Tag Archives: Africa

Moodle Training in Zambia

Posted by Peter Kilcoyne

ILT Director

Worcester College of Technology

Thanks again to James for asking me to post something about the work I’ve been  doing in Africa in partnership with Computer Aid.

I’ve recently returned from a weeks visit to Lusaka where I worked with staff from Universities from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Liberia and Nigeria as well as organisations supporting the use of ICT in schools in Zambia.

The training was set up and organised by Computer Aid as part of their support to organisations to which they supply refurbished  computers that have been donated by schools, colleges, universities and businesses in the UK.

The training covered planning an organisational implementation strategy for introducing elearning and Moodle and a full train the trainers package to enable delegates to return to their own organisations and deliver Moodle training. All delegates were given zipped up Moodle training courses and a number of sample courses from different curriculum areas at Worcester College of Technology.

Some Pictures from the Training Session

Most of the delegates were new to using a VLE and there was a great deal of excitement about the potential that Moodle would have to enhance learning in their institutions and for providing new learning opportunities for students across their countries through online earning.

I hope this enthusiasm is reflected in these two short videos of Precious from the University of Zimbabwe and Fatoye from the National Teachers Institute in Nigeria


I’d also like to share a clip from the end of the training where Gladys the Kenyan representative from Computer Aid led a traditional African thank you.

e-learning has huge potential benefits in Africa where access to University is much more limited than in the UK. However  institutions wishing to implement it have serious barriers to overcome. These include compared with the UK lower levels of staff and students ICT skills and confidence, less access to PCs and slower connectivity.

I’d like to finish this posting by asking readers to look at what happens to your organisations ICT equipment when it’s no longer needed and to consider donating it to Computer Aid. www.computeraid.org

If you have any questions about this post please contact me at

pkilcoyne@wortech.ac.uk

Computeraid and elearning in Africa

Post from Peter Kilcoyne
ILT Director
Worcester College of Technology

pkicoyne@wortech.ac.uk

Thanks very much to James for asking me to write a few posts about Computeraid and their support for elearning in Africa.

Computeraid (www.computeraid.com) is a great organisation that collects, refurbishes, wipes hard drives for PCs in the UK and ships them out to Schools, Hospitals, Universities and other community organisations.

Computer Aid

This picture shows a container of refurbished PCs being unpacked by one of their African partner organisations.

Over the last fe years Computeraid have been working with Universities in a number of African countries supporting them in implementing e-learning.

Online learning has great potential to open up educational opportunities to many Africans.  Compared to the UK, HE provision is much more limited and is beyond the reach of many due to the cost of fees, limited numbers of scholarships and the physical distance that many people live from Universities.

A great example of how an institution that Computeraid is working with is planning to use elearning to increase access to HE is the Zambian Open University.

ZAOU

ZAOU at present has a population of around 5000 distance students who study through an entirely paper based system. They aim though to increase that to around 50 000 students through adopting elearning. Compared to using paper based system staff and students will get great benefits in efficiencies, speed of delivery, use of communication and collaborative learning tools and e-assessment.

Computeraid are supporting this project in a number of ways. They are shipping out containers of PCs for use by staff and students.They are also supporting development of provision of small learning centres around Zambia and the development of e-learning and technical skills amongst staff at ZAOU.

An example of the innovative solutions that computeraid have developed to provide access to the Internet and ICT is this solar powered cybercafe which is built in a shipping container.

 

Computeraid have also helped ZAOUs development of elearning skills amongst its staff through funding two visits by myself to Zambia to run e-learning training sessions and a reciprocal visit from five ZAOU staff to Worcester College of Technology.

Pictures of Moodle Training  in Lusaka

Moodle training At Open University of Zambia

Moodle training at elearning conference

Moodle training at elearning conference Lusaka Zambia

Pictures of ZAOU visit to Worcester College of Technology

ZAOU and SLT meeting

ZAOU at WCT

Dust clouds permitting I’ ll flying back to Lusaka on Wednesday to do some more Moodle training with staff from ZAOU and a number of other universities.

I hope to do one or two more posts on James’s blog to let you all know how it’s going.

Finally please find out what happens to your organisations old computers and consider donating them to Computeraid.