Clearing

Alex February 18th, 2010

45 signatures from each of the 30+ university departments, plus finance, stores, personnel from all campuses and all in triplicate. That’s all I need for the clearance procedure so I can officially leave the university. Despite still having another 5 weeks left, I’ve heard from others about how unbelievably time-consuming and bureaucratic the clearance procedure here is, so thought I should make start.

I managed to find a secretary who would go round and collect most of the signatures for me (for a small fee), so far I have 30, the remaining signatures needed are for finance, stores etc, so for these I need to sign my computer over to someone else, so I can prove that there isn’t any equipment still in my name and that I don’t owe any department any money.

It looks likely that this will take much of the next week or so to be complete and I’ll be extremely relieved when I finally have everything signed off and finished.

Rollercoaster week

Alex January 24th, 2010

The last week or so has seen lots of ups and downs, though overall the balance is more up than down! On both of the last Saturday mornings I ran training sessions for tutors. I was expecting these to be a bit of a nightmare, I’d already had trouble getting all the user accounts working correctly, plus I wasn’t really sure how many people would turn up. In the end around 10 tutors attended each week so was very pleased with this outcome – it could very easily have been that no-one or only one or two attend. Not knowing who was coming beforehand or what level they’d got to made things a little tricky for planning the sessions, but went well in the tutorial-style we used. Some are already creating quizzes and other activities for their students, whereas with some other tutors, they hadn’t attended the training week in November, so we were starting at the beginning.

Last Sunday morning (just over a week ago) we had some visitors from the Ministry of Education, so I explained our elearning projects and showed them the labs – unfortunately (as always seems to be the case) a power outage, in one of the buildings holding the switches connecting the terminals to the data centre, prevented me from showing the terminals in use.

The downsides this week have been the fact that it was uncertain for a while as to whether we’d be able to run the second full week of training for the tutors, as the visitors from Alcala may not have had time to prepare. If they weren’t coming this would have made extra work for me, as I still would have needed to run some extra training to ensure the tutors were set up and ready for delivering courses int the second semester. With all the other tasks I have to do (in the now 8 weeks remaining – not that I’m counting) this would have been too much and I’d have been very disappointed if they had canceled, or delayed until June.

Also a laptop went missing from our office over the previous weekend. A student had left it with one of my office colleagues to fix, but without going into all the detail here (and I’m not totally sure about exactly what happened), he ended up being locked up at the police station for 2 days and has to pay 12,000 birr (over 1000 USD) until the laptop is found. Previously our office was used a lot by other staff to get internet access and to get their laptops fixed, but now all this will stop and the locks are being replaced.

This week we finally made progress on fixing up many of the user accounts that weren’t working, plus getting the server at Ayder campus working again. There were lots of different odd problems with the users accounts, but most re fixed now (just a few odd problems to resolve still). But getting the server fixed was great news (especially at the end of a Friday afternoon). this means we can now get the lab open again and into use. Though now the students are having exams, then they’ll have a 2 week break, so they may not be around much for anther 3-4 weeks. The lab at Ayder now has curtains up, and new carpet is ready to be put in. The curtains seem to match the rest of the room, but I suspect this is more by accident than design.

Anyway it was a good end to a very fraught week, so hoping I don’t have any more weeks like this one.

Monkey business

Alex January 17th, 2010

Campus baboonsOn campus there is a small family of baboons, I’m not really sure where they came from. Although they’re native to Ethiopia, there aren’t any wild ones in this region, so I suspect they’re escaped/released ex-pets, perhaps from one of the amusement parks in town (one used to have a hyaena pit, now turned into a arcade games room).

The campus baboons spend quite a lot of time in the area near my office, out on the first floor balcony, but they often have to be chased off to stop them pulling apart the noticeboards. The other day we heard a lot of crashing noise from outside – it was the young baboon playing with broken glass, then throwing it onto the tin roof below. Very fortunately, and despite licking the edge of the broken glass, the baboons managed to avoid cutting themselves, or anyone else.

Attempting to fix servers

Alex December 28th, 2009

IMG_1437We’re still having a few problems with the server over at Ayder (Health Sciences) Campus. It’s made more problematic by the fact that the contractors digging up one of the nearby roads cut through the fiber cable linking Ayder to the main campus. So not only is there no internet at Ayder, there is no network connection to the Moodle server to allow staff there to be uploading their courses and activities.

On Friday and Monday I spent several hours (about 7 or 8 in total) on Skype to Eduardo in Barcelona who is helping us to get the server fixed. Things are made a little easier by the fact we have 2 identical servers, alpha and bravo. Alpha is (generally) running fine at Arid campus and bravo is the broken server at Ayder, so the plan was to make a copy of alpha onto one of the spare disks, modify it slightly (name, IP address etc) then use this to fix bravo.

The clone had already been made – to one of the 4 physical disks in the machine. All I needed to to do was switch the disks around to test the clone, then take the cloned disk to Ayder. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the cloned disk to work and on Friday it took Eduardo and I a little while to figure out what the problem was. It turned out that the way the disks were numbered on the server label:

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didn’t actually match how the were referred to by the operating system, so rather then switching the disk in positions 0 and 2, we should have been doing 0 and 1.

Finally we got this issue resolved and the disk ready to take to Ayder, plus a few other backup options that Eduardo had come up with in case this disk didn’t solve the problem.

On Monday, I took the disk over to Ayder, got on Skype, and spent a few hours messaging Eduardo (and a little later Mike) and we managed to get the server booting up correctly. In the end we managed to fix the problem without needing to use the disk we’d had the confusion over on Friday.

But unfortunately all is not quite finished. The terminals at Ayder aren’t yet connecting to the properly. So next job is to get that resolved.

All of which means that we still haven’t been able to get the lab open for students to use, but hoping to be open properly in the next week or so. Still much more work to be done, so will keep us all busy for the coming weeks I’m sure.

Approaches to eLearning in Ethiopia

Alex December 14th, 2009

Last week, Oliver and Haileleul from the Engineering Capacity Building Program (ECBP) in Addis came to visit our elearning project in Mekelle. They are working for the elearning development program for ECBP, setting up eCompetence Centres at other universities in Ethiopia and are looking to develop a similar program in Mekelle without duplicating the Digital Campus project work.

All seemed to go very well and we’re currently in the process of writing a proposal for the training of more staff to become elearning experts, to be presented to the University management in the very near future.

Their most successful program so far seems to be at Adama University, where the Engineering College has been turned into an independent Institute of Technology. The (German) director and senior management have really focused on improving student computer access, by setting up 600 terminals open 24/7.

The ECBP approach taken to develop elearning course content/materials is slightly different to our approach with Digital Campus. We are training teachers to set up and upload their own courses and teaching materials, with the support from pedagogical department, whereas the eCompetence Centres allow teachers to take their materials to the centre. The centre staff then do much of the content development and uploading for the teacher. There is good reason for this difference, the ECBP approach has a stronger focus on multimedia content, whereas we’re looking at much more basic content uploading and activity creation. Expecting all staff to have the facilities, skills and time to produce multimedia content is simply unrealistic.

There are pros and cons of each approach. Sending your content off to a centre for transformation into online activities can increase the technological complexity of the activities or content developed (e.g. multimedia or flash animations), increase quality (questionably) and consistency between courses. Also it is easier to set deadlines for course production. However I have concerns that staff then have no sense of ownership of the online materials related to their course, for example, that regular updates are made and that staff participate in and monitor forum discussions. It may mean staff then don’t consider it to be part of their jobs to be involved with the online aspect. I have to ad that the ECBP approach does have the teachers working with the elearning team – it’s not a case of the teachers dropping off the materials and walking away from any further involvement.

Training teacher to produce their own online content and activities means that you can have a smaller team supporting the elearning development, providing advice and training but not the ‘doing’ and this woul dhelp to reduce the direct cost to the university. We hope it would also motivate the teachers to encourage their students to use the materials and activities if the teachers have gone to the effort of creating them. The danger is that teachers won’t have the time or skills, or it will be considered to be more work force upon them by management. Maintaining a baseline level of quality and consistency between courses may be difficult.

So, which do you think is the better approach? Or should there be a mixture between the two?

I hope that I’ll get the opportunity to visit Adama university early in the new year, with some staff from Mekelle, as I believe there will be a lot we can learn from their experiences. I think that the success of their program may be mainly due to the efforts put into providing 24/7 open access computer labs to students, something that’s yet to be achieved on anything but a very small scale at Mekelle.

Lab Preparation and Training Week

Alex November 30th, 2009

Trainers in the new lab

Trainers in the new lab


The week before the opening of our labs by the Spanish Ambassador we had run a full week of training with about 25 teachers from the Health Sciences and Engineering Colleges. Simultaneously with the training we were also trying to get the labs complete – so quite difficult to coordinate with everything done right at the very last minute.

The training went far better than we had hoped, with the teachers being very keen, even to the extent where when we suggested a coffee break, it was hard to get people away from the computers. We also had many requests from other staff who would like to join the training. The next two challenges are to get the labs open and available for students and not to lose the momentum we’ve built up with the recent training. We’re continuing with weekly half day workshop/tutorial sessions and will be opening the labs for a very select group of students so they can test out the labs for us and help to identify any possible problems. This also gives the ICT team the opportunity to learn and deal with issues.

So much has happened over the last 2-3 weeks so it’s impossible for me to note (or remember) everything that’s happened, although there were a couple of notable exceptions.

Last minute varnishing

Last minute varnishing


Firstly, the tables that we ordered from the agricultural college in Wukro finally arrived. I mentioned in a recent posting about the delivery over the weekend, well, the other half of the order arrived on Friday morning, only the varnishing hadn’t been finished, so the college sent a technician to complete the tables as they were being unloaded from the truck. Despite the delays, I’m very pleased with the tables and how they look in the labs, I was slightly worried that I’d miscalculated and the tables would be too big for the lab or too small for the computers, but fortunately this wasn’t the case and everyone tells me how good the labs look.

Sewing the ribbon

Sewing the ribbon


The other event which stuck in my mind was organising the ribbon for the ambassador to cut. At about 5pm the day before his visit, I was given a copy of the schedule, one section read ‘cutting the ribbon’. I then made the mistake of saying that I was going into town after work, only to be asked if I could by some ribbon as they uni didn’t have any. I mistakenly assumed this would be a relatively easy task given that all tailors and fabric shops are down the same street. This was not the case, after visiting too many shops, the only red ribbon I could find was about 1cm wide. we had to settle for a strip of edged red fabric and hoe that it would be wide enough for the door and wouldn’t look too bad. On the day I also took pair of scissors with me, just in case.

As a surprise for us and the trainers, the University had arranged a meal at the Axum hotel on the last evening of the training, so we finally had chance to wind down a little…

Dinner at the Axum

Dinner at the Axum

Kafka would be proud

Alex November 18th, 2009

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Last Wednesday, Roman, Jaime and Mike all arrived from various parts of the world to run the first training week for the Digital Campus project and to get the servers and labs labs set up.

Everything for the rest of the week was rather stressful as we were chasing up where equipment was and arranging to get it moved into the right place. The bureaucracy of getting all the items logged into the store, plus the lack of communication or any sense of urgency has been quite astounding. To get the items into the labs, they first must be moved into the main store, I then write a letter confirming that the items match the specification, then they are registered with the main university store manager, only then can the equipment be signed out and transferred to the college, which then has the responsibility of moving the items from the main store into the lab. With many different items, arriving at different times, to different university sites, then being distributed to two different labs, for different colleges creates rather a huge scope for mistakes, inaction and buck passing.

One reason we were given that the monitors hadn’t been moved into the labs was that the terminals hadn’t been moved and there was no point moving the monitors until the terminals were in place. Sure, the monitors are quite useless without terminals, but vice versa is also true, leading to a ridiculous catch-22 situation.

On Saturday, we went up to Wukro for a bit of what should have been relaxation. The tables for the labs are being built by the agricultural and we’ve been waiting a little while for these to be completed and delivered. When we called in the morning to ask about the tables, we were told, rather ominously, ‘you’d better come and see them’. We arrived at about 6pm to be told that the tables had just left on a truck bound for Mekelle Uni. As it was highly unlikely that any of the University store managers would at work at 7pm on Saturday evening, Father Angelo set off in his truck to catch up with them to stop them but they’d had too much of a head start. I’m unsure where the tables spent the night, but I was then called at 7am Sunday morning to say they were at the University, is someone around to receive them? I was still in Wukro and again, unlikely that anyone else would be available at the Uni at that time on a Sunday. after a few phone calls back and forth, the guards at the Uni allowed the tables to let left there for us to collect, check and sign for on Monday. The tables were actually finally located on Wednesday morning.

On top of all this we also had the training course and associated arrangements to finish off ready for the 5 day training course to start tomorrow (Monday). The following Tuesday the Spanish Ambassador is due to visit the project. As the Spanish Cooperation (AECID) organisation is funding the project, it’s important we have something to show in terms of labs/servers etc – so keeping many fingers crossed that next week is less stressful than the last, though I have major doubts about this!

We did manage to fit in a little relaxation by visiting a rock church near Wurko on the Sunday morning. We were accompanied by two researchers who have already written a couple of books about Tigrayan rock churches, who were also allowed to take photos of every page of the churches old prayer book.

Sycamore tree used as basis for logo of Digital Campus project

Sycamore tree used as basis for logo of Digital Campus project


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Elearning site available off campus

Alex November 11th, 2009

On Friday, I finally rebuilt our Moodle server, following the power supply failure of the old server. The site is now running on the same server as the main Mekelle University website and so can be accessed off campus (another big achievement) at:

http://www.mu.edu.et/elearning

Initially, we’ll use this Moodle installation as the place where the Engineering and Health Sciences tutors can upload their courses for the Digital Campus pilot project, but any other college or department is welcome to use this server for hosting their courses.

The building of the labs for the Digital Campus project is all coming together at once, the servers and terminals are on their way up from Addis as I write, the tables are almost completed and will be delivered by the end of the week, plus the other networking and electrical work is almost finished. All of this is on top of organising the training week (16th to 20th November) for tutors, followed by week of training for th ICT staff. This training is being run by the Digital Campus project team, with the others arriving from around the world during this week.

Given how busy I’ll be over the coming 2-3 weeks, I’m unlikely to be checking email much or updating my blog, so be prepared for a long catch up post in a month :-)

Orientation workshop

Alex October 30th, 2009

IMG_0929On Wednesday last week (21st Oct) we held the introductory workshop for the Digital Campus elearning project (project website). All seemed to go well, but we still have some difficulties with the schedule and tutor selection. The problem is that we’re looking for staff who will be available to train fellow staff next year (i.e. they won’t be leaving for masters at the end of this year) and these tend to be more senior staff who already have high workloads. Those staff who do have the time (generally the new staff who graduated with their first degree last year) are highly likely to leave at the end of this academic year. Bit of a catch-22 in knowing what to do for the best. The amount of training required for the certification is also going to be difficult to fit into the coming semester. Approximately 20 days will be needed which, ideally, needs to be completed by the end of the first semester, less than 3 months away and unsurprisingly the teachers will be spending much of their time teaching.

25 years on

Alex October 24th, 2009

As I’m sure many of you will be aware, it is 25 years since the reports of famine in Ethiopia appeared on the BBC. But a quarter of a century later (and who knows how many millions in aid) there are new reports about potential famine in these same areas affected all those years ago. The BBC has recently broadcast from Mekelle about the situation (here and here), and Oxfam are again raising money to try to prevent famine occurring again across east Africa. There’s also a report on the Guardian website about the impact of the images sent back from Ethiopia 25 years ago.

From my point of view, working at the Uni in a well-off regional capital, I see little or no sign of the food shortages which are being reported back in the UK. I’m certainly not saying that problems don’t exist, I know that I’m in a privileged position, given my location, job and income – but for me, it’s hard to know how bad the situation is, or is becoming. It’s also likely to be affecting more remote rural areas far worse than where I’m based. There are no reports in the local media about the situation (in either the local language or English language newspapers), so my main sources of information about the problems are from outside Ethiopia, usually BBC & UK newspaper websites or from those I know who work with medical organisations/NGOs and spend more time out in the rural areas. As far as I’m aware the situation at the moment is certainly just about potential famine, and the number of people needing extra food aid (on top of the food aid normally given out) is 6.2 million – which is actually the same as last year.

Since coming to Ethiopia last year, I’ve always been wary about bringing up the subject of the 1984/85 famine. Most people I meet or work with are under 30 and so either weren’t born or were extremely young at the time. Also, those Ethiopians who have been abroad say that all anybody else in the world seems to know about Ethiopia is famine and long distance running and I don’t want to perpetuate the feeling that that’s all anyone knows or cares about Ethiopia.

Yesterday, Martin and I met up with Mike Wooldridge, the BBC journalist who has been sending back the recent reports, but was also one of the reporters here in Ethiopia reporting on the 1984/85 famine. He’s an ex VSO volunteer and his daughter was a VSO volunteer at the Teacher Training College here in Mekelle a few years ago. It was really interesting getting the chance to meet Mike, finding out about the changes that have taken place in Mekelle and Ethiopia generally over the last 25 years and also being able to show him around the University to demonstrate the work that VSO is currently doing.

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