Departure - Leaving Rwanda

Just in case I had to fit any more work into the last few minutes of a job, I finished packing with about two hours left of time before needing to go to the airport. Joseph showed up and we put the finishing touches on his course, burned his course onto a CD, and updated some information in the online course database.

I also talked to Ishmael about his coming to the states on scholarship to play football. I need to make sure I finish that movie for him before the end of the week so I can give it to the coach in Delaware. I hope everything works out for him. It would be a great opportunity for him to go to the states and take some courses. I also think it would be a great opportunity for him to play football.

After returning the keys, I said goodbye to Manuela, Laura, Joseph, and Salvatory. Everything went smoothly at the Airport and now I am sitting waiting for the plane to arrive so I can finish the few legs back home. It is a nice way to finish this trip. Music is playing on the television with Rwandan traditional dancing. Music truly is at the heart of these beautiful intriguing Rwandan people.

Packing and Rwanda

After a brief morning of packing, I burned a few CD’s for the school. Returned all of the equipment that I had been using, and then it was down to financial stuff. Eugene, the accountant, returned to the school with my check pretty late and I had to work out some bugs with the bill.

Note – in the future when you are working for a school make sure you get a weekly bill, especially in Africa, so you know how much you are going to be required to pay. The school was very flexible and negotiated with me on a very fair rate and setup, but it was a headache to get everything worked out. My check was missing reimbursement for my travel expenses, but they just took this amount out of my bill.
The final bill ended up being around 1800-1900 USD which was pretty steep in my opinion, but living in Africa really is a novelty and I am glad to have had the experience living at the school with the cold showers, the staff who have become my close friends, and the ability to work late into the evening or early in the morning depending on what needed to be done. I think next time I will probably live in a friends home instead of staying at the school.

I ended the day cashing my check and exchanging money back into US dollars. I lost a lot in the exchange, but I was expecting this.

Overall, I wouldn't consider today a work day, but I guess I am entitled to a couple days off during my three months in Rwanda, especially because I worked more hours than most of the employees at the school.

Rungeri Hospital

In Rungeri we met up with Felix to take a tour of his hospital. Throughout the tour I was impressed with his ability to use limited funds to get a job done. There were shortcomings with the hospital, but he literally was working miracles in the city. Most of the cases that he treated were Malaria and HIV. His hospital delivered a lot of babies and had a substantial orthopedics section. They had 10 computers with internet connection, a lab, a pediatrics center, also a surgery building. The doctors were limited and their interns were in large part funded from outside organizations and were from Rwanda and other countries.

Felix said that He needed the following:

Pharmaceutical software

Financial Management software

Human Resource software.

In order of importance he said the following would be helpful
1. Equipment and doctors
2. Funding (Financial base)

After visiting Felix we began the windy drive back to the states. I got sick driving back to the states and ended up throwing up out the side of the bus. I felt better later in the evening after I had gotten some bread and water into my system. I guess Okapi cars are better than busses on my stomach.

Software Package

Today was a pretty lax day and I wish I would have worked with Judo a bit more while he was at the school. I spent most of my time setting up a computer for use by teachers in creating online education. Unfortunately most of the disks that I had were old and didn’t have the serial number information so I wasn’t able to add the programs to the computer.
In the future we will need to examine what programs teachers will need to improve the creation of online materials. The following programs with licenses to build a teacher resource center are the programs that I think would be suitable currently. It is wise to remember that tying yourself to a software package can be dangerous. Without tools however course creation can be much more difficult. Here are the programs that I would currently recommend:
Dreamweaver
Adobe Package
Macromedia Breeze
Camtasia
Snagit

We need to find a suitable program for turning online courses into CD’s to be used by those students without an internet connection.

Training Paulin - Late Night!

Training went well today. We briefly discussed how students need Access, Knowledge, and Experience using our online course management system to make the system more valuable to the students and the school. I also assisted some of the professors in adding content to their course or setting up their course depending on what stage they are in with their course creation. It was a pity that so many of the teachers were not here for the second session. It would have been nice for teachers to start practicing using the content before I left. A few teachers discussed putting together a task force to continue the development of courses and to provide training for teachers.

Later on in the evening, Paulin showed up to work on his course. We stayed up until about 11:30 and got a great deal accomplished on his course. We added a few categories and discussed effective ways of organizing the information for his students. I was impressed with his work ethic, but it seams that he has bitten of a little more than he can chew as far as work load is concerned.

Faculty Training Begins

Let the training begin! About 10 faculty members showed up for the training session. Most of them were Junior faculty, but I enjoyed teaching one of the more senior faculty members as well. Laurent was unable to come do to some other meetings, but we proceeded quite smoothly. The teachers were given some basic principles of Adult education from Malcome Knowles and then created their own username and password to access the distance education course. We talked about learner readiness, participation, and application as well. The class went very quickly and we finished up the training session with interested teachers placing their course online to begin adding content and to build a framework.

Oh, I forgot to mention that we also discussed how helping each other become experts in using the online system would require teamwork and collaboration. I don’t know if they understood the example I gave them of my training as a “spelunker” but it seemed like they were excited and ready to help each other succeed.

Training at a Distance

We had to reschedule the training for Wednesday because of a late notification of the Monday training. This is o.k. because I can spend more time preparing for the training session.

Because I know teachers could use more training than just two days for learning how to place course materials online, I have adapted my old “Distance Education Course Design” course into “Teaching at a Distance”. I have made a few changes to the structure and placed the materials online with more information about how to enter information into Moodle. I will be having teachers use this course to do the two day training so they can get more information about placing course materials online without me having to be physically present.

Meeting with Ministry of Health on Distance Education

Last evening I participated as a presenter in a group meeting with the director of the school, Laurent, the project manager in Rwanda from Tulane, Laura, the manager of distance medical resources from the Ministry of Health, Richard, and consultant form South Africa who has worked for the last few years in Telemedicine.

The meeting went well with Richard presenting first, with the South African presenting second, and with myself presenting last. We discussed the goal plans for the future and then how we might partner together in meeting these initiatives.

The meeting went very well and finished on a positive note. It seemed that we at the school have a much stronger instructional design infrastructure established which will greatly enhance the projects success. The telehealth sector is being established by the Ministry of Health without any instructional design emphasis. The partnership of the tools we have created at Tulane, Utah State, and the NUR-SPH with the tools of the Ministry of Health should bring large advancements in the effectiveness of teaching and presenting information to a wider audience.

The NUR-SPH will need to stay up to date on instructional strategies, technology, and ways of implementing these strategies to build a pan-african forum of experts. We will also need to provide training for individuals to keep the momentum of this project moving forward.

Perhaps Eddie can continue this endeavor while I finish my last few credits at USU, then return to further the project.

Last week in Rwanda

I have just finished participating as a teacher for the final course of the Certificate Training Program. I have all of the courses put together on CD and have given that to the students. Yesterday I figured I would try to make the feedback automated for the school and spent most of the day learning how to create an online form and a simple way of using PHP to place it up on the web. I still have a great deal to learn about this subject in order to make the form build a bulk database and then to compile the results of student feedback in averages to the teacher. I don’t think it would be to complicated, but I need to figure it out. I probably won’t have time to do it while here in Rwanda because I will be training the faculty this next week and would like to get the courses a little more user-friendly before I leave. I also will need to finish a brief change of the first course that I made and change it to be more focused on adult education and organizing courses in Moodle. I also need to finish up a paper of recommendations and equipment that the school will need to keep the project moving. Other than that I am on the tale end of this summer internship. I think they will have me as a continual member of the development of this program in the future.