Students Circle Network

Last updated
Students Circle Network
NewSCNLogo2013.png
Type of site
Social networking service
Founded2010;12 years ago (2010)
Headquarters Kyrenia, Northern Cyprus
Founder(s) Gossy Ukanwoke
Key peopleSamora Reid, CEO
Chika Uwazie, VP of Channels
Amby Uche, Products Development

Students Circle Network was a global social networking service for university and secondary school students that provided over 10,400 academic courses of various levels from over 200 OpenCourseWare members worldwide, as well as study groups in various academic disciplines with online chat, and social-network games. [1] The platform was an OpenCourseWare consortium member. [2]

Contents

The platform was free to students studying business, computing, engineering, sciences and humanities. It had members from over 120 countries and 200 universities as well as many secondary schools. Membership was open to students, researchers, and teachers. It was self-funded. [3]

Users were able to create a "something akin to a Facebook profile for [their] academic interests". [4]

History

The network was started as a personal project of Gospel "Gossy" Ukanwoke, in Kyrenia, Northern Cyprus, in June 2010, as a collaboration tool for students at Girne American University, where he was studying. [5] [6]

Gossy Ukanwoke was referred to as the Mark Zuckerberg of Nigeria [7] [8] [9] and as "Africa's top technology entrepreneur". [10]

In December 2010, the platform was launched worldwide and reached 1 million visits. By January 2011, it reached 2 million visits and was averaging over 50,000 visits daily. [11]

In April 2012, Gossy Ukanwoke resigned from active management of the platform to focus on the creation of Beni American University, with a goal of creating affordable education in Africa. [12] [13] [14]

In 2012, Students Circle Network was a finalist at the Future Africa Awards in the Innovation in Education Category. [15]

Students Circle Network won the People's Choice Award from Study.com. [16]

Partnerships

In addition to the OpenCourseWare member universities, Students Circle Network partnered with non-OpenCourseWare member universities, including:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MIT OpenCourseWare</span> Web-based publication of MIT course content

MIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to publish all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, freely and openly available to anyone, anywhere. The project was announced on April 4, 2001, and uses Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. The program was originally funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and MIT. Currently, MIT OpenCourseWare is supported by MIT, corporate underwriting, major gifts, and donations from site visitors. The initiative inspired a number of other institutions to make their course materials available as open educational resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open educational resources</span> Open learning resource

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" describes publicly accessible materials and resources for any user to use, re-mix, improve, and redistribute under some licenses. These are designed to reduce accessibility barriers by implementing best practices in teaching and to be adapted for local unique contexts.

eGranary Digital Library

The eGranary Digital Library is a product of the WiderNet Project, a non-profit aimed at providing access to information technology and library services in developing countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Zuckerberg</span> American internet entrepreneur (born 1984)

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Girne American University</span> University

Girne American University is a non-profit university in Girne, a city in Northern Cyprus. The university was founded in 1985 by Mr Serhat Akpinar as an institution of American-style higher education. It part of YÖDAK, the higher education coordinating council of Northern Cyprus and YÖK, its Turkish parallel.

OpenCourseWare (OCW) are course lessons created at universities and published for free via the Internet. OCW projects first appeared in the late 1990s, and after gaining traction in Europe and then the United States have become a worldwide means of delivering educational content.

The African Leadership Academy (ALA) is an educational institution located in the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, for students between the ages of 16 to 19 years old, with current alumni coming from 46 countries.

The National Open University of Nigeria is a federal open and distance learning (ODL) institution, the first of its kind in the West African sub-region. It is Nigeria's largest tertiary institution in terms of student number and is popularly referred to as 'NOUN'.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Massive open online course</span> Education service on the web

A massive open online course or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive courses with user forums or social media discussions to support community interactions among students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs), as well as immediate feedback to quick quizzes and assignments. MOOCs are a widely researched development in distance education, first introduced in 2008, that emerged as a popular mode of learning in 2012, a year called the "Year of the MOOC".

The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) is an African non-profit organization founded in 2010 by Tony O. Elumelu and headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. It is a pioneer member of the Global Impact Investment Rating System (GIIRS). So far, the Foundation has empowered 7,520 African entrepreneurs across 54 African countries.

<i>YNaija</i> Nigerian online magazine

YNaija is a Nigerian online content publishing platform, founded by Chude Jideonwo and Adebola Williams of RED Africa media group. YNaija launched in May 2010 with columnists and various news sources. It offers news, original content and covers politics, business, entertainment, environment, technology, popular media, lifestyle, culture, comedy and healthy living.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accra Institute of Technology</span>

The Accra Institute of Technology (AIT), is an independent technology-focused research university based in Accra, Ghana. The university comprises six schools and three institutes.

iversity Berlin-based online education platform

Iversity is a Berlin-based online education platform. Since October 2013, iversity has specialised in providing online courses and lectures in higher education, specifically MOOCs. Courses are free and open for anyone to enroll and participate. Many of them are conducted in English or German, but also other languages. iversity cooperates with individual professors as well as different European universities. Some of the courses were winners of the MOOC Production Fellowship held in early 2013. iversity.org officially launched the MOOC platform online in October 2013 and as of February 2015 has a user base of 600,000 online learners, enrolled in 63 courses offered by 41 partner universities. iversity is the only MOOC platform offering courses with ECTS-integration. iversity has branch offices in Bernau bei Berlin, Germany and Berlin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regina Honu</span> Ghanaian software developer

Regina Honu, is a Ghanaian social Entrepreneur, software developer and founder of Soronko Solutions, a software development company in Ghana. She opened Soronko Academy, the first coding and Human-centered design school for children and young adults in West Africa. Honu has received multiple awards, including being named by CNN as one of the 12 inspirational women who rock STEM. She was also named as one of the six women making an impact in Tech in Africa and one of the ten female entrepreneurs to watch in emerging economies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji</span> Nigerian social entrepreneur

Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji is a Nigerian social entrepreneur and human development expert whose work cuts across entrepreneurship, education, youth development and public leadership. She is the founder and chief executive officer of Rise Networks, a Nigeria-based private and public sector funded Youth Interest social enterprise.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hotels.ng</span> Nigerian travel websites

Hotels.ng is a Nigerian online hotels booking agency which was launched in 2013. The platform was founded by Mark Essien who hails from Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria and claims to list over 7,138 hotels from 320 cities in Nigeria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Temie Giwa-Tubosun</span> Founder of LifeBank, which improves access to blood transfusions in Nigeria

Temie Giwa-Tubosun is a Nigerian-American health manager, founder of LifeBank, a business enterprise in Nigeria working to improve access to blood transfusions in the country.

Co-Creation Hub, commonly referred to as Cc-HUB or the HUB, is a technology-oriented centre located in Yaba, a district of Lagos. Founded in 2010 by Bosun Tijani and Femi Longe, it provides a platform where technology-oriented people share ideas to solving social problems in Nigeria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bosun Tijani</span> Nigerian-British entrepreneur (born 1977)

Olatunbosun Tijani is a Nigerian-British entrepreneur, co-founder, and CEO of Co-Creation Hub. Co-Creation Hub works at the forefront of accelerating the application of innovation and social capital for a better society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jobberman</span> Nigerian Job Portal

Jobberman is a Nigerian based job portal and career platform that lists candidate job applications for employers and helps connect people looking for jobs with companies hiring. It is "the single largest job placement website in sub-Saharan Africa".

References

  1. Poore, Megan (October 10, 2012). Using Social Media in the Classroom: A Best Practice Guide. SAGE Publishing. ISBN   9781446268841.
  2. OMERUO, KENNETH (December 13, 2011). "TechTrends Nigeria – The Leading Technology Blog In Nigeria". TechTrends Nigeria.
  3. Okeke, Nnenna (March 30, 2016). "Men We Should Know- Gossy Ukanwoke, Founder of nigerias-first-online-university". ConnectNigeria.com.
  4. Croce, Nicholas (December 15, 2012). Enhancing Your Academic Digital Footprint. Rosen Publishing. ISBN   9781448883790.
  5. 1 2 "Global Eğitim Merkezi Student Circle Genişliyor" [Global Education Center Student Circle Expands] (in Turkish). Girne American University.
  6. Uwazie, Chika (March 17, 2011). "Students Circle Network takes Global Education by the horns". YNaija .
  7. 1 2 Nsehe, Mfonobong (September 30, 2011). "Meet Nigeria's Budding Mark Zuckerberg". Forbes .
  8. Kermeliotis, Teo; Ellis, Jessica (April 7, 2014). "'Nigeria's Mark Zuckerberg' puts tech into higher learning". CNN .
  9. Olanrewaju, Lekan (March 26, 2012). "Nigeria's Mark Zuckerberg? Students Circle creator set to launch online university". YNaija .
  10. WAKAMA, AS (October 6, 2011). "Q&A Who is Africa's Top Tech Entrepreneur". IT News Africa .
  11. van Vugt, Bertil (February 1, 2011). "Venture profile: Students Circle Network". vc4a.
  12. Abayomi, Amaka (March 29, 2012). "Nigerian launches online varsity for African students". Vanguard (Nigeria) .
  13. De Waal, Mandy (18 April 2012). "Hi-tech solution to Nigeria's education chaos".
  14. "Nigeria's Entrepreneur Introduces First Online University". Channels TV. April 30, 2013.
  15. Jaiyesimi, Doyin (August 22, 2012). "The Future Awards 2012: Meet the nominees that made the final shortlist". YNaija .
  16. "Best Non-Video Free Courses: Study.com's People's Choice Award Winner". Study.com.
  17. "Students Circle Network Selects InfiniteGraph to Enhance Educational Offering" (Press release). PR Newswire. October 25, 2010.
  18. "Girne Amerikan Üniversitesi 'Student circle' ile dünyayı kucaklayacak" [Girne American University will embrace the world with its 'Student circle']. Star Kıbrıs (in Turkish). November 9, 2011.