Reflections - Teachers and Preparation

Up to this point I have created the following courses:
- Distance Education Course Design
- Clinical Aspects of HIV/AIDS and Opportunistic Infections
- Advanced Research Methods in Public Health

Participated in creating:
- Malaria

And am currently working on
- Behavioral Change
- Qualitative Research Methods
- Quantitative Research Methods

Of the three courses that I have created, the Advanced Research Methods course was the easiest to facilitate. Thom had a direct lecture based teaching format and was well prepared with segmented slide shows and a well designed course syllabus and daily outline. In a matter of two weeks his course was ready to go both in Moodle and in CD format.

The other two courses have taken upwards of four weeks even though the content has been about the same. The instructors either did not have the lectures prepared or had not thought about presenting them in a segmented format. One teacher did not have a syllabus or outline for the course and took three to four days to come up with a finalized structure. One lecture consisted of 100+ slides and was to be the entire course. After discussion the lecture was broken up into smaller segments and the course went much more smoothly.

I have noticed that improvements in presentation could also be made if daily instructional objectives were clear. In fact these objectives were never written down and I always had to ask for the content for the day and how they would like to arrange the daily activities. Imparting information by stand and deliver teaching has been the norm.

For the first three courses I sat in the classroom while the instructors were giving the presentation. I recorded the audio using a wireless microphone. Because of the large files or PowerPoint glitches, the computer would crash from time to time and lose the audio file. This made the instructors frustrated because they didn't want to record the audio outside of class. To make up for this I found that if I didn't run any other programs while recording the computer wouldn't crash. Sometimes I would run another audio recording program outside of PowerPoint to make sure we had a backup. This worked o.k., but identifying where to splice the audio was tedious work even marking each slide.

Recording the lecture outside of class needs to be accomplished by the teacher until better technology can be obtained at the NUR-SPH. For example student questions are never heard on the lapel microphone and teachers fail to restate the question before answering. When there have been two instructors presenting, switching microphones from one to another has resulted in lost audio segments and lost translations. The mixer we are currently using only has one microphone input.

Teaching in two languages has also been extremely difficult. Teachers often switch from English to French mid-sentence. Although it takes twice as long to cover the content and makes recording live audio a nightmare, my main fear is our audience. Because we are mixing English and French only those individuals who speak both languages will be able to take the courses. Purely English speakers will be lost. For example, I don't speak french and so I never know if they are on a tangent or still in a related subject matter. Purely French speakers will also be on the sidelines. The lecture slides need to be in one language. Presentations need to be in one language with a translator talking in the other, or the instructor needs to give the presentation in both languages. If we don't take this approach Ugandans will not be able to take the courses. Many Rwandese will also struggle. The language problem is the most complex and I haven't devised an adequate solution.

I suggest that teachers work with an instructional designer in creating course materials before they come to Rwanda. In this way the two or three weeks that they are on site will not be focused on course development, but will be focused on student development.

I also suggest that teachers record at least a "reader's digest" version of the lectures before coming to Rwanda. If course materials are prepared before arriving in Rwanda the materials can be placed online where the internet speed is faster and where IT support is larger.

Local teachers will need some assistance in creating these materials and I have asked to be able to train an individual here at the school.