OLE Rwanda Workshops on e-resources and OER
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009Two capacity building workshops for ICTs in Education researchers and librarians that focused on ”access and use of electronic resources (INASP PERI) and Open Education Resources (OER) were successfully conducted in March 2009.
The first workshop was organized for participants from Kigali and neighboring districts and took place on 19th and 20th of March 2009; the second workshop was at the National University of Rwanda (UNR) in Butare on 31st March, 2009.
These capacity building workshops were organized by Open Learning Exchange Rwanda in partnership with the Ministry of Education and the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP PERI).
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education (Dr Mathias) made official opening remarks during the Kigali workshop. A total number of 45 people attended both workshops exciding 40 participants initially planned for. Participants came from the Ministry of Education, 10 different High Education Institutions across the country (Universities, Colleges) and 10 organizations promoting ICTs in Education and libraries such as One Laptop per Child (OLPC), National Curriculum Development Center (NCDC), Global e-schools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI), INASP,National Agricultural Research Institute (ISAR) , Center for Geographic Information System (CGIS), AVU e-learning Center, Center for Conflict Management (CMG), Institute of Scientific and Technological Research(IRST) and the National University of Rwanda Research commission. Representatives from these organizations were Head of Departments of Computer Science, Lecturers and Researchers, Librarians and Coordinators of Organizations promoting ICTs in Education and few students.
Participants leant different tools and techniques to access e-resources (INASP PERI and others) in order to increase the understanding (access and use of e-resources) and to boost applied ICTs in education research. The workshops also provided an overview of Open Education Resources (OER) and opened up the debate and research perspective on the potential of OER in the Education system in Rwanda; more importantly raising the need for a collaborative approach between Universities, Research Centers, Open Learning Exchanges Centers and Schools in ensuring that Rwanda benefit from Open Education resources for quality universal basic education in the future.
Group works suggested ways forward to strengthen ties between partners to vulgarize access and use of INASP PERI resources and to engage University communities in research supporting access and use of Open Education Resources in Rwanda (full report and recommendation shall be available soon).




