Computer Aid begins a Moodle training course in Mekelle, Ethiopia | 20/06/2012
This week Computer Aid, together with our long-standing partner Worcester College of Technology, kicked off the Ethiopia Moodle E-learning Training Course for 50 lecturers and university ICT staff from four universities across the country. Hosted by Mekelle University which is based in the Tigray District, lecturers have also joined us from Aksum, Samara and Jimma universities.
Moodle is the most widely-used online learning system internationally and is utilized by many of the world's leading universities. It is a user-friendly system that allows instructors to support their courses in many ways: link students to online resources (i.e. handouts, websites, YouTube videos), engage students in online debates, set assignments which the students will then submit online. This Moodle training is geared towards those who want to teach primarily in person but wish to introduce online content and interactions to take their course to the next level.
The step-by-step ICT skill-building course guides training participants through the practical use of Moodle. We take them through the steps of establishing an online course, from establishing an instructor account to building sophisticated online classes employing the full range of resources available on the Internet. Importantly, the course is integrated with action-oriented group work. Participants partner with others from their colleges to develop plan-of-actions to address the institutional and technological support needed in order to integrate e-learning when they return to their departments.
Computer Aid has chosen to partner with Mekelle on this first-of-its-kind training in Ethiopia as we have been working with the university for several years providing computers to build up the university's IT resource for students and staff.
Mekelle has embarked upon an ambitious scale up of its e-learning program and aims to have 75% of its course offering on Moodle by 2016. Our training comes at the perfect time to expose a broad cross-section of faculty and staff to the Moodle software.
Training facilitator, Peter Kilcoyne (Information and Learning Technology Director, Worcester College of Technology) remarks, "Mekelle has great provisions for developing its e-learning program. The lecturers who are attending the course are hugely enthusiastic about gaining the skills to use Moodle. I am very confident that following on from this course they will develop some excellent online learning provisions."
The training will continue all this week, concluding with a closing ceremony led by Computer Aid CEO Tom Davis on Friday, 22 June 2012.
For more information about how your university can partner with Computer Aid to bring Moodle training to your campus, or to inquire about Moodle courses we offer online, please contact Computer Aid International's Training Coordinator Kristen Houlton at kristen@computeraid.org.
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Participants of June 2012 Ethiopian University Moodle E-learning Training Course held at Mekelle University