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.

Meeting with Richard of the Ministry of Health

Today I had the opportunity to meet with Richard from the Ministry of Health here in Rwanda. He is currently working on developing communication lines and training between the different hospitals in Rwanda. Currently three hospitals have been connected through a fiber optic network and are having a chinese company set up classrooms where live broadcasting between the hospitals can be connected over the LAN.

We discussed what the school has been doing and he was fairly interested in Moodle. He explained that they were paying a man to develop software and maintain the software which was similar to what we are already doing. His price is very low however and ex-patriots probably wouldn't be able to set up the Moodle server for less than what he is charging, let alone provide the training necessary to keep the service running.

His ideas however were very interesting. He was particularly interested in the Knowledge center and looked forward to the time when a searchable information database could be used by doctors at the hospitals.

He also mentioned that the school could look into using their network for teaching live courses using the rooms that they had set up until the school gets connected to the fiber optic network.

I will be meeting again with Richard and an individual from South Africa on Wednesday.

Prior to Distance Class - Teacher Communication

This was an email where Eddie and I discussed a few technical aspects of the course, the times for the course, and other ingredients to make the course go well.

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I checked up on a few things and everything should be good to go for your course. Just to let you know, if the power goes out while you are teaching online you may experience 5 minutes of delay where students aren't responding or interacting while the generator kicks back on. Also sometimes Terracom begins working on the connection without any notice, if this happens the internet may turn on and off (on for 20 minutes off for 5 minutes, etc.). This doesn't happen all the time, but just wanted to make you aware of it just in case it happens. Also make sure that Adam is informed not to do server updates during class times. Sometimes early in the morning the espnur.org/courses/ web site doesn't work while the rest of the internet is working. I think the server is doing backups or something, I am not sure. It usually works fine in the afternoon however.

Here are some things that you can help me with:

1. please confirm if my class is scheduled for 24th, 25th and 26th.

The 24th, 25th, and 26th will work wonderful. I will make sure we have the computer lab.

2. Let me know what time Mountain is 2 pm Rwanda.

Utah is 8 hours earlier than Rwanda
For example:
2:00 p.m. in Rwanda is
6:00 a.m. in Utah (http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_US-UT.aspx)

3. Please upload the students to Learn to Learn (LtoL) and give them access to the class on the Friday prior. Can you print out log in instructions to Moodle (we need to find a name for RSPH's Moodle, The one that Neal and I are working on is called "Aristotle")? Include eddloo@yahoo.com as the contact for assistance.

LtoL is your class I presume. Most of the students were registered yesterday during class. I will register the rest on Friday.

4. My plan is to artificially create a Distance education model. The afternoons will be divided into 2 sections. From 2-4pm it will be fully online. They will be in the class, logged in and the only support they have is me in Logan. From 4-6, they go off line and have tutorial to work on some in-class activities. Here is where I need you assistance. They will be required to use the evenings to do off line activities on their own so that they can continue with the online activities the next 2-4 pm online event.

I will be available to assist during the class hours. Some students return to work at 5:30 to 5:45 p.m. and will need instructions about the off line work/after hours content before 6:00 p.m. This has been a struggle for each class.

5. There will be 1 major deliverable i.e., a reflection paper. Assessment will be based on 40% online activities, 30% paper, and 30% offline participation.

How would you like me to grade offline participation?

6. Can you please share this idea with the class?

We talked about it yesterday when we registered for the course.

7. In the handout that you give them, please direct them to the syllabus. There are pre-course activities that they will be required to do.

Sounds great, I will check out the syllabus and pre-course activities and write up some instructions.

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It will be necessary in the future to make teachers aware of some of these technical difficulties before they start course design so problems that arise from internet connection can be dealt with.

Tanya's Paper

Don't put thing off until the last minute, that's what I always say. The paper that I have finished creating the visual design for had to be re-edited yesterday which took a little time, but was to be expected. However sending the large pdf file has been a nightmare. Delphine has not been able to open the file and so I sent her another copy which also has not been openable or saveable to her computer. She sent the copy of the file to many government organizations to review and they couldn't open the file either.

I am going to put the paper in the Moodle course that I created and tell her to download it there because we are experiencing difficulties in sending it by email.

Time to start wrapping things up

With three weeks left before the end of the internship it is time to start wrapping up the educational packages that I have created into CD format so that they can be reproduced if anything happens to the online format.

I hope to get all of the Certificate Training Program materials onto one CD (audio not included) and written recommendations of how to best continue course development. The CD's for individual courses also need to be wrapped up with the audio so that they could be given to individuals who need to take a course at a distance without internet connection.

In addition to this a training session is being set up for the faculty to teach them how to use Moodle and how to start developing their courses.

Midnight Training

Last night at about 9:00 p.m. Judo arrived. We sat down for almost 40 minutes and worked on teaching him the ropes of being a Moodle administrator. He was very tired, but stuck with me.

We covered most of the simple aspects of Moodle such as adding courses, adding users, confirming users, and how to edit courses. I don't know how much stuck in his head, but it shows that us techies work longer hours than most.

I also feel bad for Judo, he is overworked and underpaid for what he does for the school. If they paid him more money, he wouldn't have to work three jobs to make ends meet and they would have less tech problems at the school.

Almost Caught Up

I just finished entering the content for Francine's courses. I am so excited. Her class was incredibly complex, mainly because there was too much paperwork involved. It would have been easier to give students a subject to search and have them find relevant information online then to describe their results in a bibliography that would be given to the teacher.

Anyways, I am feeling euphoric at the moment. Finishing entering content for two courses on a slow internet connection in one day truly is a miracle. Rock on!

Training Continues

John De Dieu has been playing a little with Moodle and has entered another assignment into the course without assistance. We have given him administrator access for the Moodle Server and will receive training on adding courses and how to edit the courses and add users in addition to continuing learning tools for course development.

This needs to be accomplished within three weeks because training of faculty will occur on August 1st - 5th for faculty to begin entering data into Moodle. I also am setting a goal of getting all of the course content entered for the courses before this date so I can work exclusively with faculty in getting their courses online.