The University of Rwanda-College of Education through its School of Open and Distance Learning (SODL) in collaboration with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) organized an online teaching and learningtraining for University of Rwanda- College of Education lecturers. The training is part of SODL outreach programmetoequip University of Rwanda lecturers with pertinent skills in e-learning in the quest to make education accessible to a wider audience.

Speaking at the opening of the training, Prof. George Njoroge, the Principal of the University of Rwanda College of Education said that the move is associated to the University endeavors to leverage education technology. He urged the academics in attendance to make use of the training and upload their teaching materials and engage with students online. He also informed that the initiative underlines the qualification framework by the Presidential Order in whichstudents should be at center of learning.
In the course of the training, lecturers willbe introduced to MOODLE; an open-source learning platform that enables online teaching, consultation, assessment and evaluation. Besides, the training enables partners in learning and teaching to hold online interaction about tought subjects after classes.

“The platform is going to ease the access of education, all you need is to tell students where to access the learning materials and give them tasks,” Njoroge said, adding that uploaded materials are going to be peer-reviewed by other academics worldwide and hence taking UR academics profile online.
Besides, the training seeks to help students in remote areas to access learning materials and also participate in learning process which will be a huge success in education. The system is also deemed to reduce the cost of education given that students were incurring a lot of money to go where courses are delivered.

With MOODLE, lecturers and students will be able to share online materials which include notes, assignments and other multimedia contents. The platform is also designed in a way that it can incorporate discussions between lecturers and students while the latter can also read instructions and deadlines set for particular assignments.

Mr Leon, an e-Learning Instructor during the training

One of the academics following instructions on e-Learning

Participants in the training

Prof Njoroge's remarks during the training

Story by
Darius Murangwa
PRO-University of Rwanda-College of Education