With the experience from the workshop in November 2009, we started a reflection that result in some changes in the courses development that are congruent with our objectives.

In order to better accommodate with the different study styles and workload, two courses have been designed. Each ourse certificate is associated with different course requirements. The basic course certificate deals with course structure design  and moodle functions like quizzes, forums and assignments. The advanced course certificate deals with the basic requirements plus activities created with rapid e-learning tools like Mind Maps, pdf-convertion, picture editing  and manipulation.

Our main goal is still to engage and support the teachers to achieve a basic course structure in Moodle so they will be able to show an embedded online course with some content and activities for the second semester.

What’s next?

With the intention to collect each tutors progress and to deliver support and guidelines to upload their materials, a series of Workshop for tutors has been scheduled, as weekly training sessions.

At the same time, the second the Face-To-Face week is been organizing in March month, containing such as these topics:

• Course progress presentation: each tutor presents their course status and participates in the evaluation of the other courses progress.
• Some advanced Moodle functions like advanced quizzes and directory upload.
• Standard course format, to reach a coherent course appearance.
• Use of Open Educational Resources (educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone), to include as course content.
• Use of some rapid e-learning tools.

This morning, representatives from the Ethiopian Ministry of Education visited the new Digital-Campus elearning computer labs. Although it was only a very brief visit, all went very well, despite a power outage which meant we couldn’t show the terminals in use. They were very interested in how elearning can be used to compliment other resources, such as eLibrary and also in how the technology and skills can be transferred to other organisations, especially the new Ethiopian universities, one of the visitors is vice president at the new university in Debre Birhan.

The morning before their visit, we had a very successful tutor training workshop. Good progress is being made in getting courses uploaded ready for the second semester, which starts at the end of February, with tutors beginning to develop online quizzes and other activities for their students, as well as video introductions to their courses.

These two 100 terminals student computer pilot e-learning labs implements open-source solutions (Linux, Moodle, MySQL) in a distributed, server-centric, thin client environment which uses both new desktop hardware, and recycled PC’s, thus reducing or eliminating obsolescence and complexity on the desktop, while providing a unique digital identity to every student and staff member who participate. Each individual is given a smartcard for system access.The goal of this integrated project is to offer a complete, hyperscalable, Digital Campus Infrastructure design, implementation, training and supporting elements solutions to Mekelle University.

A MU elearning server, using Moodle (http://www.mu.edu.et/elearning/) is currently available off campus extending the possibilities of online and blended learning to more professors and students at MU. Moodle, one of the most popular open source virtual learning environments (VLE), is used by thousands of schools, colleges and universities around the world. The current Moodle server has bee running for the last months, hosting courses for the Computer Science department. The Digital Campus project is widen this out to be used by the Engineering and Health Sciences Colleges.

The operating system for the Moodle server has already been changed from Windows to Ubuntu and the physical seer has been moved to the main University data centre where the power supply is more regular and a backup generator is available during power shortages.

By showing the current students that open source software is just as usable and functional as their proprietary counterparts, if not more so, the Digital Campus team hopes these future teachers will use open source tools when they come to develop online activities for their own courses

An on-going research programme is being developed under the collaboration between Univerisdad Alcalá,  Mekelle University and the Tigray Regional Health Bureau. Preliminary results were presented at the  annual WONCA meeting in Geneva (Switzerland) in September by Dr.Ignaci Lopez.

Since the end of the last century, the infection by intestinal parasites (IP) among children has been identified as one of the possible factors involved in the malnutrition of children in developing countries. At the same time, it is controversial whether the administration of antiparasitic drugs in this population are systematically improving the nutritional status of children in that context

Our objective has been to check the feasibility of a trial on the prevalence of infestation by intestinal parasites in children in an urban area of Tigray region in Ethiopia and its relationship to the nutritional status of that population as a first step to improve a existing programme of prevention of IP in this population.

A Phase I cross-sectional study in collaboration with the regional office of health Wukro was run  to determine prevalence of intestinal infestation in a sample of children attending one primary health centers at Wukro.

MU has recently approved its Institutional e-learning strategy under the digital-campus program deployment. The new UM e-learning strategy aims to embed e-Learning as a key element of the teaching and learning culture of the Mekelle University, enhance the student learning experience and to provide a richly interactive and stimulating environment to students, teachers and university staff.

The following objectives will be pursued:

• Implementing a Learning Platform  for all departments: this provides a single point of access for both staff and students to a wide range of on-line tools and applications
• Enabling academic staff to take the lead in embedding e-learning in the teaching, learning and assessment.
• Putting in place appropriate and sustainable infrastructure and support both centrally and within faculties and departments.
• Providing high quality, appropriate e-Learning tools and resources.
• Ensuring e-learning is accessible to all students whatever their individual situation is.
• Facilitating flexible and distributed learning.
• Supporting generic research with e-tools as well as developing research into e-learning.
• Encouraging national and international co-operation in e-learning.
• Assuring the quality of e-learning provision and its impact on students’ teaching, learning and assessment experience.

The Spanish Ambassador to Ethiopia, D. Antonio Sánchez-Benedito, opened the new Digital Campus training labs at Mekelle University Health Science and Engineering Campus on the 24th November.  He arrived on the morning to cut the ribbon and to hand out certificates to those tutors who participated in  the online education workshop training last week.

The Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development  (AECID) has awarded three scholarships to Mekelle University professors for the academic year 2009-10.These scholars will be enrolled in phD programmes at the University of Alcalá (Madrid, Spain).

Goitom Fitsum (MS Engineering) is a lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering  at MU. Goitom is involved in different research and development projects related to network architecture applications.

Araya Abrha (MS Public Health) is a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Public Health. Currently Araya is giving lecturers on public health courses to Public Health, Medical and Pharmacy students at Mekelle University. In addition Araya is involved in different research and development projects related to public health.

Mahmud Abdulkader (MS Biology) is a lecturer and researcher in the Department of Microbiology at Mekelle University. Mahmud is involved in different projects related to relevant public health/infectious diseases issues.

Wednesday saw the introductory workshop for the Health Sciences and Engineering College staff taking part in the Digital Campus elearning training programme. Over 20 lecturers are taking part in the pilot programme to be trained in developing online activities for their students. The introductory workshop gave the participants an overview of the training programme, what they can expect to learn, the aims, objectives and expectations of the project, as well as organising a schedule for the 20 of training workshops the lecturers will be attending. The training is now scheduled to begin on 16th November with a full week of training, with the remaining training days spread over the rest of the first semester.

Published on october 2009. Digital Planet: BBC World ServiceDigital Planet: BBC World Service3 (http://www.open2.net)

By Alex Little

It’s now been exactly a year since I arrived in northern Ethiopia with Voluntary Service Overseas to start a placement at Mekelle University. Based in the Computer Science department, I’m developing and training staff in e-learning and advising on general IT policy and strategy. Throughout the last year the university has been undergoing a period of huge change – with rapid expansion in student numbers, restructuring of the colleges and departments, and an ambitious plan to modernise and develop overall.

Work and life is very different to living in Northampton and working at The Open University. It’s certainly taken time to adjust to the new organisation, culture and way of working. After arriving with high expectations and a keenness to get moving with the job, work felt slow in the first few months and I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere. However, everything has fallen into place recently. Now I have built up relationships and got to know the working practices, things have really started moving – and the time spent getting to know my colleagues, in particular, is really paying off. Their support and assistance has been vital; without them guiding me through, it would have been extremely difficult to achieve anything.

It also takes a while to get used to the network and power interruptions. The university is fortunate to have a 2Mb broadband connection, which, I believe, is one of the fastest connections in this part of Ethiopia – but we do have to share this between over a thousand staff. We’re currently on a “power-sharing” schedule, where, during the working week, the power is off every other day. As you can imagine, this makes conducting IT training difficult. With scheduled powers cuts, you can work around this, but there are also other times when the power will go off for several hours without notice. Recently, some areas of the university have been supplied by backup generators, so this helps greatly, providing you are using the right computer labs. We’re hoping this situation will improve once the rainy season is over and the hydroelectric dams are full.

The university has recently started a partnership with Alcala University in Spain to work with the Engineering and Health Sciences colleges, writing an e-learning training programme for selected tutors to attend over the coming semester. During the course, tutors will develop online activities for their students to take part in. Since student access to computers can be very limited, we’re building two new computer labs – one for each college – so the students can participate in these activities. As this is pilot project, we’re testing out installing thin client labs and using open source software. This is a huge contrast to the usual computer lab setup here, which consists of desktop PCs running Windows. At any given time up to three-quarters of the PCs may be out of action for a number of reasons, commonly due to virus infection, but also hardware failure. The labs then take a small army of IT technicians trying to keep as many PCs up and running as possible. We’re hoping that the architecture of the thin client labs will vastly reduce the amount of support time needed, as well as being a more scalable solution, with the added bonus that it will be cheaper to increase the number of terminals.

Although most of my current work is involved in coordinating and managing these new labs and assisting with writing the training course material, I also have a few side projects to maintain. One of these involves showing staff from the Health Sciences college how to use GPSs to map the community health centres and health workers in the rural areas. The college has a number of projects in these areas measuring the impact of government schemes such as the Health Extension Programme – which gives healthcare training to local people so they can better support their communities.

Despite, or perhaps because of the problems, the sense of achievement is much greater than my work back in the UK. Knowing that you are making a real, though perhaps small, difference makes dealing with the life here all the more worthwhile. The Ethiopian people are very friendly, generous and appreciative, making it a highly rewarding and enjoyable experience.

How you can get involved?

In my opinion, simply supplying more computers and hardware doesn’t really help get to the core of the problem of IT development here: although more hardware will never be refused, IT training and staff development plays a greater role in development. Many staff – not only in the university but also teacher training colleges – lack the IT skills to maintain and make best use of the equipment available to them. Even computer science students arrive having hardly used a computer so a lot of time is spent developing basic skills, including how to operate word processors and spreadsheet packages. As has been reported elsewhere, viruses are a huge problem, damaging the tools that could help Ethiopia to develop. Training staff in how to install and, crucially, update their anti-virus software therefore has a significant impact.

My volunteering here is something I wish I’d done sooner. As a software developer by background, I’d often put off applying as I was unsure I had the skills needed to work in a developing country. It is a big commitment to give up a well-paid, comfortable job in the UK, but I haven’t looked back. Not only have I been sharing my existing IT skills, but I have also developed new ones in terms of training, hardware and network maintenance. I’d definitely recommend other IT professionals to come and experience living and working in a developing country.

About the author

Alex was a Web Developer, Application Programmer, and Developer in Social Software at The Open University until September 2008. He now volunteers with VSO as an IT Advisor and Trainer at Mekelle University in Ethiopia.