Experience sharing with Adama University
Adama University - eTeaching website
Adama University is an interesting case in Ethiopia as it now has a German President and several other senior expatriate staff – such as the ICT Director. So they have implemented many changes which have yet to reach other Ethiopian Universities.
Their elearning programme seems to be going well, they have a team of 5 staff dedicated to uploading and developing the elearning materials – more information about their team can be found on the Adama University website. Although they have a very similar approach to the one we’re taking with the Digital Campus project, there are some crucial differences. Firstly, their team are uploading the materials for tutors, whereas we are supporting the tutors uploading their own materials (I have previously blogged about this). Some of their activities and assignments form part of the students final grades, as we are not including the whole course cohort in our program, we are unable to use summative assessment. Their better IT infrastructure and lab access allows them to offer the online courses to many more students.
One the other side, we have our system available off campus too, whereas at Adama their Moodle is (currently) only available through the local network. I’m still unsure that having a centralised team is the best way forward. I can understand it’s advantages, in quality control, consistency etc, but unsure that it will encourage teachers to feel they actually own the course and should be keeping content up to date, participating in discussions etc.
Their ICT infrastructure looks very well organised and they have common computer labs which are open 24/7 – this obviously gives them much more opportunity to push courses out to students and know that the students will get access. We’re trying to push the University here to having similar levels of access times for students, but I think it will be a while yet before Mekelle reaches 24/7 access to labs which have a large proportion of machines fully functioning.
Although it was a long way to go for half a days visit, it was well worthwhile for me to meet the team there and look at the different approaches they are taking.
Dear Alex,
Its good to see your blog post and it is really awesome. I was not around when the time you came to see the eTeaching team but Mr. Jorn asked me to show you our Multimedia Language Learning/Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) facilities unfortunately we couldn’t meet. It’s a nice blog and I want to add something about what you are unsure about.
As you are explained, having the centralized team will help for quality control, Consistency etc. While we are doing all these staffs we also encourage instructors to participate in the eTeaching platform by posting assignment, quizzes, and discussion forums. The team is responsible by designing, developing and producing the learning contents to save the instructors time based on the principles and methodology of eLearning/eTeaching concepts. Follow up what is happening on the eTeaching portal and the like.
After uploading the contents the instructor will be responsible by publishing different interactive teaching and learning staffs like I said before assignments, quizzes, discussion forums and as much as the instructors can do.
While surfing the eTeaching portal if there is any difficulties from either the instructors’ side or the students’ side there is help always using the eTeachinghelp@adama-university.net email address.
For now let me stop here and may be the team will add if they have additional ideas.
Akeya Z.