Students pursuing ICT related programmes at the Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) recently had an opportunity of getting practical lessons from ICT experts from one of Malawi’s telecommunications companies, TNM Plc.
The MUST Department of Computer Science and Information Technology (CSIT) engages TNM ICT experts to demonstrate to the students some practical ICT technologies coupled with a tour of the company’s facilities in Limbe a day later.
On August 17, 2022, a team of three TNM Plc ICT experts, led by Head of Infrastructure and Cloud Services MacDonald Chamba conducted lectures at MUST campus, among others touching on topics such as telecommunication, networking, information security, virtualization and cloud computing.
The TNM Plc team also carried out practical demonstrations of some technologies.
“It was quite an amazing event that was further punctuated by entertainment from the guest lead lecturer,” said Menard Phiri, an ICT lecturer who coordinated the event.
According to Phiri, the lectures were followed by an industrial visit on August 18 to TNM Techno Park in Limbe where the MUST ICT students toured the company’s data centre and related facilities to cement their understanding of prior concepts demonstrated by the TNM Plc officials.
They also had a chance to interact with other ICT experts at the TNM Techno Park.
“The industrial visits serve as the first point of interaction between the students and the working environment where most of them will end up. The students interact and learn from experts in the industry.
“It further opens new avenues for learning by seeing as it offers students an opportunity to experience the real machines, workstations, systems, servers, assembly lines, etc. and get to learn how they work in real life situations,” said Phiri, adding that learning outside the classroom and having free conversations with lecturers and industry experts is an important component in a student learning process that MUST encourages.
