According to the Association of African Universities (AAU), the huge impact of COVID-19 pandemic on face-to-face education has accentuated the need for African Universities to build the capacities of their faculty on the effective use of educational technologies to facilitate learning.
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The Association of African Universities (AAU) has identified, that though some Universities in Africa have installed the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS), their academic faculty have limited or no skills to use it. These Universities also have the limited technical expertise to administer and manage their Moodle platforms.
In response, the AAU and its partners are piloting a virtual capacity building of the Moodle LMS for 170 academic staff of Lupane State University based in Zimbabwe.
The open content being used for the Virtual Moodle Training for all academic staff at Lupane State University was developed as part of the EdTech-UEM project for academic staff capacity building. The content was developed by Eduardo Mondlane University and the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) ”“ and funded by Sida. e/merge Africa, which is funded by the Carnegie Corporation is a partner in the adaptation of the EdTech-UEM workshop resources.
The Think Modular ”“ Digital Solutions GmbH (Austria), are also be offering their Big Blue Button video conferencing system for this training. This platform is open source and can be integrated to Moodle.
In addition, over 93 Moodle Experts signed up to assist with delivering the virtual capacity building sessions. The volunteering Moodle Experts are from Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Macedonia, Eswatini, South Africa, Austria, Pakistan, India, UK and Australia and they will be helping the AAU pilot this training.
Why this pilot is important?
This will help us to understand how to deploy future virtual trainings in Africa that are scalable. The AAU plans to train thousands of academic faculty in Africa to effectively use the educational technologies. To do this in an effective and quality assured manner, it is important to undergo this pilot phase, working with the academics of one institution. The institution was selected based on an earlier request for AAU to conduct this type of training for them.
Next Steps
If an African Higher Education institution is interested in having its academic faculty trained, they should contact the AAU via the Secretary-General ([email protected]) and copy Ms. Nodumo Dhlamini, Director -ICT, Communications and Knowledge Management (mailto:[email protected]).
