this work therefore confirmed the pressing needs of NOUN educational instructional video contents in the public domain to consolidate the university open courseware, which has become a major reading education resource within and outside the fold of ODL system.NOUN perspective to ensure the sanctity of the university instructional video contents was considered a principal actor in maintaining the trust in the adoption and application of the video contents to knowledge.
Considering the two perspective of needs and the gratification of needs for educational instructional video contents of reputable source, this work thereby concluded that certain level of moderation be applied while the NOUN instructional video contents are made open access through social media to distinguish such from the unbranded contents.

Q2:
How does NOUN consider making her educational instruction video open access on social media?Director of Learning Content Management of NOUN in an interview confirmed the invaluable influence of the NOUN open courseware on both the ODL instructors, ODL students, and non ODL users within and outside Nigeria.While reinforcing the reason why the NOUN

Table 1 :
Demographic distributions of the respondents

Table 2 :
Five-Point Likert Scale distributions of the usage pattern of NOUN repository by the university's undergraduates

Table 1 :
Five-Point Likert Scale distributions of the users' assessment of educational instructional video contents