Moodling with Rwandan
Researchers
Ravi Murugesan

• INASP
– “International Network for Availability of
Scientific Publications”
– Charity based in Oxford
– Promotes scholarly information for
development
• AuthorAID
– One of INASP’s projects
– Supports developing country researchers in
publishing their work

Training at AuthorAID
• Workshops on publishing research for
university researchers in partner countries
– Ethiopia, Rwanda, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania,
Nepal, Cuba…
• Over 25 workshops facilitated by
AuthorAID staff since 2007
– Many “cascaded” workshops as well

E-learning
• Initially supposed to be a set of e-learning
modules put up on the website
• Then a Moodle enthusiast was hired

Pilot e-learning course
• “Writing a Research Paper for Publication”
• Set up on Moodle 2.1
• 6-week, fully online course
– October to November 2011
• One instructor (me) and 28 learners
– Academic staff at the National University of
Rwanda

Activities in the course
• Forum
• Lesson (most of the course)
• Feedback
• Glossary
• Database

Facing the challenges

• E-learning adoption: slow in Africa
• English: Second language in Rwanda
• Mostly first-time e-learners in the pilot
course

Encouraging enrolment
• Clear course description
– Circulated by email well in advance
• Preparatory course before the actual
course
• Light weekly workload (2 to 3 hours)
• Self-registration and self-enrolment

Accessible, interesting content
• Moodle’s default theme used for low-
bandwidth connections
• Short sentences and simple words in the
content
• Questions interspersed (lesson module)
– Of 118 pages in the course, 74 had questions
• Not more than 200 words per page in
lessons

Question page in a lesson

Encouraging study and completion
• Preparatory course and learning
guidelines
• Regular announcements (news forum)
• Prompt responses to questions
• Monitoring learners’ progress every week
• Checking with learners who fell behind
• End-of-course assignment
• Two-week extension

Assignment with database module

Glossary with questions and
answers

Outcomes

• 25 of 28 learners (89%) completed
the course
• Good feedback

Screenshots from analysis page of
feedback module

Next steps

Moodle for AuthorAID; maybe for
INASP too!
AuthorAID
community
INASP
community

Thank you
Write to me (rmurugesan@inasp.info) to see
the course and give me feedback